THE DANCE OF THE PEN, THE PLAY OF THE SIGN

Abstract

According to the Islamic tawhidi paradigm, God, after creating the world- both humanity and nature- ex nihilo, did not dwell in either of them or abandon them completely. God cares for the world but maintains a distance, a gap that separates Creator from created. This has resulted in a fundamental humanity-nature duality, which is echoed in many other dualities (e.g., body-soul, male-female). Humanity’s existence is restricted by this gap’s parameters, but it is also a human space in which the individual has the freedom to fulfill a human space and either to fulfill or abort hisher essence and potential. Through the limits imposed by this space, the individual passes from the state of nature to the state of culture, from a simple innocence that does not know good or evil to a complex experience that recognizes their existence. In short, humanity passes from the embryonic stage, in which the individual is both limitless and completely determined, with no space separating him/her from nature, to the divine (rabbani) stage, where he/she is limited but, through these very limits, where freedom, dignity, identity, sepamte consciousness, and the abilities to loose and to transcend are gained. Humanity is part of nature, but not an organic part ...