"By the fig and the olive, by Mount Sinai, and by this land made safe, truly We created man in the most beautiful stature, then We cast him to the lowest of the low, save those who believe and perform righteous deeds; for their shall be a reward unceasing. What then will make you deny religion? Is not God the most just of judges?"
Quran 95:1-8
Here's another one of the shorter surahs in its entirety, in this case surah 95, al-Tin, here rendered "The Fig." Like a lot of the shorter surahs three's a lot going on here, so I'll probably come back and revisit it later in a different context (for example, here we have one of the over fifty times that "believe and perform righteous deeds" are linked together). However, in this instance I'm mainly interested in the fourth verse, "truly We created man in the most beautiful stature." There is a famous hadith qudsi which goes, "Truly God created Adam in His image," which is obviously similar to Genesis 1:27. It's important to keep in mind that in Islam, like in Judaism, but unlike in Christianity, it is not appropriate to render God in a physical anthropomorphic form. Essentially, image means something very different than the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In his related commentary in the Study Quran Nasr tells us, "This hadith is understood to mean that human beings are created with such attributes as life, knowledge, power, will, speech, hearing, and sight (the qualities most often used in Islamic theology to describe God), which are in fact Divine Attributes that God has caused to be reflected in human beings. Human beings are able to manifest all of the Divine Names and Qualities, whereas all other created beings are only able to manifest a limited range of the Divine Names and Qualities." So, while human beings cannot be God, we can, and should, aspire to these virtues. This, in turn, speaks to human potentiality, and not simply in a secular sense outside of a religious paradigm, but rather as an essential part of the human mission.
Quran 95:1-8
Here's another one of the shorter surahs in its entirety, in this case surah 95, al-Tin, here rendered "The Fig." Like a lot of the shorter surahs three's a lot going on here, so I'll probably come back and revisit it later in a different context (for example, here we have one of the over fifty times that "believe and perform righteous deeds" are linked together). However, in this instance I'm mainly interested in the fourth verse, "truly We created man in the most beautiful stature." There is a famous hadith qudsi which goes, "Truly God created Adam in His image," which is obviously similar to Genesis 1:27. It's important to keep in mind that in Islam, like in Judaism, but unlike in Christianity, it is not appropriate to render God in a physical anthropomorphic form. Essentially, image means something very different than the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In his related commentary in the Study Quran Nasr tells us, "This hadith is understood to mean that human beings are created with such attributes as life, knowledge, power, will, speech, hearing, and sight (the qualities most often used in Islamic theology to describe God), which are in fact Divine Attributes that God has caused to be reflected in human beings. Human beings are able to manifest all of the Divine Names and Qualities, whereas all other created beings are only able to manifest a limited range of the Divine Names and Qualities." So, while human beings cannot be God, we can, and should, aspire to these virtues. This, in turn, speaks to human potentiality, and not simply in a secular sense outside of a religious paradigm, but rather as an essential part of the human mission.
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