THE DANCE OF THE PEN, THE PLAY OF THE SIGN

Abstract

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