To understand our world, therefore, we are in more need of a Universal Heart than a Cosmic Intelligence.* Not only does it provide the motive force behind creation, which mere intelligence lacks, but it also reminds us of the mysterious spiritual powers that operate both in our personal domain, in our subconscious, and in the universe as a whole. We are humbler, richer beings than the culmination of a mechanical, random, and heartless process of gradual emergence, as Darwinian materialists tend to suggest in a sly, unspoken concession to our need to see ourselves at the top of the evolutionary pile. And we are not the only, nor even the first, persons in the cosmos, but rather the natural products of a Natural, Forceful, and Caring Person.
* If we conceive of God as a symbol of rationality (rationality as we define it) or a principle rather than a Person, we are more likely to think of God as the product of the human brain, read (or write) books with titles like ‘The History of God’ or ‘The Evolution of God’, and dissociate ourselves from the common people’s imaginal realm of worship and prayer. We will also tend to care more about how ‘real people’ feel or think about us than how God regards us. Belief in an impersonal God may satisfy our intellects, but it leaves our hearts continuously searching for comfort in other fields.
The Qur’an frequently emphasizes the emotional impact of its verses precisely because our real lives are heart-felt lives. A God that does not move us as a person would, Face to face, Heart to heart, is little more than a statue in the park of academia – not what we could call our spiritual home, but an unmoving, unwitting perch where our souls can drop their excrement.
Since AL-LAH is the source of this heart-felt reality, He must have more ‘heart’ – infinitely more – than anything else, even human beings. This is yet another way in which it makes sense to say that we know Him better than we know ourselves. In other words, what we immediately sense with introspection is not just our presence, but primarily His Presence, which is why it is so unshakably convincing. We get the feeling that ‘this’, whatever it is, is somehow permanent, that it could not possibly be extinguished forever. Our distinctive identity, the sum of our self-talk, experiences, and how we internalize others’ reactions to us, is something we drape over that initial sense of presence. We go through ‘this’ presence of His to get to ‘that’ identity of ours.
The mind demands unity, but will not stop making distinctions, and thus frustrates its own designs. The heart permits and encourages diversity, and continues seeing an underlying unity despite the differences. Therefore the Qur’an is constantly talking about couples, and how everything GOD creates is engendered in pairs. We may understand from that not only the obvious contrast of male and female, but all the complementary opposites, such as heaven and earth and day and night (and others inconceivable until recently, such as matter and anti-matter), that inhabit the Qur’anic universe and contribute to the fascinating, dynamic, and balanced tension that creativity demands.
From everything We have created pairs that you might be engaged in thought. (Q51:49)
وَمِنْ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ خَلَقْنَا زَوْجَيْنِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَذَكَّرُونَ
From Ibni ‘Umar, from the Prophet, (may GOD bless him and give him peace) who said, “Ritual worship by night and day is [performed] two by two.” (Sunanu Abi Dawud, Book 5, Hadith 46)
عَنِ ابْنِ عُمَرَ، عَنِ النَّبِيِّ صلى الله عليه وسلم قَالَ ” صَلاَةُ اللَّيْلِ وَالنَّهَارِ مَثْنَى مَثْنَى ”
The first verse of the Qur’an contains a pair of attributes – the Gracious, the Compassionate – applied to GOD, and this pair is further paired by repetition in the third verse of ‘The Opening’. The entire Surah (one of 114 divisions of the Qur’an) is structured around sets of pairs and opposites, particularly the main division mentioned in this tradition:
[From Abi Hurairah, who said,] “I heard theMessenger of AL-LAH (may GOD bless him and give him peace) say, ‘AL-LAH the Mighty and Glorious says, “I have divided worship [recitation of ‘The Opening’] between Myself and My slave into two halves. Half is for Me, and half is for My slave. And for My slave is that which he requests.”’” (Sunanun-Nasa’i, Book 11, Hadith 34)
فَإِنِّي سَمِعْتُ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم يَقُولُ ” يَقُولُ اللَّهُ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ قَسَمْتُ الصَّلاَةَ بَيْنِي وَبَيْنَ عَبْدِي نِصْفَيْنِ فَنِصْفُهَا لِي وَنِصْفُهَا لِعَبْدِي وَلِعَبْدِي مَا سَأَلَ ”
The GOD You Already Know 