Nature of Man

In the Name of Allah The Compassionate The Merciful

Man is born with fitrah which means that he has recognized that Allah is his Creator innately but with the potential of being a nonbeliever.  Therefore, he has to protect himself from external agents of misguidance with the help of external divine agents which are the prophets and the revelation from Allah (Yasein 1998).  

Man has dual nature, the material (body) and the immaterial (mind and soul).  Man’s physical nature is an agent that feeds the soul with information through sense perception and rational perception so that meaning of the information received can be understood.  Therefore, there should be no dichotomy between heart and body because the heart depends on the body to provide them with information through the sense faculties and reason; and the body depends on the heart to liberate it from succumbing to its lower nafs.  Concisely, both dimensions of man must be developed according to the truth. 

We have mentioned that rational perception and spiritual perception are done in two separate faculties.  According to Yasien (1998), rational perception is done in the mind.  The locus of the mind is the brain.  It is “capable of reasoning which is the projection of aql on the mental plane” (p. 92).  We know that man differs from other animals because man is bestowed with the ability to reason and communicate using language through speech.  The process of articulating words in meaningful structures is done in the aql (mental plane).  Al-Attas (1980) defines aql as “an innate property that binds and withholds the objects of knowledge by means of words” (p. 14).  He claims that aql and qalb (heart) are synonymous.  Spiritual perception is done in the aql.  Aql is capable of both reasoning and intellection i.e. comprehending revealed knowledge.  Qalb (heart) is the locus of aql.  This means that the function of the heart is not only to pump blood to the entire body but also as an organ of spiritual cognition (Acikgenc 1996).  The Qur’an refers to qalb (heart) as thinking organ in the following verse:

                                                         

Have they not traveled through the land so that they have hearts to think with, and ears to hear with?  It is not the (physical) eyes that are blind, but the hearts within the breasts.  (Al-Hajj (22): 46)

From this exposition, we conclude that man is dual in nature; however both the physical and abstract nature of man is interdependent.  Therefore, education system should be planned in a way that both dimension of man can be cultivated.