Dina Kaidir’s Reviews > The Immense Ocean: Al-Bahr al-Madid: A Thirteenth Century Quranic Commentary on the Chapters of the All-Merciful, the Event, and Iron > Status Update

The human state is distinguished from all others by its inherent balance of subtle and gross, meaning and form, spiritual and physical. It is due to this balance that if human beings be granted gnosis (ma'rifa), it elevates them above all other creatures.

Surat al-Rahman, verses 1-13, such a noble sura. :)

"Within any given revealed or scripture oriented religion there will be marked three tendencies: "the people of the text," or literalists; then the rationalists, who will try to understand the text with their rational faculty (al-aql); and finally the "people of the spirit," those who seek to understand and actualize their own innermost beings, these are the mystics (rabbaniyun)." ~Shaykh 'Abdal Halim Mahmud~