Many Muslim thinkers refer to the lost heart by the Koranic term fitra or “original creation.” Fitra is the divine form that God bestowed upon Adam w… - William Chittick
" "Many Muslim thinkers refer to the lost heart by the Koranic term fitra or “original creation.” Fitra is the divine form that God bestowed upon Adam when He created him; or, it is the divine spirit that, according to the Koran, God blew into the clay of Adam in order to bring him to life. Any discussion of “origins” in Islam has everything to do with explaining how God created the universe in stages, beginning with the invisible divine spirit, the breath that God blew into Adam. This spirit is called by many names, such as the First Intelligence, the Supreme Pen, and the Muhammadan Spirit. It is a single reality that is aware of all things and gave Adam his knowledge of all the names, Or, we can say that the First Spirit is the creative command of God, his word “Be!” to all things.
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About William Chittick
William C. Chittick (born June 29, 1943) is an American Muslim philosopher, writer, translator and interpreter of classical Islamic philosophical and mystical texts. He is best known for his work on Rumi and Ibn 'Arabi, and has written extensively on the school of Ibn 'Arabi, Islamic philosophy, and Islamic cosmology. He is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University.
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William C. Chittick
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William Clark Chittick
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To lose the ability to see with the eye of tawhid means to fall into seeing with the eye of shirk, or associating other gods with God. If the Qur’an considers unrepented shirk the one unforgivable sin, this is no doubt because it entails an utter distortion of human understanding, a corruption of the human fitra, and an obscuration of the intelligence that is innate to every human being.
The first function of the prophets is to “remind” people of their own divinely given reality. In speaking of this “reminder”, the Quran employs the word dhikr and several of its derivatives (é.g., dhikra, tadhkir, tadhkira). Moreover, it calls the human response to this reminder by the same word dhikr. The “reminder” that comes from the side of God by means of the prophets calls forth “remembrance” from the side of man. The use of the one word for a movement with two directions—from the Divine to the human and from the human to the Divine—is typical of the Quran’s unitary perspective. Here in fact there is only one motivating force, and that is the Divine activity that makes manifest the good, the true, and the beautiful, even if it appears to us as two different movements. Moreover, the Quran also makes it eminently clear that “remembrance”—the human response to reminder—does not mean simply to acknowledge the truth of tawhid. The word itself also means “to mention”. On the human side, dhikr is both the awareness of God and the expression of this awareness through language, whether vocal or silent.
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The verse of Alast continues by explaining God's purpose in calling everyone to witness: ""Lest you say on the Day of Resurrection, "As for us, we were heedless of this," or lest you say, "Our fathers associated others with God before us, and we were their offspring after them. What, wilt Thou destroy us for what the vain-doers did?"" (7:172-73) Interpretations of this verse differ, but many authorities maintain that it means that on the day of judgment, people will be held responsible for recognizing the truth of tawhid, whether or not they have heard the message of a prophet. However, they will not be held responsible for the specific teachings of a prophet if such teachings have not reached them.
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