Why it is important for humanity to cooperate

By Sheikh Muhammad Ali Waiswa

How often we hear and utter that little saying to explain big differences that occur in and between us. But as much as we might "say" it, I don't think we actually realise how truly different we are and natural and important it is to human harmony for us to preserve our delicate differences of disposition.

The poet beholds a cornfield, seeing in its tall lines of gold and green divine signs of beauty that release the soul to roam free through the deep meadows of human longing.

When at last its restless rove comes still, he sows his word-seeds with the deliberate labour of a farmer in row upon row of precise and orderly meaning. Suddenly, a dream field grows up all around him. We partake in it.

The biologist gazes upon that same field and his heart diverges. He sees the wonder of life. He touches the magical soil. His thoughts run through it like a river of life, where all is connected earth, wind and sun in a great arch of life reaching up from the lowest organism to the great reaches of the solar blue sky.

Of course, all God's creation shares much in common. Human nature, from spirit to physical kind, is a single nature. But it is folly to leave unacknowledged the wondrous, miraculous variability in our intellects, our emotions and our cognitive life.

For such is God's providence and signature across the face of existence-this spectacular simplicity of similarity endless rearranged into dazzling differences that burst from "Be!" into countless ,convergent life.

How can we frame the infinite within us, we "brief "creatures? We cannot but the Qur'an can.

If we read what the Quran says about the nature of human difference and its purpose, we find categorical facts that Allah wants us to recognise, then contemplate, then lead our lives in consonance with this common reality of individuality.

The Quran tells us that God created as much variance in people's psychology and spiritual and rational faculties as He did in their bodily features and physical capacities. It explains, moreover, that these variations on the singular theme of our humanity and diversity to which they inevitably lead are meant to help us know and acknowledge one another. That is, Allah means by this to ease our learning and consolidate our compassion, by which I mean our spiritual strength.

The Quran forewarns us of the satanic view of difference that can insinuate itself like the whisper of a dark wind into our souls. That variance can fabricate false categories in us that can inspire contention, schism and the will to inflict extreme pain on others. Divine knowledge is, therefore, the key to accord in individual and collective relationships. Yet, importantly, its seminal quality is not abandoned (as one might guess when the matter is, as in the case of creation, one of profusion and plenty.).Rather, it is self-restraint.

For there are no laws or systems of governance that may prevent man from abusing his fellows in creation if man is weak on the inside, if his faith fails and his character falls short of minimal manners of civility. Indeed, the paradigm man - Prophet Muhammad (P.b.u.h), described his mission and hence, the message of Islam thus: "I have been sent for no other reason than to perfect (in people) the noblest qualities."(Ahmad)

The Qur'an enshrines diversity as a blessing and divergence into dissension as a violation in five basic principles:

•   Humanity is one (4:1)

• God honoured the human creature by enduing it with divine preference over all other creatures in this life (2:30, 7:11, 17:70, 95:4). As such, it is a distinction that every man is to uphold for all men, even those that rebel against God.

• The inherent differences in humanity represent a special providence from God (2:213, 10:99, 11:118, and 49:13) that man is to celebrate, not translate into mandates to ill- treat one another.

• Cooperation and consonance (ta'aawun and ta'aluf) are the twin lights illuminating human interaction (5:2, 49:13)

• Transgression and unfairness are prohibited under all circumstances (2:190, 5:8) their logical extreme, killing, being recorded in the divine ledgers as one soul equalling all, and all souls quashing the transgressor (5:32)

Cooperation and consonance form a binary Qur'anic concept to which Islam accords special place in the collective human relationship. The cooperation component activates Muslims individually and collectively to help others achieve their whole some goals and remove all that harms them. The element of consonance runs deeper, guaranteeing one's right to differ in truth, without threat of confrontation, dispossession, or endangerment and with continuous and unquestioned acceptance of one's humanity. Yet they warrant no right to impose such difference.

Deficit in either of these qualities is measured in degrees of ignorance of God's command and in flaws of character.

We would all do well to remember God's reminder to His Messenger(P.b.u.h), that people will not all accept what he would ardently and altruistically have them believe: "But had your Lord so willed ,all who are on the earth would have believed -each one of them - and all of them- together. Will you then compel people (to faith) so that they become believers (O Prophet)? (10:99)

The writer is the Imam of Makerere University Business School