Fatimah al-Zahra, even as a young child, was constantly assisting her father, Prophet Muhammad, during the early days in Mecca and supporting him in any way she could.
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It is no coincidence that the only child of Prophet Muhammad to survive past infancy was a girl, his daughter, Fatimah al-Zahra.
The unique event of the delivery and the outstanding support from the greatest women of humanity in delivering Fatimah al-Zahra.
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Just as the lead-up to the conception of Fatimah al-Zahra was unparalleled in human history, her birth was also as unique, and is yet another indication of her great status.
The other-worldly link of the creation of Fatimah al-Zahra, peace be upon her, and her arrival into the world.
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To begin to understand Fatimah al-Zahra and why she is so important in Islam, we must start our journey through a brief introduction of her parents.
The human being is both conscious of self and conscious of the world. He has a tendency to become more aware of himself and the world. His fortune and prosperity are, thus, in pledge of these two kinds of awareness.
It is not easy to judge which of these two is superior in significance to the other. Some people value self-consciousness over world consciousness and some others do the reverse. The type of approach taken possibly reveals one aspect of the difference which exists between Eastern and Western patterns of thought.
The creatures that constitute our world are divided into two groups: animate and inanimate. Inanimate creatures such as water, fire, stones and soil do not play any role in the building and development of themselves. They merely originate and grow under the influence of external factors. They do not engage themselves in activities of any sort so as to improve their existence. Conversely, living creatures like plants, animals and human beings make specific efforts to preserve themselves from various difficulties, to absorb things on which to feed and to reproduce.
Chapter one revealed a portrait of the human being as a material and spiritual being who shares many common aspects with other animals but, at the same time, is separated from them by a great distance in terms of some basic, conspicuous distinctions; each offering him a separate dimension, each a separate manifesta tion in the whole of his existence. Such distinctions occur in three different areas:
1. recognition of the self and the world
2. desires which govern human beings
The human being has a strange story in Islamic thought. In fact, human beings in Islam are not exclusively pictured as straight statured animals who have flat nails, who walk on two feet, who speak. Rather, according to the Qur’an, they are much deeper and more mysterious than what such words may define.
This book “The Human Being In The Qur’an” (Insan dar Qur’an) is the fourth of a seven-volume series which bears the general title, An Introduction to The world view of Islam (Moqaddima hii bar Jahanbini-i Islamic). Mutahhari has attempted in these books to expound some basic and controversial Islamic concepts and principles in a language so clear as to be easily understandable by both the masses and the elite.
Bismi-Llah, Al-Rahmani, Al-Rahim
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
The martyred professor, Murtadha Mutahhari, was born in A.H.S. 1299 (1920 A.D.) in Fariman, a town in the northeastern Iranian province of Khorasan. His father, the late shaykh Mohammad Hossain Mutahhari, was a chaste: God-fearing man and, consequently, the object of great reverence of all social strata throughout Khorasan as well as other parts of the country.
Abbas Ali Shameli
