being in the proper place... and in the sense I am defining here, it is also a reflection
of wisdom; and with respect to society it is the ‘just order’ within it. Concisely
defined, Adab is the spectacle of justice as it is reflected by wisdom [not feelings]...
When the rational soul subdues the animal soul, one is putting one’s self in one’s
proper place. This is adab towards the self... [it then expands towards] family and
towards community etc. etc....
But when the mind displaces levels and degrees of knowledge and being,
disrupting the order in the legitimate (revealed) hierarchy, then this is due to the
corruption of knowledge. Such corruption is reflected in the confusion of justice,
so that the notion of ‘proper places’ no longer applies in the mind or even
externally, and hence, the disintegration of adab takes place... this situation thereby
allows false leaders in all spheres of life to emerge because of the corruption and
knowledge and the consequent incapacity and inability to recognize and
acknowledge true leaders... [Furthermore] it is an intellectual anarchy that
characterizes this situation whereby common people become determiners of
intellectual decisions [democracy] and are raised to the level of authority on
matters of knowledge... whereby we are left with platitudes and slogans disguised
as profound precepts...”^54Al’Ghazali reinforces this definition with the following statements:
“A human being is not a human being while his tendencies include self-indulgence,
covetousness, temper and attacking other people [gossip]... A child has no real
knowledge of the attainments of an adult. An ordinary [common] adult cannot
understand the attainments of a learned man. In the same way, an educated man
cannot yet understand the experiences of enlightened saints or Sufis.”Many are the times when Aisha corrected the Prophet’s Companions [her
inferiors] whose memories had failed them, and most especially Abu
Hurairyah: whose envy of her intellectual ability may have caused him to
author misogynist Hadith that influenced the superordination of men to the
degradation of women in Islamic societies within three to four generations.^55
Even accounts of Aisha's jealousy towards Khadijah indicate that she bore a
dispassionate regard for the emotion [feeling] of jealousy though she surely
experienced it. This demonstrated her virtuous triumph over its potentially
54
See: Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas; Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam , ISTAC,
1995, KL, MALAYSIA
(^55) See: Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an , (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1980),