Hearing, Seeing, and Reasoning
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May peace be upon you all,
1736...you will be held accountable for your hearing, sight, and the faculty of reasoning.
This is a common theme throughout the Qur'an. Whenever the integrity of believers comes into question, hearing, sight, and reasoning are mentioned with the exclusion of taste, smell, and touch.
One would think that God would not forget to mention the other senses in this context. Therefore, I imagine, there must be a reason.
The first thought that popped into my mind is as follows Taste, smell, and touch, are the luxurious of the material senses. They serve the purpose of pleasure, and not of thought provocation. They are the accents of life, the bonuses, if you will. Whereas what we hear and see must be digested and figured out.
Again, these are my rudimentary thoughts and surely need refinement. Looking forward to seeing your thoughts. )
May peace be upon you,
Tay -
Peace Tay
that makes a lot of sense to me - I'd just add the notion that hearing, seeing and reason are things a disbeliever can deny, can reject if you like. You can ignore what you see or hear, clamp down on your reason. As these things help us formulate our higher understanding of this reality they are especially important in regard to our salvation.
However the other sensual senses (touch, taste, smell) are not subject to the same level of inner policing. If something tastes sweet your tongue will be in no doubt, it will not deny it. It will not claim the flavour is actually savoury. But if you see one guy beating up another you might well reason out that he was acting in legitimate self-defence tho he was in fact the aggressor.
Its a broad distinction and one could think up examples where this wouldn't hold true.... but generally speaking I think it does.
peace
asdfjk -
Peace Asdfjk,
You stated,
I'd just add the notion that hearing, seeing and reason are things a disbeliever can deny...However the other sensual senses (touch, taste, smell) are not subject to the same level of inner policing
Excellent points, bro. I'm understanding the touch, taste, and smell senses to be almost involuntary.
Its a broad distinction and one could think up examples where this wouldn't hold true.... but generally speaking I think it does.
I'm at a loss for an example to the contrary. I know that all of our senses have a certain threshold, where the brain does not continue to process information it recognizes as old information. For instance, one may not realize the smell of his own home, but a stranger walking in will definitely smell something different than he's used to, and he'll make a mental note of it. This occurs with all of our senses, sadly, even reason.
Peace,
Tay