Who am I?

The majority of people will ask themselves the question “Who am I”, within their lifetime. This query has been one of the fundamental questions posed by humanity and intellectuals have spent ages pondering and researching to find an answer.

Understanding the identity of a human being can take two forms: 1) Personal identification, which means to refer to a person’s names their date and place of birth and the activities that the person has engaged in throughout their life and 2) Human recognition, whereby the attributes and features of a person are identified, basically these trails which are believed to constitute human nature. Here we will refer to some important human qualities, which play key roles in defining his humanity. An individual inherently posseses reason, nature and dignity and seeks to achieve maximum perfection in areas such as knowledge, morality and beauty.

The recognition of these attributes can help man find answers to another one of his important questions, which is regarding the perfect human. When the most prominent human characteristics are studied, the conclusion is that the immaculate human being is the one who has developed within himself/herself all the values and talents to the maximum, in such a manner that they are in complete harmony with each other. It is interesting to note that none of these features in and of themselves is an accurate measure to assess humanity, all of them contribute to humanity. What is certain is that we are not looking at only one dimension of the human and measuring him by that. The features that we are considering differ from those recognized within the sciences such as biology, medicine, physics and other sciences which only study man from a materialistic view.

The Qur’an states: “And do not be like those who forget Allah, so He makes them forget their own souls. It is they who are the transgressors”.(59:19)

The Messenger of God (s) stated: “Whoever knows himself, knows his Lord.” ( 'Awalial-Layali. Vol. 2, p. 102)