17. Al-Isra’/The Night Journey
I/We begin by the Blessed Name of Allah
The Immensely Merciful to all, The Infinitely Compassionate to everyone.
17:01
All Glory is to The One WHO took HIS Servant Muhammad for a journey by night,
from the Grand Sacred Masjid in Holy Makkah to the Distant Masjid in Blessed Jerusalem;
the environs of which WE have especially blessed,
so that WE make him see some of OUR Wonders of Almightiness.
Truly HE - HE is All-Listening, and HE is All-Watching.
17:02
And WE granted the Scripture - the Torah - to Moses, and
made it a source of guidance for Descendants of Jacob.
Saying:
‘Do not take anyone - metaphorically or hypothetically - for a guardian other than ME!
17:03
You are all descendants of those whom WE carried in the Ark with Noah.
He was truly a grateful servant!’
17:04
And WE warned Descendants of Jacob about OUR Decision in their Scripture:
‘You will definitely create and promote corruption in the land twice, and
you will indeed exalt yourselves’ with haughtiness and become grossly overbearing.
And thus you will be punished twice.
17:05
So when the first of these two warnings came true - as the Descendants of Jacob were tuned to sinful disobedience;
WE raised against you OUR servants, people of great power - the Babylonians.
And they ravaged your homes and caused havoc throughout the land.
And it was thus a warning fulfilled!
17:06
Then WE returned to you another chance of victory against them after you had repented,
and strengthened you with wealth/prosperity and sons/manpower,
and made you even more numerous in soldiery than ever.
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In human life, family relations are of basic importance. In the Islamic Law, the proportion of rights and obligations amongst the relatives is in accordance with human nature. The nature of relations amongst family members has been brought into light with Islamic and Natural perspectives. Amongst those rights and obligations, the responsibility for expense is of primary importance, because its clear understanding illustrates the reality of all the family relations which causes the positive effects on the whole society. In this article, by discussing the expense (rights and obligations) of relatives, the Islamic instructions, basic philosophy, general effects, necessity and its importance has been brought into light. All facts have been presented under two heads of expense (rights) of wife and expense (rights) of the relatives. But, in the light of Quran and Hadith, it has been agreed by all the Islamic Jurisprudents, upon the necessity/obligation/ compulsion of the right of expense for the relatives just like the right of expense for a wife. In this article and attempt has been made to clarify that, in a family setup, how much importance has to be given to the rights and duties/obligations of a wife?
Intervening within contemporary ecosophy, this thought experiment reframes the idea of the human while taking into account nonhuman semiotic potential. It postulates literary theory and texts as agents that participate in the material world’s meaningmaking tableau while subverting the nature/culture and human/nonhuman divides. Through a transdisciplinary itinerary, my work provides a much needed intervention within the field of literature as it foregrounds the narrative potential of nonhuman actants and its impact on the assumptions regarding the human body. Since stories have historically prescribed the centrality of the human as a logocentric agent, I argue that stories can also be used to dismantle this anthropocentric tilt. In so doing, they can establish the idea of a reparative humanness that takes into account the materialsemiotic agency of the world within which the human is enmeshed. Via the idea of textual ecology, I read the world as a kinetic compendium of human and nonhuman stories that defy absolutes and break down onto-epistemological enclosures. Therefore, my theorization takes on board Gerald Vizenor’s The Heirs of Columbus and Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl, along with two hypertexts, i.e., Mark Amerika’s Grammatron and Stephanie Strickland & Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo’s V:Vniverse to propose a re-reading of the human in terms of a compound subjectivity. This compound subjectivity inaugurates a re-reading of human embodiment as an editable assemblage that is in a state of continual becoming due to its enmeshment with various nonhuman phenomena. Since the human body is no longer a fixed entity, human performativity is also equally malleable. Therefore, I propose the idea of Ecoperformativity, which invites a search for new stories regarding our understanding of the world we live in through their mediation with nonhuman narrative agency. In so doing, I have blended the pertinent tenets of Jacques Derrida, Karen Barad, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Bruno Latour, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Timothy Morton, Rosi Braidotti and Donna Haraway, etc. My research advocates the stance that in narrating more egalitarian performative accounts of human and nonhuman agency, literary texts and theories function as open-ended semiotic systems which permit a weaving of new stories regarding the co-constitutive participation of the human and nonhuman in the meaning-making processes of the world. This provides the space for the renewal of humanities that could raise further possibilities for thinking Posthuman subjectivities and the new structures of dominance that might emerge as a consequence.