Struggle

Sophia's Note (from theme session on 'struggle'):

freedom :the concept of freedom is diffrent a bit than that in modern culture , even in our daily talk in arabia we use the english word free when we want to refer to the western meaning of freedome - in our chit chats- we say someone is free when he/she do whatever he/she likes

but that meaning is more attached to the concept of will if we dig it deep , we say someone do whatever he wants ie he has the will to choose to do or not to do 

will is another concept that is a little diffrent too , the will isnt totally free nor one fate is detremined by DNA or any natural law the will of one man is in between those 2 paths between the absulote free will and the absolute determinism

one famouse saying about freedom is of a man who was surrounded by a huge army to kill him , he told them : if you have no religion and you fear no other life , be free in this life and go back to yourselves and question it , do you have the right to kill me ?

he is asking them to purefy their intentions and clear their positions and on what bases they make their decision : are they killing him cuz he deserve it or they are killing him cuz they want money , fame , power and so on

in jihad we struggle to free our decisions from 2 main entities : desires and hawa , the other one isnt easy to explain in english in one word the first though is easy

desires struggle are best described with one liner : not all that sparkle is gold ! and the other one liner : we eat to live not live to eat

Hawa is a concept related to ego sometimes , love hobbies , heart , opinions etc , it is about likeness and dislikeness , about the things we might change our mind about them 180 degree

It is adviced not to be a self opinion worshipper nor to follow others opinions blindly -opinions based on likeness and dislikness even if we later tried to justefy them for the sake of justefying them-

in this process one must not consider desires as aims but as tools , and he shouldnt be basing his decisions on likeness and dislikeness

so the word jihad is a descriptive word to the state of self at the time of making decisions , we struggle , i guess that everyone doing that in one way or another , it is just in islam we have more emphasis on that , it is encouraged and guided

it is mostly dealt with in ethics

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