Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim People encompass multiple
existences, multiple levels of dealing and interacting with the
world. The foremost level is an individual level - the level of
a single person or single self (nafs) and the moral and ethical
life and behavior of that person within the milieu of small
scale interactions. This is the level at which most people
relate to religion and ethical life - they see religion as an
individual spiritual quest, morals and ethics as an individual’s
responsibility, religious life as an individual struggle within
their own nafs (soul) and characterized by their own behavior.
And the Qur'an greatly emphasizes this individual role through
verses that indicate that “neither your creation nor your rising
is anything but as a single soul.” (Qur’an 31:28) So the
individual has a real, substantiative existence, a profound link
to deeper realities, and therefore has a real and substantial
responsibility as well. But at the same time the Qur'an claims a
societal role for humans, a