The
Relationship between the Belief in Allah and the Belief in the Hereafter
With a little thoughtful reflection one can realize that the Islamic metaphysical belief in the Divine Creator and the eschatological belief in the Hereafter together constitute the total sapiential knowledge of the whence (mabda) and whither (ma’ad) of man. That is to say, one who upholds these beliefs reflectively and with full consciousness, ipso facto, possesses authentic knowledge both about his source or origin and his ultimate destiny or destination. The Holy Qur’an summarizes this in the following words:
Verily,
we are from Allah and unto Him we shall return.
(Al-Baqara
2:156)
As a
matter of truth, a man without this absolutely essential knowledge of the
whence and whither of humanity is like a wayfarer who, due to a mishap during
the course of his journey, neither remembers as to wherefrom he started his
excursion nor recalls the destination to which he was traveling. One can well
imagine the miserable plight and mental anguish of that traveller. This is
exactly the situation of a man who, not knowing his ultimate destination or the
purpose of his existence, spends his entire life in pursuing this-worldly
goals, in accumulating the means of material sustenance and luxuries, and in
seeking carnal gratifications. Such a man is so absorbed in his immediate
physical concerns and his narrow material gains that he does not heed the
higher ideals and values of life. The Holy Qur’an allegorically speaks of this
man thus:
But then,
is he who goes along prone on his face better guided than he who walks upright
on a straight path?
(Al-Mulk
67:22)
That is
to say, the man who is ignorant of Divine guidance is confined in a narrow
single dimension. He therefore sees only what is immediately beneath his feet,
and is utterly unaware of the direction his path is taking him to. This is a
metaphor of the spiritual obtuseness which prevents a person from caring for
anything beyond his proximate worldly concerns.
Or else,
this man is like a kite which, its thin cord having been cut, is entirely at
the mercy of the ever-changing winds. The winds may carry it wherever they
like. The Holy Qur’an expresses this very graphically in these words:
For he
who ascribes divine qualities to anything beside God is like one who is
hurtling down from the sky, whereupon either the birds snatch him off, or the
winds blow him away to a far off place
(Al-Hajj
22:31)
The net
result of this rejection or ignorance of the Divine guidance in respect of the
whence and whither of man is that he becomes enmeshed in metaphysical doubts
and uncertainties, ending up with wholesale agnosticism or skepticism. The
logical end-point of this epistemological confusion is that some thinkers are
led even to the extent of casting doubts on their own objective existence and
into total ethical nihilism.
To Be Continued ....
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