FOR MUSLIMS, WHILE this world is a theatre of joy and an arena of responsibilities, it is primarily a place of preparation for what is to come. What we believe, say and do here has ultimate consequences for what happens to us in the Final Judgement and the life after which follows. Given the immediacy of how we experience this hayat al-dunya, or life of the world, and how it allures us into becoming clingy to it, it is not always easy to accept the fact that at any moment the world can and will disappear; not quite like a puff of smoke, but like a small block of ice rapidly melting into nothingness by the intense heat of the sun. The Qur’an says about the akhirah or hereafter: But you prefer the life of this world. Yet the hereafter is better and longer lasting. [Q.87:16-17]
Rather than the hereafter being something less real than the reality experienced in this ‘dream world’ of sorts, or it being a sort of pale, feeble, disembodied reflection of it, it is more real than any reality that we can experience in the here and now. The Qur’an assures us that our experience in this worldly life is qualitatively less real than what we will experience in the hereafter. For the possibilities of the spirit, as it passes through the mysterious portal of death to be reunited with its physical body in due time, are limitless.
DREAM WORLDS
That this worldly life was earlier described as a sort of ‘dream world’ isn’t to deny that it is real. It most certainly is real. It was just to emphasise that there are states of experience so intense that compared to our everyday experience in this world, they may be likened to wakefulness in contrast to dreaming. So we read these verses from Imam al-Shafi‘i:
يَا نَفْسُ مَا هِيَ إِلَّا صَبْرُ أَيَّامِ
كَأَنَّ مُدَّتُهَا أَضْغَاثُ أَحْلَامِ
يَا نَفْسُ جُوْزِي عَنْ الدُّنْيَا مُبَادِرَةً
وَخَلِّ عَنْهَا فَإِنَّ الْعَيْشَ قُدَّامي.
[my] soul! It is but a few days patience;
As if her extent were a few dreams.
O [my] soul! Pass swiftly through this world;
And leave it, for life lies ahead of me.1
It is hard to find a more striking illustration of the differences in the degrees of reality experienced by a person transported from this world to the bliss of the next, than where the Prophet ﷺ said: ‘The most privileged of people in the world from the denizens of Hell will come on the Day of Resurrection and be dipped into the Fire. It will be said: “O son of Adam, did you see any good? Did you get any blessings?” He shall respond: “By Allah! No, O Lord!” Then the most impoverished of people in the world from the inhabitants of Paradise will come and be dipped in Paradise. It will be said: “O son of Adam, did you see any misery? Did you experience any hardship?” He shall reply: “By Allah! No, O Lord! I did not see any misery, nor experience any hardship.”’2
The above hadith may be likened to a bad and good dream. If anyone were to awaken from a bad dream, scared, panicked, full of fear and anxiety, but finds themselves at home beside their loved one, the sun beaming into the room, the prospects of joyful and prosperous days before them, and all their cherished hopes and longings satisfied, for how long will they remember the dream’s pain or anguish? Conversely, if they were to awaken from a delightful dream, to find themselves in a familiar jail cell, awaiting the next round of merciless torture, without a hope of reprieve at all, the dream’s pleasure would vanish in seconds. Be it scary or sweet, reality imposes itself over dreams; the more real trumps the less real. Such is the life of the Hereafter as compared to the temporary, ‘dream’ life of this worldly existence.
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- Cited in ‘Abd al-Rahman b. Rajab, Bayan Fadl ‘Ilm al-Salaf ‘ala ‘Ilm al-Khalaf (Cairo: Dar al-Lu’lu’ah, 2002), 93.
- Muslim, no.2807.
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