Food For Thought

 

Food For Thought

  (Basic Principles of Islam.)

The average human being lives for about 60 years. Twenty years of this life is consumed by sleeping and approximately another ten in growing and learning.

Take into account another twenty years in working and worry, we are left with a meager ten years, to enjoy the 'realities' of life without the above 'prerequisites'. However, even with such freedom one encounters physical pitfalls such as illness, anxiety and the natural process of ageing. Overall the life of this world may be seemed us as a bitter-sweet game or test with no apparent purpose.

The Qur'an says:

"Know that the life of this world is but play and amusement, pomp and mutual boasting and multiplying, (in rivalry) among yourselves, riches and children. Here is a similitude. How rain and the growth which it brings forth, delights (the hearts of) the farmers', soon it withers; you will see it grow yellow; then it becomes dry and crumbles away. But in the Hereafter is a penalty severe (for the devotees of wrong); and forgiveness from God and (His) Good Pleasure (for the devotees of God). And what is the life of this world, but a matter of illusion. " (57:20)

Muslims believe that the limited life in this world merely serves as a transition toward life eternal, in Paradise. For those who strive in the right path awaits a bounteous reward and for those who strive toward ignorance awaits a terrible punishment.

Muslim should view the pleasures of this world as petty and restricted by our own senses and imaginations, whereas the pleasures of the Hereafter are boundless, a gift from the Most Merciful, the Most Kind.