Five times congregational Namaz-e-Jama’at in a community mosque is packed with all kinds of personal and social benefits for you and your community in this world and it also puts you on track to Jannat in the next world.
So is also the case with Siyaam and Zakat and Hajj. And with Tilaawat or reading and recitation of the Qur’an. In all these cases, what you do for success in this world will also prepare you for success in the next world, if your heart and mind are filled with belief in God and the Day of Judgment.
What Muslims need to understand, and what the rest of the world needs to understand, is that they are all good for Deen as well as for Dunya. They are good for your body as well as for your mind; just as they are good for your soul as well as for your society. And they are all pathways chalked out by Allah that take you directly to Jannah based on the grace, love and mercy of Almighty Allah.
And based on the gift of faith and belief that he may have already bestowed upon you.
What Muslims of India have done, just like Muslims in many other places, and just like many Christians and others all over the world, is to separate the Deen from the Dunya. This separation is most artificial and unfounded. It is unfounded in science or common sense and it has no basis in the so-called religion itself. It is most irrational and unscientific. It is also a most disastrous, unreal and dysfunctional separation.
For, in the human person, the body, the mind and the soul are all seamlessly fused together. You cannot help one of them in the right and proper way without helping the other two. Nor can you do things to hurt one of them without hurting the other two.
Let the Divine Nur Light up Your Face
Eat Halal, Tayyib food – food that is pure and clean and lawful – in the right quantities, which means not too much and not too little, your body will flourish. It will do all kinds of wonderful chores and functions for you that you never thought possible.
What is more, you will see the glow of natural health and beauty on your face. And that glow will not be merely the glow of your corporal body; it will also be, at the same time, the radiance of your mind and your soul.
With a body carefully crafted with healthy, Halal, life-giving, truly Islamic food – if you want to call it that – you will save tons of cash in Botox shots and plastic surgery. And your mental health and spiritual wellbeing would never have been stronger or more salubrious.
You can even call that glow a Nur: divine light of Allah shining on and through your face. No vitamins and no plastic surgery can rival that.
Train yourself to tell the truth. Think nice, positive and good thoughts. Be kind and generous and helpful to people. Avoid jealousy; put away hate; control anger and malice. Avoid laughing too much or too little. Smile often and wholeheartedly. Stay away from senseless gossip and backbiting.
And see what these things do to the look on your face.
I know what I am talking about. I have seen those faces. You could almost light up a room with them. And so have you – you have seen those divinely lighted faces too. I am sure you have come in contact with some individuals of that kind in your own life. They are individuals whose faces radiated a glow that was clear for all to see. And, I am sure, you found yourself wondering about that.
In the case of Sayyidina Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, it was physically true. In the case of the glorious followers and devotees of his in his as well as in our own time and age, it is more than a metaphor. It is surreal as they say.
What the good Muslims have done all too often – the kind of Muslims who believe and behave in an Islamic way – is to content themselves with what they think is Deen and relegated to a secondary place what they think is Dunya.
That is classic pre-Islamic thinking: to think that Deen and Dunya are two separate and disjointed things. One has nothing to do with the other. Call it Jahili thought if you will. Call it the thought of disjuncture and discontinuity. It was not a culture of connectivity, continuity and communion.
That is where the world was during pre-Islamic times. During the Jaahili times.
The general ignorance, the general lack of education and enlightenment, and the layers upon layers of darkness that prevailed in those times on every front were so opaque, so appalling and so palpable that the Qur’an calls that period of human history “The Earlier Times of Jahiliyyah.”
Al-Jaahiliyyatil oolaa: meaning the era of Pre-Islamic Jahiliyyah.
Islam came to put an end to this time of pre-Islamic darkness. Islam came to bring knowledge and enlightenment to the world. It came to remove the darkness that had laid hold of human life on earth.
It is this all-round enlightenment that the Qur’an calls “Guidance.” It stands for the most complete, valid and enlightened answer to every question you may ever have. About this world or about the next world.
Thus, Islam came to educate the people.
It came to give them the most complete and comprehensive education possible on every conceivable subject. Part of that education was to tell the people that Deen is Dunya and Dunya is Deen. And never shall the twain part till the Dunya (this world) is ended and the Aakhirah (next world) is the only reality left.
That means you can’t build one by destroying or neglecting the other. They are both two sides of the same coin. You separate the two, and the coin of human life on earth vanishes without a trace and leaves human life – both aspects of it, the so-called “secular” as well as the so-called “sacred” – knocking about in darkness without identity, without destination and without hope.
