Desiring This World and Desiring the Hereafter
{Whoever desires the immediate life, We hasten for him in it whatever We will, for whomever We intend. Then We appoint Hell for him, which he enters condemned and banished} [al-Isra: 18].
Everyone in this life tills and intends: acts and wills, whether foolish or rightly guided, miserable or happy.
Some people intend through their deeds only this immediate abode and worldly life. They confine their concern to it, fix their hearts upon its portions, make it their intended destination and ultimate endeavour, and expect neither reward nor punishment beyond it. They turn to it heart and body, wholly turning away from anything else. They answer no divine caller through encouragement or warning and do not restrict their conduct by the laws of justice and beneficence.
For anyone with this intention and conduct, God hastens in this world whatever His will has already determined to hasten, if he belongs to those for whom He intends this. Grammatically, the prepositional phrase ‘for whomever We intend’ substitutes for the phrase ‘for him’ in ‘We hasten for him’.
God’s hastening is therefore for whom He intends, not everyone who desires. What is hastened, in amount, kind, and duration, accords with the giving Lord’s will, not the desiring servant’s.
How many seekers of worldly life aim for something but obtain only part, losing a portion of their labour with no return in this world or the next! How many strive and labour only to end in disappointment and deprivation, returning exhausted with no immediate fruit gained and no future reward stored! That is manifest loss.
Then, when he comes before God in the Hereafter, Hell, the abode of punishment, is prepared and appointed for him. He is compelled to enter and burn in it.
‘Condemned’: remembered for the ugliness of his deeds, scant gratitude to his Lord, failure to use divine blessings in obedience, and failure to consider his ultimate outcome.
‘Banished’: driven far into the Fire and expelled from mercy. He deprived himself of benefiting from God’s mercy in this world through gratitude, so justice required his deprivation of it in the Hereafter. Similar is the verse in al-Shura: {Whoever desires the harvest of this world, We give him some of it, but he has no share in the Hereafter} [al-Shura: 20].
He worked for this world and received his share of it. He did not work for the Hereafter and therefore has no share there.
The qualifying ‘some’ in ‘some of it’ indicates that whatever he receives, whether all or part of what he sought, is only a portion of this world.
If the entire world is insignificant in its smallness, transience, and vexations compared with the least bliss of the Hereafter, what of only a part of it?
Whoever exchanges the Hereafter’s bliss for this small, base, troubled, paltry portion has failed and lost.
Similar too is the verse in Hud: {Whoever desires worldly life and its adornment, We fully repay their deeds in it, and they are not shortchanged (15). Those will have nothing in the Hereafter but the Fire. What they accomplished there is nullified, and their deeds are invalid (16)} [Hud: 15-16].
Fully repaying their deeds means granting their fruits completely in this world.
‘They are not shortchanged’ means their recompense is not reduced: they obtain the effects through the causes they employed.
In the Hereafter those deeds are nullified, producing neither reward nor fruit, because they were invalid and without permanence. They worked for this transient abode, and their work vanished with it. The sin of ingratitude to their Lord remained, bringing them into the Fire. Such is the outcome of wrongdoers.
These two verses, however, are unqualified concerning both what is given and the recipient. The al-Isra verse qualifies both by God’s will and intention. In explanation and rulings, the unqualified is understood through the qualified.
All these verses indicate that the worldly causes God established in this life as means to effects lead those employing them, by His permission, to their appointed results, according to His command, decree, and laws governing life and the universe, even if those employing them believe neither in God nor the Last Day and do not affirm the messengers.
It follows that whoever neglects these divinely decreed worldly causes and does not employ them will not obtain their effects, even if a believer. This is known and observed throughout human history, past and present.
A believer’s reward for faith is not lost, but its recompense is in another abode. Likewise, the other person’s use of causes is not wasted: he receives recompense in the abode of causes, yet has nothing in the Hereafter but the Fire.
The categories of servants:
Servants thus fall into four categories:
1. A believer employing worldly causes: happy in this world and the Hereafter.
2. A materialist abandoning them: miserable in both.
3. A believer abandoning causes: miserable in this world and saved in the Hereafter after being held accountable for that abandonment.
4. A materialist employing worldly causes: happy in this world and among the lost in the Hereafter.
Knowing this, Muslims should not be unsettled by their own condition compared with those who do not follow their religion. Their backwardness is not due to faith but to neglecting causes, itself a sign of weak faith. Others advanced not through lack of faith but by employing the causes of worldly progress. Muslims know they passed through ages in the first category through faith and deeds. They entered the third only when faith weakened, deeds worsened, and neglect increased. They therefore have only themselves to blame for what befalls them. Your Lord judges truly; He is the All-Knowing Judge.
{Whoever desires the Hereafter and strives for it with its proper striving while a believer, their striving will be appreciated} [al-Isra: 19].
This is another category of creation, whose deeds intend and seek the Hereafter, awaiting its reward and hoping to be removed from the Fire, attain Paradise, and receive divine pleasure. Such striving is appreciated on three conditions:
First: sincerely intending the Hereafter’s reward through one’s deed, as conveyed by the verb of intention in ‘whoever desires the Hereafter’ and the purposive preposition in ‘strives for it’.
Second: performing for it the action recognised by Islamic law and appropriate to it, without which its reward cannot be attained: obeying and fearing God by observing His commands, prohibitions, and limits.
Third: being a believer certain of God’s reward and immense recompense.
When these three conditions are fulfilled, ‘their striving will be appreciated’: accepted and rewarded with good praise and beautiful recompense, tenfold for a good deed, up to seven hundredfold and many times more. {God multiplies for whom He wills; God is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing} [al-Baqarah: 261].
If any condition fails, the deed is neither accepted nor rewarded, since a conditional result necessarily disappears when its condition is absent.
Several discussions arise concerning these conditions:
The first discussion:
Intending reward and recompense for deeds does not contradict sincerity towards God. Sincerity means directing worship to God alone.
Hope and desire for reward, and caution and fear of punishment, are two great stations among your acts of worship. In them too you must be sincere, hoping only for His reward and fearing only His punishment.
If sincere in hope and fear, you regard yourself lightly and struggle in obedience, undeterred by opposition or anyone’s blame concerning God. The worlds diminish in your sight, and you utter ‘God is greatest’ with knowledge, inner experience, and witnessing.
The point is that sincerity is the spirit of hoping for reward and fearing punishment. How could these contradict it?
Someone acting, hoping for reward, fearing punishment, and sincere in all performs four acts of worship: the deed, hope, fear, and sincerity, the spirit of them all.
The Qur’an records the patriarch of the prophets, Abraham the Friend, praising God thus: {He whom I hope will forgive my sin on the Day of Judgement} [al-Shuara: 82].
God records His righteous servants’ supplication: {Our Lord, avert from us Hell’s punishment; its punishment is unrelenting} [al-Furqan: 65].
The qunut supplication says: “We hope for Your mercy and fear Your severe punishment.” [1]
Many other proofs support what we have stated.
The second discussion:
This condition indicates that anyone not intending the Hereafter has no appreciated striving.
This requires detail. A worshipper may intend no Hereafter at all, seeking instead worldly praise, gain, or a deed’s practical benefit. He may intend both the Hereafter and one of these in equal or unequal partnership. In an ordinary customary act, he may intend no Hereafter, only a worldly aim, or both, with the worldly serving as a means to the otherworldly.
There are thus several categories:
The first category:
Someone performing a devotional act such as prayer, charity, pilgrimage, or learning, without intending the Hereafter at all, incurs sin rather than appreciation.
Concerning this, Abu Hurayrah’s hadith in the Sahih reports: I heard the Messenger say: “The first person judged on Resurrection Day is a man killed in battle. He is brought forward, shown God’s blessings, and recognises them. God asks: What did you do with them? He replies: I fought for You until I was killed. God says: You lie; you fought to be called brave, and that was said. He is then ordered dragged on his face into the Fire.
A man who learned and taught knowledge and recited the Qur’an is brought forward, shown God’s blessings, and recognises them. God asks: What did you do with them? He replies: I learned and taught knowledge and recited the Qur’an for You. God says: You lie; you learned to be called learned and recited to be called a reciter, and that was said. He is then ordered dragged on his face into the Fire.
A man whom God enriched and gave every kind of wealth is brought forward, shown God’s blessings, and recognises them. God asks: What did you do with them? He replies: I left no avenue in which You love expenditure without spending there for You. God says: You lie; you did it to be called generous, and that was said. He is then ordered dragged on his face into the Fire.” [2]
What these people practised is ostentation: worshipping so as to be called obedient.
Whenever ostentation enters worship, even slightly, it nullifies it. Abu Hurayrah’s hadith in the Sahih reports the Messenger saying: “God says: I am the One most free of need of partners. Whoever performs a deed associating another with Me, I abandon him and his association.” [3]
Associating another with Him applies to little and much alike, so both nullify the deed. The ostentatious performer incurs sin, not appreciation.
The second category:
Someone worshipping with the intention of the Hereafter’s reward and a further worldly advantage, like “a man seeking jihad while desiring worldly gain”.
When asked about this, the Prophet said: “He has no reward.” Narrated by Abu Dawud and Ibn Hibban.
Similarly, someone simultaneously intending emigration and marrying a woman, ablution and cooling himself, or fasting and dietary restraint has no reward, even if the worship is valid: validity depends on intending the act, while reward depends on sincere intention.
This applies when both purposes are equal, as the hadith’s wording appears to indicate.
If worship is the predominant intention, apparently he receives reward proportionate to that predominance.
The third category:
Someone worshipping for the Hereafter’s reward, while considering the worship’s other benefits only secondarily, as a recognised religious benefit taken into account in legislation.
Verses and hadiths giving benefits as reasons for religious rulings are innumerable. Concerning pilgrimage: {So they may witness benefits for themselves} [al-Hajj: 28].
Its benefits include economic activity benefiting those lands and their inhabitants and increasing their flourishing. Hence God says: {There is no blame upon you for seeking bounty from your Lord} [al-Baqarah: 198].
The bounty means trading during pilgrimage seasons. [4]
Considering any benefit worship brings or harm it repels while intending worship does not contradict sincerity or reduce reward. Such benefit resembles the reward attached to the deed: one in this world, the other in the Hereafter. Both belong to God’s mercy sought through our deeds, encompassed by the qunut phrase “We hope for Your mercy,” for He is the Merciful One of this world and the Hereafter.
The fourth category:
Someone performing ordinary worldly acts such as eating, drinking, sleeping, intercourse, and the like, intending only worldly benefit without reward, receives neither reward nor sin.
This is the condition of the heedless and ignorant.
The fifth category:
Someone performing ordinary acts with awareness of their religious permissibility, intending them as means to obligatory or recommended deeds that depend on them, and to avoiding prohibited or disliked acts. Examples include intercourse with one’s wife to fulfil her right and preserve both spouses’ chastity; sleeping to gain strength for worship; and exercise to remain healthy for obedience. Such a person is rewarded, his effort appreciated, and he receives what he intended.
Through this path a divinely assisted servant can make all movement and stillness for God and in obedience, continually remembering Him and worshipping as though seeing Him. One who worships as though seeing his Master cannot let his heart forget Him and become occupied with another. Even when attending to something else, he does so by His permission and approval, never departing from God’s holy presence.
A proof is the Messenger’s statement in Abu Dharr’s hadith in Muslim: “In each of your sexual acts is charity.” They asked: Messenger of God, does satisfying one’s desire earn reward? He replied: “If he placed it in the unlawful, would he incur sin? Likewise, placing it in the lawful earns reward.”
The third discussion:
Some people invent acts and arrangements and approach God through them, as polytheists invented worship of idols through supplication, sacrifice, submission, and expecting needs to be met by them, while knowing they are God’s creations and possessions. They worship them, as they say, only to bring them nearer to God.
Likewise some groups among Indians invented forms of self-torment, killing and burning themselves as supposed obedience and devotion.
Likewise some Muslim groups invented dancing, instrumental music, circumambulating graves, making vows to them, sacrificing beside them, calling their occupants, kissing their stones, erecting structures over them, burning incense beside them, and pouring perfumes upon them.
All these inventions are intrinsically corrupt because they are not the striving for the Hereafter practised by Muhammad and his Companions after him. Their practitioners incur sin rather than appreciation.
The fourth discussion:
The Lord’s appreciation of His servant rewards the servant’s gratitude to Him. A servant is grateful only when acting in obedience and believing. Without faith, gratitude cannot be conceived. This is inferred from ‘while he is a believer’.
The nominal clause conveys faith’s firmness and rootedness during action. Steadfastness and continuity in deeds correspond to faith’s firmness and rootedness.
The believer acts certain of God’s pleasure, meeting Him, and His immense reward. He works without losing heart, whether or not he reaches his goal; whether worldly obstacles or death intervene; whether its fruits are harvested in his generation or only generations later.
The clause thus conveys the condition for accepting deeds, the secret of persisting in them, and continuing gladly and joyfully.
All Muslims Can Act upon This Verse
Conclusion:
All Muslims, praise be to God, possess faith. Let them remain aware of it in every deed. They inevitably act for livelihood or the return to God; let them intend in everything God’s countenance, obedience to His command, and His good reward. Let them confine worship to what is established from the Messenger, to be certain of conforming to God’s pleasure and following salvation’s path.
If they do this, steadfastly pursue it, and struggle to make themselves adhere to it, they will be grateful and appreciated, according to their differing ranks among those who work before the Lord of the worlds. God speaks truth and guides the way. [5]
The scholar Abd al-Hamid ibn Badis (d. 1359 AH/1940 CE), may God have mercy on him. Majalis al-Tadhkir min Kalam al-Hakim al-Khabir, 1/160-173, Dar al-Rashid, Algeria; Ibn Hazm, Beirut; third edition, 1436 AH/2015 CE.
[1] Part of the qunut supplication established from Umar, narrated by al-Bayhaqi (2/210-211) through Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Abza.
[2] Narrated by Muslim (1905), from Abu Hurayrah.
[3] Narrated by Muslim (2985), from Abu Hurayrah.
[4] As in Ibn Abbas’s hadith in al-Bukhari (1770); see also Tafsir Ibn Kathir.
[5] Al-Shihab, part 1, volume 6, Ramadan 1348 AH/February 1930 CE.