NYAZEOn Living, Technology and Art

Praise God.

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I first tried to read the Qur’an when I was in high school. A class-mate lent it to me. I don’t remember if there was a copy in the library, but the one he had was big, leather-bound, the impressive kind. Inside, English words stood beside the original Arabic, which was so beautiful I immediately trusted them. It wasn’t intellectual, it was entirely emotional. I was a lonely kid looking for something that mattered, something real. Those Arabic characters, they could have meant anything. For that reason, they meant everything. They were a way out.

I started wearing a kufi and reading Qu’ran every chance I got, but I never really understood the words, even the English ones. It would be years before I finally took my real Shahada and started practicing, but the seed of wisdom had already been planted. Wisdom, you ask? Yeah, that’s right. I’m not going to proselytize and say which way is better or who has the truth, Christians, Jews or Sabians (whoever they were). I’m just saying that no matter which soft drink you drink, there’s going to be some sugar, so if you have taste buds, you’ll taste it.

That’s what the Qu’ran was and is to me. It’s a holy book. It’s full of sugar. Just like the Bible. It’s intention is to raise human beings to a greater, not lesser state, but it is not all-powerful. It isn’t God or even God’s actual voice (which, like a Son, he doesn’t need).  It is a fragrance of the divine and a codec to interpret your life through.

The Day of Judgment? What is it? Nobody knows. Anyone who claims to know because they have read the Qur’an or the Bible exaggerates their understanding. If anyone truly knew, they would be supernatural. The point of the Qu’ran and the Prophets who came before is precisely this point. We don’t know much besides what we see and feel. Sometimes it takes a dramatic and often metaphoric approach to condense and illustrate the mysteries of the Universe. The gift of the Qu’ran is that anyone can read it or hear it and absorb something good from it. That people do not isn’t an indictment of the book, but of the reader.

When I think of Judgment Day, I am filled with great peace. I don’t even know it’s literally true. I don’t have to. Will it come in my lifetime? My vanity wishes it would, but it probably won’t. Like everyone before me, I will probably have to die before I see God’s face.

Saint Rabiya once explained that to serve God for desire of Paradise or fear of Hell were ultimately inferior forms of service. Only love was sufficient for full immersion in the divine. It occurs to me that perhaps Judgment Day is simply a metaphor offered by the Divine to give us peace in this life – in the face of seemingly unanswered brutality, those who seek faith in goodness, need all the help we can get.

For me, I think I am OK with or without Paradise. My life on Earth has shown me great beauty and tenderness. I have experienced moments of such divine, crystalline beauty that it hardly matters if see them again. They are precious because of their fragility. I do not see what a thousand thousand years of such moments will accomplish that one split second of perfect beauty did not.

If there is no Paradise after the grave, it will not be a great loss. How can you lose anything that was never yours to begin with?