The Fire Is Surrounded by Desirable Things

Now, there is a tradition that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: the fire is surrounded by desirable things, and paradise is surrounded by undesirable things. The idea here is that if we look at the pure outwardness of something, and not at its inwardness, and we submit to the outwardness, an outward thing can look very desirable — but what are its inward realities? So, for instance, for a man who submits to his lust — which is very common, one of the seven deadly sins, and a very common human experience — there is something desirable, obviously, for a male and a female in having a sexual relation. At the physical level it can be a very physically stimulating experience. And if we look at it outside of its social context, that desirability might be there. But if we begin to place it within a societal context, what are the implications of this act? What are the implications of sleeping with another person without any social responsibility? Because a pregnancy can often result, so there is an other; there is a third. There is a third that is the result of the act. Also, what is it saying about intimacy in a culture in which the most intimate physical act becomes profane, to the degree that it has no emotional content? In other words, there are deep implications to the act itself.

If we look at it from its desirability, it is a downward motion. If we look at the aspects that might be less desirable, such as commitment — commitment is a difficult thing; to make a commitment. There are things that are going to be difficult that relate to it. But what is the inward reality? Outwardly, there are many people in this culture who do not want to commit to marriage, because it is undesirable for them. They want to be free: upwardly mobile, not tied down. They see it as being tied down, and that is undesirable. Footloose and fancy-free — that is how they want to be. What are the long-term effects of that? What are the long-term effects? Outwardly there are many desirable things; but then inwardly there are many undesirable things. Just as outwardly there are many undesirable things, but inwardly there are many desirable things.

So what the Qurʾān, in a sense, is really trying to do is to get people to think deeply about things. And this is why it constantly talks about thinking about the ʿāqibah: what is the long term? What are the subsequent results of the action? So this, in a sense, is a model of human potentiality in terms of its upward movement, and also of degradation in terms of its downward movement. Most people are in conflict. Many people are not in conflict: they have submitted completely to this downward motion. And other people are struggling to move up. And some people are moving up.

Now, in the modern world we have become, arguably, quite cynical in a lot of ways. But the ancients probably had… it was just that there was a sense of this, even within Western culture. There was a strong sense of the idea of this upward movement — that it was humanly possible: the dark night of the soul, Saint John of the Cross, this type of idea, that one could really achieve a type of power over the self, and have completion and fulfilment in God. The difference, perhaps, between that classical model in the Western world and the Islamic model would really relate to the idea that the Muslim model is not saying that the world is bad. And the reason is that the world is seen as literally a theatre of divine revelation, and the fact that God has made it a revelation means that it cannot be bad. But to the degree that God is absent from the world, the world is bad. So, in other words, there are two hadiths of the Prophet (peace be upon him). One says the world is green and beautiful, and in another he said it is like a dead carcass. It is green and beautiful for the one who understands his place in the world, and honours that place, and rises up to stewardship, and attempts to subdue the self and to be a caretaker. It is a carcass for the one who destroys his soul in the world, and thus destroys the world as well.