When a Vessel Is Broken

A question follows on all of this: an item may be broken and yet continue to exist in its pieces — why, then, does it not go on making dhikr? The answer given, as a matter of what the Prophet (peace be upon him) has taught rather than personal interpretation, is that everything has a beginning in time and an end in time, as a human life does. A man of forty-five, soon forty-six, did not exist forty-seven years earlier, or forty-eight; Allah brought him into being and sent his soul, his rūḥ, into this world, giving it a fixed span within this passing existence, and no one but Allah knows when that span will end — perhaps at the next moment, perhaps in a hundred years, by which time no one will even remember him. When his time comes, he is laid beneath the earth — six feet down, or three, whatever the custom of the place — his fate thereafter in Allah's hands. Every created thing in the universe follows the same pattern: once its trial is complete, its dhikr, its tasbīḥ, is likewise complete.

On the adab of such things, the Prophet (peace be upon him) is understood to have taught, further, that when an item is cracked — an earthenware vessel that has been through the kiln and glazed, or glass — it is not to go on being used, even where the crack or chip is slight; health authorities today confirm that germs gather in the exposed, unglazed area. Attachment to a favourite mug changes nothing in the ruling, though a person may of course do as he pleases; the adab remains as stated. Such pieces, once discarded, return to the earth, and there Allah allows them to continue their dhikr with the earth itself — while still serving their purpose, as a cup, a plate, an ornament, they go on making dhikr, and once that purpose ends, dissolved back into the ground, the dhikr continues there.