Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

158 t CHAPTER SEVEN
to paint the Prophet of Islam as a sensualist with an eye and a taste
for women. As one famous hadith put it, “When it comes to this
world (al-dunya), women and perfume have become dear to me,”
to which is quickly added, “but my heart’s delight is in prayer.”
Whatever the precise truth of all these reports, Muhammad was
clearly no ascetic. He was neither excessive nor abstemious in his
conduct, a rather remarkable trait in a man who knew both poverty
in his early years and extraordinary worldly success in his
middle life. “I am but a mortal like you,” he is made to say in the
Quran (18:110), and both the Quran and the sunna confirm that
assertion. Nor did he preach to others any discernible degree of
voluntary self-restraint or self-denial with respect to the legitimate
pleasures of life.
The Goods of This World
If the Prophet of Islam was a “moderately sensual man” in person,
his religious priorities were more radically defined, at least as they
issue from the Quran. The Quran has a strong sense of the distinction
between “this world” (al-dunya) and the “next world” (alakhira).
“Know,” the Quran says (57:20), “that the life of this
world is only a frolic and a mummery, an ornamentation, boasting
and bragging among yourselves, and lust for multiplying wealth
and children. It is like rain so pleasing to the cultivator for his
vegetation which sprouts and swells, and then begins to wither,
and you see it turn to yellow and reduced to chaff. There is severe
punishment in the Hereafter, but also forgiveness from God and
acceptance. As for the life of this world, it is no more than the
merchandise of vanity.” More, our desires are often displaced:
“You want the frail goods of this world, but the will of God is for
the other world” (8:67). There is no necessary contradiction between
the realms; it is simply that the next world is where judgment
will be passed on our use of the goods of this world—there
that those who have used them well will find their place of reward,
and those who have used them ill, their punishment.
The Quran’s teachings differ little in this regard from the Gos-