Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
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254 t CHAPTER TEN<br />
the signs (ayat) that God in his mercy has strewn across the universe<br />
to underst<strong>and</strong> his uniqueness <strong>and</strong> generosity (30:20–25). But<br />
<strong>for</strong> Muslims there is a special guidance: the Quran (2:185), with its<br />
own clear ayat—a word that soon came to refer to the Quran’s<br />
individual verses. The Book also characterizes itself as a furqan, a<br />
“criterion.” This too is a difficult word, but its contexts suggest<br />
that the entire range of its values is germane here: criterion, revelation,<br />
salvation. The Quran is then, in its own words, both a guide<br />
<strong>and</strong> the instrument of salvation, since, as we have just seen, the end<br />
<strong>for</strong> humans is the generous endowment of prosperity, the successful<br />
reaping of rewards in this life, <strong>and</strong> an entry into the Garden<br />
that is God’s reward to the just in the Afterlife.<br />
The End <strong>and</strong> What Follows<br />
The corollary of “this world” (al-dunya) so despised by the ascetic<br />
is “the next world” or, more properly, “the End” (al-akhira),<br />
which the mystic attempts to anticipate. From the perspective of<br />
the three monotheistic communities, this “end” is understood in<br />
two related, <strong>and</strong> sometimes conflicting, senses. It refers in the first<br />
instance to the end of the individual: what, if anything, occurs to a<br />
person immediately after death. It is a starkly personal <strong>and</strong> individual<br />
concern. But the three faiths are also, <strong>and</strong> perhaps even<br />
more thoughtfully <strong>and</strong> fretfully, concerned with the End Time, the<br />
absolute finale to God’s plan <strong>for</strong> the cosmos, <strong>and</strong> what might lie<br />
beyond. There was, as it turned out, a great deal beyond. The End<br />
will mark only the end of history; beyond “The Day” <strong>and</strong> “The<br />
Hour” of the End Time stretches eternity, not the mere prolongation<br />
of time but an entirely new dimension of being. Eternity is a<br />
state or condition, <strong>and</strong> although theology undertook to explain in<br />
what it consisted, “eternity” simply pronounces of itself that it has<br />
no beginning or end. Humans will enter it in progress.<br />
The End Time was <strong>and</strong> remains a complex affair <strong>for</strong> <strong>Jews</strong>, <strong>Christians</strong>,<br />
<strong>and</strong> Muslims, with an elaborate <strong>and</strong> articulated scenario <strong>for</strong><br />
the series of acts that will constitute it. Its <strong>for</strong>mal production design<br />
began with the visionary apocalypses of post-Exilic Judaism