ভূমিকা
“And this life of the world is nothing but a sport and a play and verily the abode of the hereafter, is certainly the (real) life: did they but know!” The Qur’anic word /lahw/ is used for the amusements which hinder man from the main aims and fundamental affairs.
The Arabic term /la‘ib/ is doing something like play in which there is no particular aim.[^1] The creation of the world has been done wisely and for a particular aim, while being mammonist and neglectful from the Hereafter is done foolishly.
In order that men can promote their thought higher than the horizon of this limited life, and that they open the doors of some vaster worlds to the scope of the vision of their intellect, in this verse the Holy Qur’an, through a short and very expressive sentence, compares the life of the present world with the eternal life in another world, where it says: “And this life of the world is nothing but a sport and a play…” There is not anything in this world save sport and play, while the life in another world is the real life.
The above verse continues: “…and verily the abode of the hereafter, is certainly the (real) life: did they but know!” What an interesting and expressive meaning this Qur’anic phrase /la hiyal hayawan/ is! Because the Arabic word /lahw/ means ‘sport’ and anything that makes man busy to it and turns him away from the essential affairs of life, while the word /la‘ib/ (a play) is used for the acts that have a kind of imaginary order for an imaginary aim, (play).
In a ‘play’ someone plays as a king and another one as a minister, another one is the commander of the army, and some others play as a caravan or as a thief. But after their struggles and conflicts, we see that all of their deeds have been some imaginary acts. The Qur’an implies that the life of this world is a kind of sport and play. In it, there are some people who pursue some imaginary things.
After a few days they scatter and their bodies will be buried under the ground, and, then everything will be forgotten. But the real life, which has no declension or destruction, will remain.