ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Islamic Business Ethics This World and the Hereafter =============================== A. The Relationship In the Islamic worldview, God has created human beings with a specific purpose: to attain the highest level of perfection in order to have a blissful life in the hereafter. The process of attaining perfection is to be done in this world by willingly submitting ourselves to God.

The relationship between this world and human beings can be clearly and simply put as the following: • The world has been created for humans; it is only here that a person can attain the levels of perfection. • Humans have been created for God: it is here that they have to submit by their own choice to the commandments of God.

In a hadith qudsi, God says: “I have created all things for you, but you I have created for Myself.”[^1] In the Quran, God says: “And the earth- We have spread it forth and made in it firm mountains and cause it to grow in it of every suitable thing. And We made in it means of subsistence for you and persons for whom you are not the sustainers.” (The Qur'an, 15:19-20) Muslims have to maintain a balance between their outlook towards this world and the hereafter.

They cannot exclusively bind themselves to one without the other; neither is the world to be forsaken for the hereafter nor the hereafter for this world. A Muslim uses this world for the hereafter; or, to put it in a stronger form, one cannot prepare for the hereafter without this world. ***** When Imam 'Ali deputed Muhammad bin Abi Bakr as the governor to Egypt.

He wrote the following document as an advice to him and the Egyptians: "Know, O people, that the righteous ones have acquired [the joys of] this transient world as well as the forth-coming hereafter. They shared with the worldly people in their mundane matters while the worldly people did not share with them in [the blessings of] their hereafter.

"They lived in this world in the best manner of living and ate the choicest food and so they enjoyed herein all that the worldly people enjoyed and achieved from it what the haughty and arrogant had achieved. “Then they departed from it with the sufficient provision and profitable bargain [for the hereafter].