Page 28 - The Pains of the False World

THE PAINS OF THE FALSE WORLD

auspicious form in the Here a f t e r. Be as ready as if you had but
one more day to live…" (Abdul-Qadir Gilani, Gonul Incileri
Ikazlar (Warnings of the Pearls of the Heart), translated into
Turkish by Celal Yildirim, Bahar Yayinlari, pp. 27-29)

PASSION AND DESIRE ARE OBSTACLES TO
HAPPINESS

Allah reveals in the Qur'an that people's earthly desire s
contain two distinct elements. One of these is the "conscien-
ce," which commands what is good and prohibits what is evil;
,
the other is fujoorwhich commands what is evil. The word fu -
joormeans engaging in sin and rebellion: telling lies, turning
one's back on what is right, disobeying just laws, moral col-
lapse and that which is an aff ront to godliness. In other
w o rds, the concept re f e r red to here as fujoor includes all the
negative features of the human ego. In the Qur'an, Allah reve-
als that He has inspired both fujoorand conscience, which im-
pels human beings to avoid the former:
And [I swear by] the self and what proportioned it and
inspired it with f u j o o r [depravity] or t a q w a [sense of
duty], he who purifies it has succeeded, he who covers it
up has failed. (Surat ash-Shams, 7-10)

The second important feature of immoral desires drawn
attention to in the Qur'an is "passion" and "greed." Someone
who contents himself with the life of this world and fails to
consider the Hereafter is devoted to all he possesses with
"passion" and "greed." He or she starts to live as if death and
the Afterlife were far away. In fact, in societies which live far

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