Tuesday, August 27, 2013

7. Jannah: The Garden from the Qur'an and Hadith - Allah will reward them for what they say with Gardens withrivers flowing under them, remaining in them timelessly, for ever. That is the recompense of the good-doer. (Surat al-Ma'ida: 85)

When considering the blessings that Allah will grant in the Garden, it
must not be forgotten that the human mind is very limited. For this
reason, people really cannot imagine the abundance, variety and
incomparable beauty of the blessings promised. Any description of the
blessings of the Garden, if it is to be enlighteningfor people, must
be done by way of comparison with the beautiful things of this world.
But the blessings of the Garden will be absolute in their perfection.
In His infiniteintelligence, Allah has created the Garden as a
magnificent place free from all imperfection.
The following example illustrates the limitationsof human thought. If
a human being had been created with the senses of taste, smell,
hearing and touch but without the sense of sight, he would never have
been able to conceive of visual beauty no matter how much it was
described to him. He would never be able to understand when people
spoke to him of colour, daylight, proportion, symmetry orvisual
splendours. By thesame token, there may be other senses that we know
nothing about at present, but which Allah will create in the Gardento
give us a totally new outlook. Therefore, in this world where we
arelimited to five senses, wecannot imagine what kind of blessings
there may be that may be beyond our ability to conceive. With our
limitations of sight, thought and imagination, we are like people in a
windowless house who never come out. Such people are unaware of the
beautiful things outside the house – mountains, rivers, trees,
beautiful flowers, animals, clear skies, bright sun-lit days – and so
cannot be aware that they live deprived of many blessings. In
addition, the comparison we make is based on the good things of this
world. The blessings of this world are extremely lacking when compared
with the blessings of the Garden and a person of faith must avoid the
error of interpreting even the limited things he knows about the
Garden from a narrow viewpoint. Apart from the things our Lord has
revealed about the Garden, a person has no idea of what surprises have
been prepared for the people of the Garden. Here is one of the verses
of the Qur'an that tells us about this: "They will have there
everything they want and with Us there is still more." (Surah Qaf:
35)
It is said that our Prophet described the blessings of the Garden in
these words:
Isn't there anybody hastening to the Garden? Because in the Garden
there are unimaginable blessings. (Mukhtasar at-Tadhkirah,
al-Qurtubi, pp. 306-307/499)

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