Hospitality and Islam by Siddiqui Mona

Author:Siddiqui, Mona
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300211863
Publisher: Yale University Press

This afterworld is divided into two – heaven and hell, or Garden and Fire. Both of these abodes can be entered only at the end of time and their descriptions are conveyed in earthly physical sensual terms. The verses describing heaven and hell are often juxtaposed to compare the fate of the virtuous with the fate of the wicked. So while the wicked enter to burn in hell, the virtuous will realize that this is the abode for those who rightfully worshipped and prayed to God. They will appreciate that their deeds meant they escaped the torments of hell. God himself will tell the righteous entering paradise, ‘Eat and drink in satisfaction for what you used to do’. Every wish, whether for food or gazing on human beauty, will be granted to those ‘reclining on thrones’.

They will exchange with one another a cup [of wine] wherein [results] no ill speech or commission of sin. There will circulate among them [servant] boys [especially] for them, as if they were pearls well-protected. Round about them will serve, (devoted) to them, young male servants (handsome) as Pearls well-guarded. And they will approach one another, inquiring of each other. They will say, ‘Indeed, we were previously among our people fearful of displeasing God. So God conferred favour upon us and protected us from the punishment of the Scorching Fire. But God has been good to us, and has delivered us from the penalty of the Scorching Wind (Q52:23–27).

They will not only eat sumptuously, drink and wear luxurious clothes such as silk and brocade, but speak to their ancestors and descendants, greet one another as if this was one blissful banquet full of familiarity and joy. God’s hospitality will not be like anything they had imagined, even though paradise is in the reign of the imaginary. Ordinary human beings will be treated like kings as a reward for their piety. Abdelwahab Bouhdiba writes in relation to the descriptions of paradise that Islam is ‘an economy of pleasure’. For Bouhdiba, the sexual and the sacral reach greater depth in paradise and ‘the image of the Muslim paradise is positive and affirmative. Islam does not repress the libido.’ Yet it is not paradise which is materialized, rather man’s nature which is immaterilaized and reduced to pure pleasure and sensation.48

Sensual images of rivers of milk and honey, pure, non-intoxicating wines in the form of tasnīm and rahīq, silken couches, jewel-encrusted thrones, black-eyed houris and youths described as ‘pearls well-guarded’ dominate the popular imagination of heavenly delights. In the Qur’ānic heaven, there will be various distinct flows of drinks and ‘wines’ in which tasnīm appears to enjoy the most elevated status. All these different drinks are united by being pure, which essentially means not intoxicating as is the effect with ordinary wines. The Qur’ān presents no definitive understanding of the various drinks that are only partially encapsulated in the English translation of ‘wine’, but heavenly wine is the reward for abstention from earthly wine.

Whoever drinks wine [khamr] in this world, then dies while he is addicted to it and does not repent, will not drink it in the hereafter.

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