"The life of this world is naught but play and diversion."
Quran 6:32
Here's another passage from al-An'am, the 6th surah, here rendered as "The Cattle." I know I've touched on similar points in the Quran before but, as we know, I'm a generally disorganized person, or at least I tend to follow my instincts and desires (and, yes, I get the inherent irony of that statement in explaining how I ended up here at this moment for this verse). I think passages like this one make people think that religions, especially Islam, are dreary places where folks sit around and lifelessly stare at religious texts pausing only to criticize the behavior of others (not that we don't have our fair share of those folks, obviously). Instead, life is supposed to be a gift from God, and why would He/She/It want us to be absolutely miserable? Rather, the joys of this life can be distracting from bigger issues. As Nasr tells us, "This world is described as mere play and diversion (see also 29:64; 47:36; 57:20) insofar as play and diversion involve a certain delusion in which the inner reality of things is obscured by outward appearances. The pejorative description of the world as play is meant not to disparage play of any sort, which is certainly permissible in Islam, but rather to make the point that many of those things accorded great weight and significance in this world as a mere child's play in relation to the reality of the Hereafter." (p. 350)
I keep finding myself hearkening back to Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, which I really should reread (again). His points about how are minds are dominated by rapid entertainment and how it impacts, impacted and will impacted education and politics (one only has to look at the Trump phenomenon) read like prophecy. Similarly, his point about the corruptive influence on education was also spot-on. A couple years ago I went to a Christmas mass at a nearby Catholic Church (this is just an example, not taking a specific pot shot at them - they tend to stay on point much more readily than their other Christian siblings) and they had invited a local radio team (they were upstairs where the choir would normally be) to provide music and entertainment during "dull" moments in the service. I was appropriately horrified, and not simply because there are few things more uncool than the appropriately uncool trying to be inappropriately cool. However, it ended up being distracting and embarrassing. So, there's plenty of room for play but there's also a time for study and work. Didn't the psychologists prove that multi-tasking is not actually a thing?
Quran 6:32
Here's another passage from al-An'am, the 6th surah, here rendered as "The Cattle." I know I've touched on similar points in the Quran before but, as we know, I'm a generally disorganized person, or at least I tend to follow my instincts and desires (and, yes, I get the inherent irony of that statement in explaining how I ended up here at this moment for this verse). I think passages like this one make people think that religions, especially Islam, are dreary places where folks sit around and lifelessly stare at religious texts pausing only to criticize the behavior of others (not that we don't have our fair share of those folks, obviously). Instead, life is supposed to be a gift from God, and why would He/She/It want us to be absolutely miserable? Rather, the joys of this life can be distracting from bigger issues. As Nasr tells us, "This world is described as mere play and diversion (see also 29:64; 47:36; 57:20) insofar as play and diversion involve a certain delusion in which the inner reality of things is obscured by outward appearances. The pejorative description of the world as play is meant not to disparage play of any sort, which is certainly permissible in Islam, but rather to make the point that many of those things accorded great weight and significance in this world as a mere child's play in relation to the reality of the Hereafter." (p. 350)
I keep finding myself hearkening back to Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, which I really should reread (again). His points about how are minds are dominated by rapid entertainment and how it impacts, impacted and will impacted education and politics (one only has to look at the Trump phenomenon) read like prophecy. Similarly, his point about the corruptive influence on education was also spot-on. A couple years ago I went to a Christmas mass at a nearby Catholic Church (this is just an example, not taking a specific pot shot at them - they tend to stay on point much more readily than their other Christian siblings) and they had invited a local radio team (they were upstairs where the choir would normally be) to provide music and entertainment during "dull" moments in the service. I was appropriately horrified, and not simply because there are few things more uncool than the appropriately uncool trying to be inappropriately cool. However, it ended up being distracting and embarrassing. So, there's plenty of room for play but there's also a time for study and work. Didn't the psychologists prove that multi-tasking is not actually a thing?
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