It is unalloyed, everlasting good, whereas the pleasures of this world are but deficient, vanishing phantoms.

Once those two reflections settle firmly in a person’s heart, he will choose what sound reason demands he choose and will turn away from what sound reason tells him to renounce.

By nature, no one is willing to abandon immediate benefit and present delight for deferred benefit and an unseen, future delight—unless the superiority of the latter over the former becomes clear to him and his desire for the higher, better portion grows strong. Should he nevertheless prefer the perishing and defective, that can only be because the superiority of the Hereafter is unclear to him or because he lacks any real desire for the better. Either case points to weakness in faith and in intellect and insight.

The one who hankers after the world, clings to it, and prefers it is in one of two states: either he affirms that what lies beyond is nobler, better, and more lasting, or he does not. If he does not affirm it, he is devoid of faith altogether; if he does affirm it yet still fails to choose it, his intellect is corrupt and he has made a wretched choice for himself.

This is an exhaustive, unavoidable division: favouring this world over the Hereafter stems either from defective faith or from defective reason—and all too often from both.

For that very reason the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and his Companions hurled the world behind their backs. They turned their hearts away from it, cast it aside and never felt at home with it; they abandoned it and had no inclination toward it, counting it a prison, not a garden (1). They therefore renounced it with genuine detachment—yet had they wished, they could have obtained every desired thing in it and reached every coveted aim, for it was presented to him