—filling their hearts with admiration for them and prompting them to imitate the disbelievers’ manners and wicked habits, while failing to emulate their diligence, their readiness of power, and the genuinely useful aspects of their inventions and industries.

(b) The second view of life—the sound view—is for a person to regard whatever wealth, authority, and material power this world offers as merely a means that helps him work for the Hereafter. The world itself is not censured for its own sake; praise or blame attaches only to what the servant does within it. This life is a bridge and a passageway to the next, and from it comes the provision that fills Paradise. The finest bliss that the people of Paradise will taste is granted to them only because of what they sowed in this world. It is the abode of struggle, prayer, fasting, spending in Allah’s cause, and the racetrack where people vie in good deeds. Allah will say to the inhabitants of Paradise, “Eat and drink in satisfaction for what you sent on ahead in days gone by” (al-Ḥāqqah 69:24)—that is, for what you did in the life of this world.