The Purpose of Life

Hamza Yusuf, the well-known American Islamic scholar, looks into the question of life’s purpose via the Quranic text. He concludes that there are three main purposes, which he defines by the Arabic words Imarat, (cultivation),Khilafat(stewardship)  and Ibadat(worship).The first term Imarat is somewhat ambiguous. What kind of cultivation? Does this refer only to agriculture, which seems unlikely, or to personal cultivation? Since this idea was new to me as a purpose of life, I looked into the Quranic references and came to the conclusion that what it is really about is something like ”maintenance” not dissimilar to the goal of the ecological movements we see arguing for sustainabilty or the Native America ideas about honoring and caring for the Earth. If that is indeed the case, then it is really contained already  in the idea of khilafat. So we are left with two purposes-Ibadat and Khilafat.

Khilafat, that some Quranic translators translate awkwardly  as vice-regency, is a very important concept. Broken down to its essence, it means that man has a managerial role in the Universe .In simple terms we could say God is the Boss and we are the Managers ,answerable to him. Clearly, we are not doing a very good job of this- as we witness environmental pollution and destruction on a scale never seen before on the planet. We, alone, are responsible for that.

The term’ ibadat’ is often translated as worship. But the root word a-b-d is related to service. And there are hadith that mention that service to man is an elevated form of worship. So ,in this term, we have service to man and duties towards God ,two distinct entities but also inter-related ones.

Now if we switch gears and look at the nde (near-death experiences) literature, we get a somewhat different picture. If we take an over-view of the nde accounts, we would come to the conclusion that there are three major purposes to life- learning to love, acquiring fundamental knowledge, which could also be termed ‘understanding’ or ‘wisdom’ and realizing one’s mission in life. That, too, makes perfect, intuitive sense.

Now these two models, at first glance, appear to be different but they are not really contradictory. The Quranic analysis tends to look at the outer aspects while the nders are reporting more of the inner aspects.This is not too difficult to understand as the Islamic scholars, almost by definition, are looking mostly at the outward.

If we now take the Sufis, who are the people of the inner, they begin to understand and unravel the inner Quran. And so they, the Sufis, speak regularly and systematically about love and knowledge .In that way they bridge the divide and complete our understanding of the purposes of life. Briefly stated here are the purposes: Behave well towards your fellow man and your environment, honour your Lord, cultivate Love and seek knowledge. Ah! As I am a stickler for complete understanding, my heart is now,finally, at peace.

N.B Please notice, here, that two erroneous views that are popular nowadays have not been mentioned. The first is the viewpoint promoted by the Hindu-Buddhist traditions that the purpose of life is to attain enlightenment. If you think about this one carefully it makes no sense! That we come from nothing and return to be nothing without anything else being accomplished in the interim is an absurd idea. Yet that is exactly what the Buddhists are proposing. The way I understand this distortion is that the Indian religious traditions are imbalanced in the direction of the other-worldly. They see no point to relative existence, except to escape from it back to where we started.

The other erroneous position is even more popular in the modern world. It says that the purpose of existence is to enjoy oneself and have a good time. Another absurdity but in this case imbalanced in the direction of worldliness. With all the suffering that life entails (the Buddhists got that one right!) and all the tests, how could the purpose possibly be enjoyment?! I can still remember Sheikh Nazim, the Sufi teacher I spent most time with, commenting on a New Age group dancing to rock music in the Swiss Alps: ”They think they are free” he said, “but they are like fish in a net”. Well-spoken, Sheikh. That is the net of dunniya (worldliness).

So I urge everyone to stay on the straight path (of virtue) and the Real Middle Way (of faith and moderation).May Allah help us all!.