According to at least one of my critics, Macrossan Street, the lavish main boulevard of Port Douglas, Queensland, seems to be a more upscale Australian equivalent of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills or of the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in Paris. (Photo from Wikimedia, umm, \u201cCommons\u201d)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Further notes on which I\u2019m working:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here are some additional examples from the Qur\u2019an of the opposition between \u201cthis world\u201d or \u201cthis present world,\u201d on the one hand, and, on the other, \u201cthe hereafter\u201d (as at 10:24, 70; 12:101; 13:34; 14:27; 16:30, 41, 109, 122), between \u201cthe life of this world\u201d and \u201cthe life to come\u201d (10:7-8; 13:26; 14:3) or \u201cthe world to come\u201d (17:10) or \u201cthe one to come\u201d (16:107):<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThose who do not expect to meet Us and are pleased with the life of this world, contenting themselves with it and paying no heed to Our signs, shall have the Fire for their home because of what they used to do.\u201d\u00a0 (10:7-8)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe life of this world is like this: rain that We send down from the sky is absorbed by the plants of the earth, from which humans and animals eat.\u00a0 But when the earth has taken on its finest appearance, and adorns itself, and its people think they have power over it, then the fate We commanded comes to it, by night or by day, and We reduce it to stubble, as if it had not flourished just the day before.\u00a0 This is the way We explain the revelations for those who reflect.\u201d\u00a0 (10:24)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey may have a little enjoyment in this world, but then they will return to Us.\u00a0 Then We shall make them taste severe torment for persisting in blasphemy.\u201d\u00a0 (10:70)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is good in this present world for those who do good, but their home in the Hereafter is far better: the home of the righteous is excellent.\u201d\u00a0 (16:30)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAs for those who emigrated in God\u2019s cause after being wronged, We shall give them a good home in this world, but the reward of the Hereafter will be far greater, if they only knew it.\u201d\u00a0 (16:41)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
As I\u2019ve already observed, the Arabic term rendered as English world<\/em> in these passages is al-dunya<\/em> (literally \u201cthe near [life]\u201d).\u00a0 In the following passage from his Oxford translation of the Qur\u2019an, M. A. S. Abdel Haleem renders the full Arabic phrase \u201cthe near life\u201d (al-hayatu al-dunya<\/em>) by means of the English adjective worldly<\/em>\u2014because it has essentially the same non-\u201cgeographical\u201d sense as that English adjective does:<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people of the Fire will call to the people of Paradise, \u2018Give us some water, or any of the sustenance God has granted you!\u2019 and they will reply, \u2018God has forbidden both to the disbelievers\u2014those who took their religion for distraction, a mere game, and were deluded by worldly life.\u2019\u00a0 Today We shall ignore them, just as they ignored their meeting with this Day and denied Our Revelations.\u201d\u00a0 (7:50-51)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Given the way a small group of my more unrestrained online critics want to portray my stay here in northern Queensland \u2014 according to them, my wife and I are basically luxuriating here in a wealthy enclave, the Australian equivalent of Switzerland\u2019s Gstaad or St. Moritz, supported (rather in the manner of the Book of Mormon\u2019s King Noah) by the tithes of poor peasants on the Bolivian Altiplano if not altogether by ill-gotten profits extracted from slave labor in the blood-diamond mines of Angola \u2014 a discussion of \u201cworldliness\u201d seems quite appropriate. \u00a0And, I have to say, my wife and I have certainly felt<\/em> like late nineteenth-century robber barons here as we\u2019ve traded gold bullion for food at the exotic local IGA Supermarket, greedily devoured our homemade ham and cheese sandwiches, and washed our dirty clothes in a token-operated laundromat! \u00a0To make things even more perfect, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that the place in which we\u2019re staying has air conditioning! \u00a0Let the peasants eat cake.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 Further notes on which I\u2019m working: \u00a0 Here are some additional examples from the Qur\u2019an of the opposition between \u201cthis world\u201d or \u201cthis present world,\u201d on the one hand, and, on the other, \u201cthe hereafter\u201d (as at 10:24, 70; 12:101; 13:34; 14:27; 16:30, 41, 109, 122), between \u201cthe life of this world\u201d and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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