16. Making Room for ‘God-Forsaken’ (3)

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6. Arguments against GOD invariably employ one common fallacy; they make the good, i.e. whatever qualities the arguer thinks GOD lacks, the enemy of the Best. They operate in an imaginal space where GOD could somehow be removed from the system and the system would somehow stand on its own. Without ‘GOD’, however, ‘GOOD’ is nought – ‘O’.

This is not to say that those who deny GOD are consciously denying goodness in its entirety, or that they themselves are utterly worthless. But by dissociating GOD from the Good, they have denied themselves the organic personality that generates spiritual vision, of seeing ‘what ought to be’ become ‘Who is’. They have contributed to the disintegration of human wholeness, no matter how devoted they may be to their individual ideals. And the same may be said of those who insist on GOD as an idea or belief and neglect the personal and communal virtues that are integral elements of what GOD as the Whole Good means. They too have torn the Divine fabric within themselves, as indicated, for example, in the hadith about the woman mentioned on the previous page.

– Hell is the Divine reaction to that tear in the underlying material of the true cosmos, the Everafter. It constitutes a container of sorts for the nullity that we fall into by a force as compelling as gravity when we can no longer bear the strain of staying upright.

AL-LAH has portrayed it as a place, a living being (as the word for home here actually means mother in Arabic), and a pseudo-life of torment – for so it will feel when we come to realize what we chose – falsehood – and what we rejected – Truth.

7. If we speak of ‘Good’ in the abstract, our hearts miss what seems most genuine to us in this world – people, places, and things. This is why the Qur’an describes the Ultimate Good as ‘the Garden’, a place whose features are sensual and stirring – beautiful, chaste companions residing in palaces, delicious fruits and drinks, flowing streams, and so on. This is life in GOD’s Life, or life with Him. This is GOD’s answer to those who say that real good goes unrewarded, or that good people suffer unjustly. We need to hear and see that justice is not merely an abstract ideal, but a tangible, lasting reality.

– The same applies to Hell. We might call it the logical corollary of the Garden. Hell is GOD’s answer to those who see that the unjust, the inveterate liar, the arrogant, and the criminally powerful get off scot-free in this life, or who complain that many of humanity’s worst specimens live lives of unbridled power, undeserved fame, and shameless luxury, and then die peacefully in their beds. This is why the Qur’an describes the absence of Good in horrifying detail – iron hooks, heavy chains, searing flames, evil companions, disgusting odours, agonizing scenes, and heart-rending screams. This is life without the Living Good; nothing of it is left but its Power to place real limits on the apparently limitless potential of lies. We – that is, humans and jinn – are the ones who fill that emptiness, that gap, with what we think is real – ourselves.

The Good is of GOD, from GOD, and returns to GOD. It is the meeting point of reality, beauty, growth, and peace, conveyed to us in terms of a home called Firdaus, or Paradise. Evil, consequently, must be a nullity, a void, a place of grotesque, pernicious lies, mindless consumption, and heartless misery. Its ultimate futility and feebleness are conveyed to us in terms of a place called Jahannam, or Hell. The falsehoods destined for Hell are not of GOD, nor are they from GOD, nor are they ever redeemed. They are only true in the sense that 0 = 0 is true, or saying that souls are worth no more than stones because both are facts. The choice of such sterile truths, the most lifeless idols imaginable,

                      at length betrays

             Your heart to false yet endless pain

When all is joined in one again.

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