The firmer one’s recollection and desire for sound accountability after death, the better is their behaviour prior to that accountability. In other words, cognisance (Īmān) of the Hereafter is inextricably linked to ethics (Akhlāq)…
Many will ask why they need to recognise a life after death. Why should such be required for one’s salvation if they are already ‘good’? Needless to say, the question is baseless, as it assumes that objective ‘good’ fundamentally excludes God and the recognition of a life after death. If we are to include the cognisance of the Hereafter as being required before one can deem themselves or another ‘good’, as was the case prior to modernity bringing about this separation, the question becomes like asking why one cannot be the very thing they dismiss.
Good is and from He Who is Absolutely Good, which is interestingly an old English term for ‘God’ (gōd with a long ‘o’). Can one be good or godly if they deny ‘God’ or deny what He requires of His goodly servants?
Recognition of the Hereafter is an Article of Faith, central to a person’s Islām -submission to the Almighty- and required from the Source of Good, Allāh. Besides this creedal duty, recognising the Hereafter brings endless good into one’s conduct. Nothing improves a person’s behaviour and morality more than to recognise accountability after death.
This ultimate accountability will determine whether a man lived a life of good or evil. To deny this ultimate ‘Judgement’ is then to deny that discrimination and has the effect of subverting the very need to do good altogether.
Islām, moreover, firmly ties mannerisms to eternal salvation, on top of emphasising their worldly advantages brought to those around us. The firmer one’s recollection and desire for sound accountability after death, the better is their behaviour prior to that accountability. In other words, cognisance (Īmān) of the Hereafter is inextricably linked to ethics (Akhlāq). This may be why in the 49th chapter of the Qur’an, the Apartments, al-Hujurāt, typically called the Chapter of Ethics, Allāh appeals to Īmān five times in just 18 verses.
Let us consider, for example, that a gesture of good happens to bring a person nothing measurable by worldly standards – neither satisfaction, financial reward nor appreciation. Consider if the recipient of your gesture was an orphan, too young to recognise the gesture or thank you and even less likely to pay you back, with obviously no parents to do so on their behalf. With this in mind, revisit the oft-recited verses in the Qur’ān that so remarkably, yet coherently relate the cognisance of the hereafter with one’s treatment of the orphan:
“Have you seen the one who denies the (final) Judgment? That is the one who repulses the orphan…”[1]
Almost to say that to repel the most vulnerable and least able to remunerate you is naturally the consequence of denying the Ultimate Account. The recogniser of the Hereafter will recognise that honouring the orphan is what is right and good. Such will hope only for Allāh’s countenance in the afterlife, even if it never comes from the vulnerable recipient in this world, and thus will persevere for them, never rebuffing them, because of that cognisance and nothing else.
References:
[1] Al-Qur’ān 107:1
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