“Qadar night! Qadar night!”
When my son was four, thanks to his pre-school teacher, he became so excited about what he called “Qadar night.” We were talking about it at bedtime one day that Ramadan, and when I told him how one act of worship is like doing it for a thousand months, he said, “Whoooaaaaahhhhh….” He was entranced listening to the story of the Qur’an coming down to our heavens for Jibreel to take it to our messenger.
I realized suddenly that the loss of innocence we see in children and the disconnect with these concepts is something that comes as we let them become more disconnected with the unseen world.
We are surrounded by things we can see, hear, touch, and observe. From a young age we internalize the idea of observation as a way to discover our world. And yet if we don’t maintain that connection with the unobservable, the undetectable, the unseen, then that childlike wonder in the face of miracles fades away.
We are left with pre-teens who shrug when we bring up stories of the Prophets and their miracles. We are left with nihilistic teens who don’t find meaning in anything sacred. It’s frightening, sometimes, to compare the rapt wonder of my now five-year-old with the blank disinterest of older children.
We see this trend in history as well. With the advent of the scientific revolution, the idea of faith in unseen forces and unseen beings diminished in importance. While there are many who still believe in angels, devils, heaven, and hell, among many faiths the the potency of these beliefs has been reduced to mere symbolism.
This theme of focusing only on the current world and becoming blind to the unseen hereafter is something that recurs over and over in the Qur’an. For example, in the Surah named after “the Romans” (ar-Room)–a fact that is all-too-apt considering our topic–Allah tells us:
يَعْلَمُونَ ظَاهِرًا مِّنَ الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا وَهُمْ عَنِ الْآخِرَةِ هُمْ غَافِلُونَ
They know what is apparent of the worldly life, but of the Hereafter they are utterly unaware. (30:7)
As I watched my young son’s reaction to these tales of the unseen, I realized that I have to keep this spark alive. If we don’t keep these concepts–of reward, blessing, taqwa, jannah, naar, the concept of an unseen God–all fresh in our minds and our children’s minds, they will fade. I see it in the faces of older children who have begun to regard these things as mere fairytales.
It is this characteristic that Allah mentions first in the Qur’an, describing the muttaqeen (pious): “Those who believe in the unseen.” This trait is what distinguishes us and honors us as believers–that we do not rely only on the observation of our senses, but that we “see” beyond with the eyes of guidance, the seeing of the heart.
We need to fight the pull towards secularism and empiricism and make the unseen, seen. That is, we need to make the unseen into something felt and cherished, lest it vanish from our thoughts and hearts completely.
