concept of time travel in islam

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The Islamic position on 'time travel'

What does the Islam say about time-travel?

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is His Slave and Messenger. If you mean by "time travel" moving between different points in time forward or backward, meaning physically visiting the past or the future, then this is impossible. Allaah, The Exalted, says (what means): • { And if I knew the unseen, I could have acquired much wealth, and no harm would have touched me. } [Quran 7:188] • { And no soul perceives what it will earn tomorrow, and no soul perceives in what land it will die. Indeed, Allaah is Knowing and Acquainted. } [Quran 31:34] Only Allaah, The Exalted, knows the Unseen; if it were possible to travel to the future and know what would happen, this (the fact that only Allaah knows the Unseen) would be falsified. Allaah, The Exalted, says (what means): { And with Him are the keys of the unseen; none knows them except Him. } [Quran 6:59] And He says (what means): { Say, "None in the heavens and earth knows the unseen except Allaah. } [Quran 27:65] We would like to point out that "time" is nothing more than a mathematical function of two variables; it cannot be separated or abstracted so that it would be possible to travel through it. However, certain "periods of time" can be (relatively) longer or shorter compared to others. For instance, the time the Dajjaal will spend on earth was described by the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, as follows: " forty days: one like a year, one like a month, one like a week, and the rest of his days like yours. " [Muslim] Another example is in the Hadeeth about Yoosha‘ ibn Noon ( Joshua the son of Nun ) conquering Jerusalem: " He reached that town at the time of the ‘Asr prayer, so he said to the sun, 'O sun! You are bound by the command (of Allaah) and so am I! O Allaah, stop it (i.e. the sun) from setting for a while.' It was stopped until Allaah made him victorious. " [Al-Bukhari and Muslim] However, if you mean merely imagining that one is living in the past and envisioning people's lives then or imagining the future and envisioning the potential scientific and intellectual advancement, then there is nothing wrong with that. Many of the matters that were fantasies in the past have become realities. Allaah Knows best.

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How does islam address the issue of suffering & evil, what is the islamic perspective on freedom of expression, what is the concept of fitrah in islam, what is the role of music in the quran, how does the quran address the issue of violence, the quranic concept of time: understanding time in islam, types of hadiths: sahih, hasan, and da’if narrations, the compilation of hadiths in islam: in-depth, what are hadiths in islam and why are they important, how do hadiths influence islamic law and jurisprudence, islamic civilization contributions: the golden age, the significance of early muslim empires, the global expansion of islam: faith & enlightenment, significant events & milestones in islamic history, islam on racism and equality: societal challenges, islam and justice: islam’s view on justice and fairness, what are the core ethical principles in islam, islamic ethics: islamic perspective on honesty & integrity, how islamic family law addresses marriage & divorce, what is shariah law and how is it derived, what are the primary sources of islamic law, what are the stages of spiritual journey in islam, dreams in islam: how does islam view dreams, exploring islamic spiritual practices, what is the goal of spiritual development in islam, the historical relationship between islam and christianity, what are the guidelines for interfaith marriage in islam, how does islam view the concept of religious pluralism, religious diversity in islam: islamic embrace, what are islam’s teachings on terrorism and extremism, what is islam’s stance on human rights & social justice, how does islam approach the issue of lgbtq+ rights, islam and democracy: how does islam view democracy, are muslims required to hate or kill non-muslims, do muslims worship the moon or a black stone, do muslims believe in the concept of “honor killings”, are muslim women oppressed and forced to wear hijab.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at is a global Islamic movement known for its commitment to peace, justice, and the betterment of humanity. Time is an essential aspect of Islamic teachings and understanding the Quranic concept of time is crucial for comprehending the faith. This article explores the Quranic teachings on time and how the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at’s perspective on time aligns with Quranic principles.

Quranic Teachings on Time

The Arabic word “zaman” in the Quran refers to time, which is regarded as a finite resource and a means of measurement. The Quranic descriptions of time are vivid and offer a framework for understanding its significance. The Night of Power or “laylat al-qadr” is a sacred night that falls during the last ten nights of Ramadan, where the Quran was revealed. Muslims believe that this night is worth more than a thousand months and that worshiping on this night has immense spiritual significance.

Time and the Purpose of Life

The Quranic view of time is that it is a test and a means of attaining God’s pleasure. The Quran emphasizes that time is a precious commodity, and making the most of it is essential to fulfilling one’s purpose in life. The role of prayer and mindfulness in managing time effectively is crucial. Muslims are encouraged to spend their time wisely, engaging in productive activities and fulfilling their obligations towards family, community, and society.

Time and the Prophets of God

The Quran depicts time as cyclical and the repetition of events in history. The prophetic mission is an essential aspect of marking important periods in time. The story of Prophet Musa (Moses) is an example of recognizing the value of time. In the Quran, the story of Prophet Musa highlights the importance of recognizing the value of time and making the most of every moment.

Time and the Hereafter

The Quranic view of time is that it leads to the afterlife and the Day of Judgment. Time in the afterlife is eternal, and preparing for it is essential. The Quranic descriptions of the rewards and punishments in the hereafter are in relation to time. Muslims are encouraged to be mindful of their actions and to use their time wisely to attain God’s pleasure.

Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at’s Perspective on Time

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at emphasizes the importance of time management and mindfulness. The Jama’at encourages its members to engage in productive activities and fulfill their obligations towards family, community, and society. The Jama’at’s efforts to use time for the betterment of society are a manifestation of the Quranic teachings on the value of time.

The Quranic concept of time offers a framework for understanding its significance in Islam. The Quranic view of time is that it is a finite resource, a test, and a means of attaining God’s pleasure. Understanding the Quranic concept of time is crucial for fulfilling one’s purpose in life and preparing for the hereafter. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at’s teachings on time align with Quranic principles and emphasize the importance of time management and mindfulness in engaging in productive activities and fulfilling obligations towards family, community, and society.

Created: May 8, 2023

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Time In The Quran: Taking A Clue From Einstein’s Theory Of Relativity

How are we to understand the Qur’anic verses wherein a day is likened to thousands of years and the events such as those of the Day of Resurrection sound like time-travel? Our physicist author takes a clue from Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

Science—And The Quran As Revelation

THE QURAN CONTAINS the words of Allah which he revealed to His Prophet, Muhammad ﷺ. The three holy books that were revealed to prophets before the revelation of the Quran were the Tawrat (the Hebrew Bible, or, Old Testament), the Injîl (the Gospel, or, New Testament) and the Zabûr (the Psalms of David) as originally revealed to prophets Moses, Jesus and David.

The Quran does not conflict with modern science at all. Interpretation of the Quran’s science-related verses is a function of the basic scientific knowledge of interpreters throughout Islamic history. The basics of scientific facts are there in the Quran, but they are beyond our layman’s imagination and knowledge. With the advancement of science and the propounding of scientific theories that have enlightened our minds and increased our knowledge, we have started to realize that much of this modern scientific understanding is mentioned in the Quran. Moreover, some theories actually interpret Qur’anic verses, or vice versa.

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And they ask you, (O Muhammad) about the soul. Say: The soul is of the affairs (i.e., concern) of my Lord. And you (i.e., mankind) have not been given of knowledge, except a little . Sûrat Al-Isrâ’, 17:85

Contemporary Interpretation Of Qur’anic ‘Signs’ Vis-à-Vis Science

We live on our relatively small planet, which is a very small entity within the vast universe. Allah has told us about the creation of this universe in the Tawrat, Injîl , as well as in the Quran—in which Almighty Allah specifically speaks about His development of the universe:

Have those who disbelieved not considered that the heavens and the earth were a joined entity, and We separated them and made from water every living thing? Then will they not believe? Sûrat Al-Anbiyâ’, 21:30

These verses that were revealed to the Prophet ﷺ more than 14 centuries ago are far ahead of the modern theories concerning the creation of the universe. The modern “Big Bang Theory” tells us that the whole universe was once one entity, a single point in space (1) (3), and that later it was separated (burst apart), or inflated. The above-mentioned Verse 30 of Sûrat Al-Anbiyâ’ tells us precisely the same thing; The Quran is telling us about the expansion of the universe:

And the heaven We constructed with strength, and indeed, We are (its) expander . Sûrat Al-Dhâriyât, 51:47

Modern scientists (2), too, are talking about continuous expansion of the universe!

The Quran also talks about the end of the universe: a ‘death’ of the universe, and its ‘re-creation’ again:

The Day when we will fold up the heavens like the folding up of a (written) sheet for the records. As We began the first creation, so will We repeat it. (That is) a promise binding upon Us. Indeed, We will do it . Sûrat Al-Anbiyâ’, 21:104

The modern scientist says exactly the same thing about a ‘death’ of the universe, its collapse, or, as it is called, the ‘Big Crunch’ (3). Accordingly, the beginning of the universe, its death, and then, its re-formation again, are events mentioned in the Quran; modern theories have been set forth to explain what has happened in our physical universe, what is happening and what will happen, based on methodical and systematic physical observation.

The Quran contains words of Allah, as revealed to His Prophet ﷺ, and these do not contradict modern science. It is as if modern science had taken its basics from the Quran!

A Scientist’s Suggestion

Our interpretation of the Qur’anic verses, when related to our physical world, is partly dependent upon the current scientific understanding that we have. An example of that is the interpretation of the verse,

By the sky and the Târiq . And what can make you know what the Târiq is? It is the piercing star . Sûrat Al-Târiq, 86:1-3

All of the old interpretations say that the Târiq is a ‘piercing star.’ However, the best interpretation of the Târiq as mentioned in this verse—when based on current, scientific knowledge that we have today—is the ‘black hole.’ So, the Quran is saying in Arabic ( al-najmu al-thâqib ) what would mean, “the star that makes a hole.”

The Quran has asked the believer to think about the significance of the creation of the universe, as observed from our earth, as a means to understanding his own existence and responsibility in life:

Indeed in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of the night and the day, are signs for those of understanding, who remember Allah while standing or sitting or (lying) on their sides and [who] give thought to the creation of the heavens and the earth (saying), “Our Lord, You did not create this aimlessly; exalted are You (above such a thing); then protect us from the punishment of the Fire .” ÂlʿImrân, 3:190-191

We as humans try to explain—with the ultimately limited science that we have—what has happened, and what is happening now in the universe. But all of our theories and explanation do not go beyond what the Quran tells us. Concurrent with the Qur’anic “signs” in the heavens is the modern scientific understanding that the whole universe was previously one entity and that then the “big bang,” or the inflation, took place. Has any single one of mankind witnessed what happened? Of course not! So, how then could a scientist expect the end of the universe and its re-formation again, unless he had specifically ‘read’ in the physical world the same as what is mentioned in the revealed Qur’anic verse, quoted above, Sûrat Al-Anbiyâ’, 21:104!

As a scientist believing in revealed scripture, then, couldn’t I mention the Quran as a reference in my scientific research paper or theory—as pointing the way for my pioneering exploration?! This does not mean of course, that I am denying the objective efforts of scientists in advancing the sciences. The advancement of science brings us all closer and closer to real-world facts as these are mentioned in Quran.

Qur’anic Interpretation Vis-à-Vis Earthly “Time”

In fact, we do well to look in detail to modern scientific understanding for relevance in interpretation of those Qur’anic verses regarding the physical world. Now what about the period when the human body stays buried in the ground, after its earthly death, until Allah brings its soul back again to life on Resurrection Day? This period is called in the Arabic Language barzakh, and its English equivalent is “barrier.” Allah is saying that, in the eyes of a human being, the barzakh is a very short period of time from his earthly death until he is brought to life again.

In order that we might understand a component of what happens during the barzakh , let us take a clue from Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity . According to the “time dilation” concept of Professor Einstein, when an object moves through space at a speed approaching that of light, its onlooker’s perception of time ebbs slower and slower. When the speed of light is reached, the onlooker’s time perception approaches zero and slows down ‘infinitely.’ At this speed, mass increases ‘infinitely’ as well. To explain the time dilation concept of his theory, Einstein offered the following example:

If a 20-year-old man is put in a rocket and propelled into outer space at the speed of light, then the time and mass of that person varies as mentioned above. Assume that he continues traveling at the speed of light for a period of what appears to him—based upon his previous experience on earth—to be 50 years, that is, until his age totals 70 earthly years, all the while he is in that rocket and traveling in space. When this person comes back to earth, he finds that the time elapsed on earth is not 50 years, but many millions of years, as Einstein has figured it mathematically. What would seem to the human space traveler in space as a mere 50 years—due to “time dilation” in space—is now re-calibrated to millions of earth years once he is back on planet earth time.

Key to comprehending this is that Einstein relates all motions to the speed of light. In this vein, note that Almighty Allah, Creator of the universe, describes himself as ‘Light’ ( nûr ) in the following verse:

Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth . Sûrat Al-Nûr, 24:35

This Qur’anic verse can be read, in our modern scientific context, to include the sense that all universal affairs are managed by Allah at the speed of light. Time on our planet is a relative thing, and is different from the time calculated by Almighty Allah, as shown in this verse:

Verily, a day—in the sight of thy Lord—is like a thousand years of your reckoning . Sûrat Al-Ḥajj, 22:47

Also, we read in Sûrat Al–Sajdah, 32:5:

He manages and regulates (all) affairs from the heavens to the earth; then it (all) ascends unto Him, on a Day, the measure of which is a thousand years of your reckoning.

When you calculate the outer space journey of 50 years as undertaken by the above-mentioned rocket at the speed of light—on the basis of one day in the sight of Allah as being one thousand years of our planet’s time—then these 50 years in space would be equal to 50 x 1000 x 365 = 18,250,000 years on our planet. So the time that would have elapsed on earth upon the return of the person who traveled in space for 50 years at a speed-of-light time dilation would be more than eighteen million years!

Time In Our Barzakh And Resurrection

Now, when a human dies and is buried, he goes through a ‘barrier’ and enters on the other side into what is called in the Arabic language barzakh . How long is the period we spend in the barzakh ? Only Allah knows how long it will be, but after the barzakh , as we are told, Allah will raise up all dead people from their graves on Resurrection Day, apparently in a ‘split second’:

The Trumpet shall be sounded, when behold! From the sepulchers (people) will rush forth to their Lord! … It is a single Sai ḥ ah , when behold! they will all be brought up before Us! Sûrat Yâ Sîn, 36: 51 and 53

On the day of Resurrection, Almighty Allah re-creates all dead and buried people:

And he (man) puts forth for Us a parable, and forgets his own creation. He says: “Who will give life to these bones after they are rotten and have become dust?” Say: (to him, O Muhammad): “He will give life to them, (He) Who created them for the first time! And He is the All-Knower of every creation! ” Sûrat Yâ Sîn, 36:78-79

On the Day of Resurrection, Almighty Allah brings back all people alive; He brings back the ru ḥ (spirit), instantly, for every re-created person:

The Trumpet will just have been sounded, when all that is in the heavens and on earth will swoon, except him whom Allah wills. Then will a second one be sounded, when, behold, they will be standing and looking on . Sûrat Al-Zumar, 39:68

Regarding the time when Allah raises up people from their graves, the Almighty informs us in the Quran as to what people will say about the length of time they have spent in their graves:

The day when the Trumpet will be sounded: that Day, we shall gather the criminals, blear-eyed (with terror). In whispers will they consult each other: “You stayed no longer than ten (days).” We know best what they will say, when the best of them in judgment will say: “You stayed no longer than a day!” Sûrat Tâ-Hâ, 20:102-104

Also, in Sûrat Al-Isrâ’, 17:52 we read:

It will be on the Day when He will call you, and you will answer (His call) with (words of) His praise, and you will think that you had stayed but a little while

ʿUzair’s “Time-Travel”

All of us know the story of The Jewish Prophet ʿUzair (Ezra) in the Sacred Quran. ʿUzair passed by the city of Jerusalem after it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. He looked and said, “How shall Allah bring this to life after its death?” Allah wanted to show him that it is easy for Him to bring this city to life:

Allah caused his death for a hundred years, and then brought him up again to life. When Allah asked Prophet ʿUzair after he had raised him up alive again, “How long did you remain dead?” He said, “A day or part of a day.” Allah said: “Nay, you have remained dead for a hundred years.” Sûrat Al-Baqarah, 2:259

Our “Time-Travel”

Allah tells us that on the Day when He will raise up people, they will think that they have stayed in their graves for only one hour:

And on the Day when He will gather them together: (It will be) as if they had stayed but an hour of a day . Sûrat Yûnus, 10:45

And be in no haste about the (Unbelievers). On the Day that they see the (Punishment) promised them, (it will be) as if they had not stayed more than an hour in a single day . Sûrat Al-Aḥqâf, 46:35

When the Companions of the Prophet ﷺ asked him about Resurrection Day and the time spent in their graves, Allah revealed His answer:

The Day they see it, (It will be) as if they had stayed but a single evening, or (at most) till the following morn . Sûrat Al-Nâziʿât, 79:46

Time—And Speed— Of The Spirit

Why will people feel on Resurrection Day that they have stayed in their graves a very short time? The explanation of that—and Allah knows best—is that when a person dies, his body will stay in the grave on one time plane, or ‘horizon,’ namely, that of earth time, but that his spirit ( ru ḥ ) goes out to another plane, or ‘horizon,’ of time. Only Allah knows ‘where’ the ru ḥ goes to, but wherever that is, Allah gives us the answer as to the speed of the ru ḥ when it makes its final ascent to Allah on that Day:

A questioner asked about a Chastisement to befall the unbelievers—a Penalty which none can avert—from Allah, Lord of the Ways of Ascent. The angels and the spirit ( rû ḥ ) ascend unto Him in a Day, the measure whereof is as fifty thousand years . Sûrat Al-Maʿârij, 70:1-4

In this verse we see that the speed of the spirit, when it returns to Allah, is as if 50 times more than the speed of light—according to how it was above tentatively ‘calculated,’ on the basis of wordings in Sûrat Al-Nûr, 24:35, and Sûrat Al-Sajdah, 32:5.

Spirit Time-Travel

When the spirit travels at an exceedingly high speed outside the body of a sleeping or dead person, and then again with his re-created body travels back to Allah on the Day of Resurrection, the time element would approach zero—when understood according to Einstein’s theory as mentioned herein; accordingly, the re-created person will feel as if he has stayed in his grave a length of time approaching zero: ‘one hour,’ ‘two hours,’ or ‘part of a day.’

The Quran And Science

This article is meant to show the conformity of scientific findings to the Qur’anic language about our natural world, and especially to propose an understanding of time reckoning as presented in the Qur’anic verses bearing on coming events in the barzakh and on Resurrection Day. We suggest that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, in particular the concept of ‘time dilation’—which comes into play for speed-of-light motion—plausibly explains what might otherwise be objected to as a mismatch of earth-experienced time versus time assessments related to the grave and to Last Day events, as meticulously worded in the Quran for us to ponder.

And, Almighty Allah knows best.

References:

(1)NASA Science: Astrophysics

http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-powered-the-big-bang/

(2) The Hubble Expansion : The Hubble Expansion—UC Berkeley Astronomy Department astro.berkeley.edu/ ṭmwhite/darkmatter/hubble.html‎

(3)The Physics of the Universe: http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_bigbang_accelerating.html

Originally posted 2015-04-22 08:24:00.

Dr Ghazi Al Nakshabandi

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I can’t even believe how good this article is!

Hi and thanks for all the hard work great article It would be better if you had put the Einstein’s quote about Quran

This is a great article. The best part, it is in how humble is the author. We are not here to prove the veracity of the words by any means possible, but reason through them. Good luck

Quran Majeed

Quran Karim contains the knowledge of everything it is a complete code of life and we can only succeed in the hereafter if we act upon this glorious book. In this Holy Quran, Almighty Allah has commanded us the rules and methods to lead a happy and peaceful life so if we only act according to these rules our life would be much easier.

May Allah reward the author and increase us all in knowledge! Ameen

Bassel Hindi

Interesting article indeed..! One point I want to make though regarding the verse 70:4 – we know that Angels are creatures of Light (and the “Spirit” most probably refers to “Angel Jibreel”); doesn’t it make more sense that Angels including Jibreel should also be moving at the speed of light (and not at a speed 50x that of Light)?

Masha Allah. This is so interesting and I learnt a lot Allahuma barik.

Time Concepts In The Qur’an – A Historical Perspective

Absolute-Comparative cases do not seem to exist in the Qur’an, and coincidently, it is this concept of time that implies that an event has taken place and will not recur.

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This is based on my understanding of a recorded lecture posted online a few days ago, of Dr. Ahmad Pakatchi speaking at The International Conference on Interdisciplinary Quranic Studies in Tehran. I hope any written material by him or other researchers will become accessible on this subject, especially given that Dr. Pakatchi is one of Iran’s qualified and well-known professors.

Time plays an important and often times a complicated role in various different fields, and history is definitely not an exception to this rule. One specific discussion pertaining to time and its role in history is with regards to a division of time from two different perspectives. The first division is that of Relative and Absolute – a division that also exists in archaeology and geology, and the second is into Comparative and Structural.

Absolute time is a numerical measurement that is calculated based on an origin, and by which we can date various events and instances. For example, making the Hijrah of the Prophet (s) or the birth of ‘Isa (s) the initial point of our time, we can subsequently give time-stamps to events in history mentioning their date, month or year of occurrence.

On the other hand, Relative time does not provide any specific date or timestamp, as it is a comparison of two events with one another, and only tells us about their relative order. Saying that the revolt of Mukhtar took place after the event of Karbala is an example of Relative time.

Based on the second type of division, Comparative time is when we look into a historical event or an event that is considered historical, in relation to other historical events from the perspective of time. For example, when we say that a certain event took place 60 years after such and such event, this is a case of Comparative time. Here we are not looking at our incident on its own, rather in relation to other events.

Structural time, on the other hand, is when we look into a historical instance in it and of itself as a singular structure, without comparing it with any other events. For example, saying that so and so person lived for 70 years is a case of Structural time. We are referring to a time (i.e. the person’s age) whose origin and end is the person himself.

These divisions can subsequently be combined with one another to produce four separate concepts of time. Each of these concepts will be explained with an example:

1. Absolute-Comparative

For example, if we say that the event of ‘Ashura took place in 61st Hijri, we are applying the concept of time to the day of ‘Ashura by comparing it with a specific origin (i.e. the migration of the Prophet) while at also mentioning the date of its exact occurrence within a historical timeline.

2. Relative-Comparative

For example, if we say that the event of ‘Ashura took place after the death of Imam Hasan (s), we are looking into one event while comparing it with another, and then giving it its own relative order. There is a comparison here, and also an indication of what happened first, but there is no numerical measurement which gives us a timestamp for either of the events.

3. Absolute-Structural

For example, if we say that the duration of Imam Husayn’s (s) Imamate was eleven years, we are applying a structural understanding of time as far as we are only concerned about Imam Husayn (s) on his own, yet also giving an exact numerical value to the duration of his Imamate.

4. Relative-Structural

For example, if we say that Hurr bin Yazid al-Riyahi was the commander of Ibn Ziyad’s army before coming to the Imam’s side. In this case, we are looking at the life of Hurr as an individual, and giving a relative order to some of his actions based on what he did before and after the event of Karbala. We are not occupying ourselves with the details of any other historical events, rather our concern is the life of Hurr himself.

Relative-Comparative time is perhaps the most often used concept of time in the Qur’an. It is primarily this specific combination that is used to cite examples of historic recurrence in the philosophy of history.

Absolute-Comparative cases do not seem to exist in the Qur’an, and coincidently, it is this concept of time that implies that an event has taken place and will not recur. This does not seem to be because the culture and society of the time weren’t aware of such a mode of conveying history – especially given that you can find examples of this in previous books – rather there is Divine Wisdom behind its absence.

Within the Qur’an, Relative-Comparative cases are often those which make use of words that signify concepts of before and after, such as ba’d ( بعد ) , qabl ( قبل ), ula ( اولي ), ukhra ( اخرى ). In some verses this meaning is also signified through the verb khalafa ( خلف ), meaning to succeed, and waritha ( ورث ), meaning to inherit. See for example when the Qur’an in 53:51-52 speaks about the destruction of Thamud, and before them the people of Noah ( wa qawma Nuhin min qabl ), or when it refers to the appointment of a king for the Israelites after Moses (2:246-247). In both these cases, we have no information about when these events took place on a measurable timeline, but we do know which event occurred first and which occurred second.

Some Relative-Comparative cases of time in the Qur’an follow a specific style and pattern, where it mentions two events, but does not give us any information about the event between those two. See for example, in 40:5:

The people of Noah denied before them and the [heathen] factions [who came] after them.

In this verse, we know about the situation of those who denied Prophet Muhammad (s), and the verse tells us that previously the same had occurred with Noah (s). However, based on this verse alone, we are not told any real information about those groups that came between these two events and those historic events are kept vague. This style, along with signifying recurrence and emphasis, seems to also allude to and emphasize the concept of lengthiness and span of time.

We also find examples of Relative-Comparative usage of time in the Qur’an. These cases are mostly recorded in a narratological manner. Surah al-Kahf is a great example of this, or the story of Dhu al-Qarnayn, or the story of Moses (s) and Khidhr and of course the story of Yusuf (s). In Surah al-Saaffat, we have short stories or rather verses that recall incidents from the lives of various Prophets (s) such that we understand that each Prophet is essentially a continuation of the story of the previous Prophet.

Absolute-Structural cases also exist in the Qur’an. For example, in 29:20, the Qur’an mentions that Noah’s life was a thousand-less-fifty years until the flood overtook his people. Over here Noah (s) and his life alone is the subject of discussion, but the verse also gives us a numeric value which makes it absolute since his age is being measured from the time of his birth. This verse, however, is not Absolute-Comparative because we do not know when Noah lived precisely and neither do we know when the flood took place in absolute terms.

This article was written by Ali Imran for Iqra Online. To read the original article, click here.

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Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures pp 2132–2134 Cite as

Time in Islam

M. S. Stern
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Islam is now a major global religion. It has its roots, however, in the Arabian Peninsula of the early seventh century. Its core elements were implanted in the early years and all later developments relate, one way or another, to that core.

In pre‐Islamic Arabia some elements seem to have related to time ( dahr ) as fate, an underlying force directing human and natural destiny. It was conceived as a power existing eternally and responsible for the happiness or agony of humanity. Thus the Qur˒ān refers to those who “say… ‘nothing but time can destroy us’.” [45:24/23]

While time was generally seen as an impersonal force, some people sought to identify God with time or, worse still by Islamic standards, to use this concept to deny God's existence. The Apostolic Tradition ( ḥadīth ) records Muḥammad's saying that Allah commanded men not to blame dahr “for I [God] am dahr .” Later there were various groups of radical thinkers, often only vaguely defined and known primarily from polemic...

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Stern, M.S. (2008). Time in Islam. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_8899

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Chronicles of the Divine Clock: A Comprehensive Analysis of Time Travel in the Quran

Dr. Hafsah Ayaz Qureshi Lecturer Department of Islamic Studies, Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Ms. Syeda Ujala Zahid M Phil Scholar, Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

The Quran is the book of knowledge on various subjects including cosmological phenomena. The theory of relativity proposed by Albert Einstein changed the traditional physics concept of space and time travel and introduced a new dimension to the concept of time and space concerning the relative motion and gravitational field. The study uses a qualitative approach i.e. descriptive and analytical technique is used. The purpose of the research is to delve into the Quranic concept of time travel and analyze the narratives of prophet Uzair and prophet Soloman concerning the theory of relativity proposed by Albert Einstein. The primary data is collected from the Quran and e-books, articles, and scientific official websites are consulted to collect secondary data. The findings of the study showed that Quran provides a higher level of knowledge, related to scientific concepts that are far beyond human perception. The concept of time travel is discussed in the Quranic verse in the form of the story of prophet Uzair (A.S) and prophet Soloman (A.S) and Queen Sheba, which provides a concept of time travel that is beyond human intellect and is unable to achieve by the physicists.

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Quṭb, IN THE SHADE OF QURAN,Vol.12,116-117.

As-Sajadah, 32:5.

Quṭb, IN THE SHADE OF QURAN, Vol.13,362.

Al-Maˊārij,70:4.

Quṭb, IN THE SHADE OF QURAN, Vol.17,251-252.

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Sabran, Rosidayu, Rahmān, Suria Hani A, Surani, Nor Ḥafiz Zariq M., Hussinsofia, Rosninawati, ISLĀM AND SCIENCE FICTION FILM: THE PORTRAYAL OF KAUNIYAH VERSES IN INTERSTELLAR, Malaysian Journal of Communication, 38(3) 2022, 193-208.

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Indexations

On the Concept of Time

In the islamic tradition, linear time, ethical time, infinity.

bit.ly/_otime

1 - Different Concepts of Time

”Do not curse dahr (time), because dahr is God” , Prophetic hadith. [18]

The presented texts are from the Islamic tradition, with one exception (section 4) about 'linear time' in the modern setting. They are a collection of short texts from different perspectives regarding time and specifically linear time. It is not a simple topic, and as evoked in the prophetic tradition about time, human capacity is insufficient to reach essential knowledge about it, except for what is clear from the quranic revelation. (See section 2.3) [n1]

Regarding 'linear time', which is the default for how most people understand or 'experience' time, it is almost synonymous to 'progress', and takes a negative connotation in the critique of (post-)modernism. [19] Progress as generally as the idea of humankind improving itself over time, but the question remains improving what - for what aim?

In short what has happened during the last 250 years is the 'flattening' of those concepts, including time, and the emergence of new variations of utopianism, ideas which pretend to lead to the perfect life (or at least a 'better life') in this world of change ( dunyā ). [28] And even if those tall utopian stories have crumbled (like Communism, Fascism…) the utopian idea itself morphed into an undercurrent of sorts in all areas of human life: when the abode of the Hereafter can longer be conceptualized, all focus, planning and hope for improvement of the human lot or liberation is on this 'abode which is close to us' ( dunyā ). [28] But as those ideas are not grounded on metaphysical truth, their effects are disappointment and destruction.

The idea of linear time is also a symtom for the loss of the metaphysical perspective, which would allow for a more humble and holistic approach to time. See section 5 and 6.

2 - Concept of Time In the Islamic Tradition

In contrast to the secularization of knowledge, of time and the rest, has the Islamic Tradition through the Quran and the hadith - thanks to the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, may Allah's blessings and peace be upon him - taken quite a different approach on human life, human responsibilities, and on time as such. The quranic focus is twofold:

(a) on a certain time or 'day' when play and illusions will come to an end, and where everyone will be finally confronted with the Truth, which is God - Allah (may His Majesty be exalted). And

(b) as a consequence, the Quran reminds us also to prepare ourselves in this life, the ( dunyā ), to get ready for this time which will absolutely come, the life beyond ( al-ākhira ) the Hereafter.

The important point is to know what you use your limited time for → for the pleasure of Allah (may His Majesty be exalted) and not to waste it for anything else.

Therefore form the right intention as a Muslim!

Earn good deeds - Allah will provide!

The Quran uses different concepts of time, and here quoting Sh Hamza Yusuf [6]

In this regard Sh Hamza Yusuf describes the continuity of the prophetic mission: The essential events in human history are the emergence of those many prophets (peace upon all of them!), who - in periods conflict and oppression - brought the divine message against oppressors and tyrants, with the emblematic story of Firaun & Musa (a.s) as the most repeated story in the Quran! [6]

2.3 - Quranic Verse Regarding Time

Surah ʿAsr is a clear reference to time: { Wa al-ʿAsr }, which means { by (the) time (or: time period)} , an oath to enhance the importance of what follows in this surah:

That man (and woman) is in a state of serious loss, except for those who use their time carefully for good works – good counsel, { watawā saw bi-l-haqq watawā saw bi-s-ṣabri - and enjoin upon one another truth } (i.e. the beliefs and practices of Islam) { and enjoin upon one another patience } (from committing acts of disobedience).

And with An-Nawawi [21] good works include learning, teaching and writing.

Imam Shafīʿi said famously: "Time is like a sword: if you don't cut it, it will cut you. [20]

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3 - Linear Time vs. Ethical Time

Section 3 - Quoting Prof Hallaq [7]

People have not yet understood the signifcance and the implications of this linear concept of time. [1] So one of his [2] valuable contributions to this issue in his own work is to highlight the different conceptions of an ethical time , that it's not really about time. [3] There’s nothing important about anything that we are doing today just because it happened to be in the 21st century.

There might be things that happened 5, 7, 10, 15 centuries ago that are actually, heuristically [4] at least, much more valuable and when we say heuristically the ethical gains are a huge entry, a huge door, to enter into the debate.

Because once you say history can be heuristic, not merely preparing a step for the next step, as a matter of cause and effect, then what you are saying is that I can learn from something that happened 2000 years ago.

It doesn’t mean that you can replicate that thing and the institutions that arose around that thing in that culture, but it means that it can teach you something , and in fact all critique that is worthwhile in modernity [5] is really based and derives its inspiration not from any call to re-enact history and to bring back historical institutions, this is something inconceivable to me and actually utterly mad, but rather to learn from others.

Just because we sit in the 21st century it doesn’t mean that we are more perceptive or wiser in particular than people who lived literally 2500 years ago.

133b_light-greenbg-flat-white-triangle-up;

4 - Chris Hedges: Linear Time

How linear time fits the new atheists' agenda.

Section 4 - Quoting Chris Hedges [8]

This sense of a linear or teleological [9] sense that we are moving somewhere, that we are the culmination of something, is foreign to most other societies, certainly to Oriental society, as it was to be ancient Greeks. They understood life as being about birth, growth, degeneration, Decay, and death and not just individual life, but the life of societies as well. And what happened I think was that the Enlightenment [10] grasped on to this Hebraic and and Christian notion of time as linear , but dropped the wisdom of original sin [11]

They dropped the understanding that because of the endemic flaws within human nature [12] we will never go and create the city of God, the perfect world, that this could only be created by the Divine.

And this was a powerful check on utopian movements within the Church [13] but the Enlightenment bought into this notion of linear time and thought that science, knowledge and education could somehow a perfect the human species, move the human species foreward, and of course I think it was a very short step from that belief-system to the Jacobins in Revolutionary France who created the 'Committee of Virtue' [14] and the reign of terror.

5 - Time-Space And Infinity

Section 5 - From Omar KN

Prophets are granted visions [29] or are informed about something from the Unseen (or: unseen worlds - al-ghayb ). We are all both in the 'seen' as well as in the unseen (worlds), they are not separate from us, but only the pious faithful ( al-mutaqqūn ) are aware of the Unseen, the ghayb . [33]

Allah (may His Majesty be exalted) says in the Sura of the Cow: { Those who believe in the unseen worlds. } Sura 2-2. And the Prophet ﷺ called it the beautiful vision. [30]

The Islamic Tradition describes many reports from the Unseen, number 1 of which is of course the revelation of the Quran . Pre-modern man in general had no problem with it. [31]

One example among others where the usual time-space dimensions were breached is witnessed in the report from the Prophet ﷺ regarding the events of the battle of Mu'tah when he - the blessings and peace of Allah upon him - informed the people of the martyrdom of Zayd, Jaʿfar and Ibn Rawāha before the news of their death reached. He was not there in body but was aware of what had happened ! [16]

Another example is the Mirāj of the Prophet, which is a major event in the Prophet's life (the blessings and peace of Allah upon him), and at the same time it is extremely important for the faithful ( al-mu'min ) for the purification of the self - as ascent to the knowledge of God. [35] But there are many other reports of timelessness or 'breaches' in the time-space dimension.

Existence and nonexistence are one reality, [34] and human concepts such as time and space or 'linear extension' [15] don't count in the unseen worlds. However, in the cosmos what manifests itself is the Infinity of the Real, of Allah. Its signs are apparent everywhere in this lower world ( dunyā ). These are signs of the self-manifestation of the Real. It is the 'eternal, the non-delimited', it is Infinity. [37]

This self-manifestation of the Real is ongoing, every day, and every moment [32] we usually don't realise it and { Allah is subtle to His bondmen } [25] . However in dreams we may occasionally perceive something of it, as dreams may be - in the best of cases - allusions to the Heavenly Spheres.

And there are certain moments when such sparks of enlightenment - of light - can be experienced when awake, such as in the visions of the prophets and the awliyā , the saints of Allah. And visions as well as dreams need interpretation, and interpretations are dependent of the state (the sincerity, righteousness, God-wariness) of the person.

In any case such special experiences are not the goal of the spiritual path.

Allah knows best and most !

6 - Time acc. to Sh. Muyiddīn Ibn ʿArabi

Section 6 - Quoting Sh. Muyiddīn Ibn ʿArabi [22]

1. God says, narrating the words of a people who are the speakers, { nothing makes us perish save time } 45-24. They speak the truth, because it has been affirmed that the God’s messenger ﷺ (may Allah bless Him and grant Him peace) said, ”God is (the) time (aeon).” [18] Hence nothing makes them perish save God, and this is the actual situation.

2. Know that “time” is a relation that has no wujūd in its entity. (And that…) time is a relation (which) arrives newly [27] at the question, "When?" ( matā )? (And similar questions). All the conditional particles in grammar [23] are the names of time, but the named thing is an affair of nonexistence. [34] These particles are like the word nonexistence , which is a name that names no object that has an entity, even though its property is rationally understood…

3. In respect to newly-arrived things, [27] this is “time”, but in respect to the Eternal, it is “eternity without beginning”. What the rational faculty understands from time is something imagined, extended, and lacking the two sides. [n2]

4. (There is the past, and there are the days of the future and there is) the present state ( ḥāl ). This last is called the instant ( al-ān ). Although the instant is a time, it is a limit for what is past in time and what is future. It is like a point that we suppose upon the circumference of a circle. Wherever we suppose the point to be, origin and end are designated for the circumference.

5. “Eternity without beginning” and “Eternity without end” are the nonexistence of time's two sides, for it has no first and no last. Rather it has perpetuity ( dawām ), and perpetuity is the time of the (present) state, while the state processes perpetuity. Hence the cosmos never ceases to be under the ruling property of the time of the (present) state, and God’s ruling property in the cosmos never ceases to be in the ruling property of time. That of it which is past and future never cease to be in the ruling property of the (present) state.

6. Do you not see that the Speech of God reports to us concerning affairs that have come to an end with the expression of past time, concerning affairs that are coming with expression of future time, and concerning affairs that are being engendered with the expression of the (present) state? As for the (present) state, He says { each day He is a upon some task } 55-29. [24]

7. At all of this, we seek an entity of wujūd within which all of it would be, and entity that would be like its container. We do not find such an entity in reason or sensation, but rather in a containing imagination. This container is itself the contents of an infinite, imagined container that is judged to be so only by imagination. Hence - if you have understood - nothing is understood by imagination, reason, or sensation save the Real Wujūd that supports us in our wujūd .

8. Because of this relation, God named Himself for us as dahr “the time (or: the Aeon)”. He did so in order that the ruling property would belong only to Him not to the property of time that is imagined, for there is none that displays properties save God. In Him the entities of things become manifest through their properties.

9. He is perpetual wujūd , and the entities of the possible things become manifest through their properties from behind the veil of His wujūd , because of its subtlety. We see the entities of the possible things - which are our entities - from behind the veil of His wujūd , but we do not see Him.

10. In the same way, we see the stars from behind the veils of the heavens, but we do not see the heavens, even if we understand that between us and the stars are the heavens. However, they have such subtlety that they do not veil what is behind them.

11. { God is subtle to His servants } 42-19 [25] . Part of God's subtlety is that it is He who comes to them in everything in which they are, but the servants' eyes fall only upon the occasions ( al-asbāb ) that they witness, so they attribute what they are in to these occasions. [26] Thus the Real becomes manifest by being veiled, so He is the Manifest / the Veiled. He is the Nonmanifest because of the veil, not because of you, and He is the Manifest because of both you and the veil.

12. So glory be to Him who veils Himself in His manifestation and becomes manifest in His veil! No eye witnesses anything other than He, and no veils are lifted from Him.

End of quote of Sh. Muyiddīn Ibn ʿArabi

7 - Footnotes

This linear concept of time is our default conception of time: what comes before, what is now, and what comes after. ↩

Referring to the orignal author Abdurrahman Taha, whose work was translated and commented on by Prof Hallaq in: Reforming Modernity…, see note 7 ↩

time as we in (post-)modernity understand it. ↩

Def: enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves; also a heuristic process or method. (Oxford Dictionary of English) ↩

A critique of modernity as proposed by Alistair McIntyre and Charles Taylor and others. □ comment: We have not verified their thesis. ↩

Quote from the video: ”What these prophets did is shut down the Megamachine, i.e. the idea of this massive social project that relates to the world, (like) the Pharao has his pyramids…

Quote from: Lewis Mumford's The Myth of the Machine: ”He gets down to the nitty-gritty about what makes us human, asserting that too great an emphasis has been placed on man as a "tool-making" or "tool-using" animal (as opposed to, say, one who makes music). This emphasis, he writes, has led us to equate technical advances with human progress, an equation Mumford challenges. For example, the ancient military-bureaucratic system that enabled the building of the pyramids made slaves out of generations of Egyptians. As such, Mumford asks, do the pyramids really stand as evidence of advanced civilization, instead of the most uncivil, inhumane enterprise of their time?”

Short review: Rage against the Megamachine ↩ ; ↩

Reforming Modernity: Ethics And The New Human In The Philosophy Of Abdurrahman Taha by Prof Hallaq, linear time, ethical time - YouTube, @57:30

Reforming Modernity is a sweeping intellectual history and philosophical reflection built around the work of the Morocco-based philosopher Abdurrahman Taha, one of the most significant philosophers in the Islamic world since the colonial era… ↩

Chris Hedges: ”One of the most dangerous legacies of perhaps the Christian faith and the Hebraic tradition is this notion of time as linear , that somehow we progress morally the way science progresses, or the way technology progresses.” I Don't Believe in Atheists Chris Hedges ↩

teleology is in philosophy the explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes. (Oxford Dictionary of English) ↩

and the Enlightenment was a blessing as well as the curse. ↩

Not only that, but much of Christianity's transcendant function. What is more the concept of 'original sin' is an (often misunderstood) Christian concept; in Islam there is the concept of the original, pure state of human being: the fitra , which we are called to recognize and realize in our lives, part of it is the comprehension, that this life is an important, but only a very small 'part' of the greater life after death, for which we must be prepared, and that this wordly life is not for play. ↩

as Augustine wrote in City of God, City of Man. ↩

What is wrong with utopianism? see: The Idea of An Earthly Utopia ↩

The reference here is to ‘the Committee of Public Safety’, see for ex.: Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety The period of the Jacobin rule known as the Reign of Terror, under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, was the first time in history that terror became an official government policy with the stated aim to use violence to achieve a higher political goal . As a result of Robespierre's insistence on associating terror with virtue, his efforts to make the republic a morally united patriotic community became equated with the endless bloodshed. Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety | History of Western Civilization II ↩

The meaning of dimension is: 'a mode of linear extension,' and since there are in the unseen worlds no human concepts such as time or 'linear extension'. Any dimension would mean limitating Infinity, which is impossible. ↩

Via @aspiringabd 2021-06 21:42 ↩

more: The Paradox of Our Condition, Quotes on Modernity, by Sh. Abdulhakim Murad Winter ↩

The complete hadith:

Allah said, 'The offspring of Adam abuse (curse) Ad-Dahr (Time); though I am Ad-Dahr (Time). In My Hands are the night and the day.' (Sahih al-Bukhari 6181, Book 78, Hadith 205).

Or: ”Oh the disappointment of time.”

قَالَ اللَّهُ يَسُبُّ بَنُو آدَمَ الدَّهْرَ، وَأَنَا الدَّهْرُ، بِيَدِي اللَّيْلُ وَالنَّهَارُ

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The Value of Time

Description: the importance of time in islam..

By Aisha Stacey (© 2011 IslamReligion.com)
Published on 17 Jan 2011
Last modified on 15 Jul 2018
Printed: 928
Viewed: 89,898 (daily average: 19)
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There are theories and concepts of time and it is studied in religion, philosophy and science. Time even has economic value. Time is money . Time has social and personal importance; we use our concept of time to place events appointments and milestones in sequence. We order our lives around time, in Islam lives are structured around the daily prayers. In the 11 th century, Avicenna doubted the existence of physical time, arguing that time exists only in the mind due to memory and expectation. Islamic and Christian theologians adopted the idea that time is linear. Verses from the Bible tell us there is a time for everything. “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1) [1]

Time has an intrinsic value that is recognised even in motivational rhymes for adults and nursery rhymes for children. To realise the value of one year, ask a student who has failed that year. To realise the value of one month, ask the mother of a premature baby, and to realise the value of one second ask the survivor of an accident. [2]

Both the Quran and the traditions of Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, make it clear that Islam considers time to a very valuable resource. Believers are encouraged to be conscious of time, to recognise its importance and to organise it wisely. If human beings do not waste or abuse time, but rather think of it as a blessing from God then they have every reason to hope for success both in this life and in the hereafter.

“By Al-’Asr (the time). Verily, man is in loss. Except those who believe and do righteous good deeds, and recommend one another to the truth and recommend one another to patience.” (Quran 103)

Prophet Muhammad instructed his followers and thus the believers to know and value the importance of time in the following traditions.

Humankind will remain standing on the Day of Resurrection until he is asked about four things: his life and how he spent it, his youth and how he used it up, his property and how he acquired and managed it and his knowledge and how he utilized it.

There are two of God’s favours that are forgotten by many people; health and free time. [3]

Islam teaches us that time passes quickly and can never return, it is irretrievable. It is also the most precious gift that humankind possesses and can be taken from us at any given moment. God is the Giver but He is also the Withholder. Time passes swiftly and God reminds us in the Quran that the months and years pass but when we are standing before Him on the Day of Judgement our time on earth will seem as though we had lived, dreamed and worshipped for less than a day.

A speaker from among them said, “How long have you stayed (here)?” They said, “We have stayed (perhaps) a day or part of a day.” They said, “Your Lord (alone) knows best how long you have stayed (here). (Quran 18:19)

They will say: “We stayed a day or part of a day. Ask of those who keep account.” (Quran 23:113)

A believer should not waste precious time on things that will not bring him closer to his Creator. Actions that do not contain a benefit for himself, his society or humankind in general are usually wasted actions, wasted time. Islam categorised things according to their level of importance. The first Muslims used to capture and use every single second of their time. Create

Thabit Al-Bunany said, “When my father was on his deathbed, I went to assist him in pronouncing the testimony that there is no god worthy of worship but Allah, but he said, ‘Son! Leave me alone, for I have recited all my supplications five times and I’m on my sixth cycle now.”

Prophet Muhammad also told his followers, “Do not curse time (al-dahr), for God is the one who crafted time. ” [4] Imam An Nawawi commented on this by saying, The meaning of the phrase “for God is the one who crafted time” means that He is the One Who causes those events and accidents to happen, and He is the Creator of all that happens.

Those who understand the value of time should make an effort to organise their time and make realistic plans. The entire life of a believer can be considered worship when that person is conscious of doing only what is pleasing to God. Religious obligations must be a first priority, however God is generous and time that seems so fleeting when we are flittering it becomes filled with blessing when we are using it to please our Creator.

The words of God in the Quran and the message of Prophet Muhammad to the believers are clear, we, humankind are told to be conscious of time. God reminds us that life in this world is but temporary and we do not know our appointed time of death. As believers we must never waste or abuse time, rather we must value it as a blessing from God. We must all understand that wasting even a single moment is an opportunity gone, never to return. When our time in this world is up, there is no going back and we will be held accountable for all that we do. Time is indeed precious!

[1] Bible - American King James version

[2] A motivational rhyme, Author - anonymous

[3] Saheeh Al-Bukhari

[4] Saheeh Muslim

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The Concept of Time in the Koran

Principal Investigator: Georges Tamer, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Georges Tamer has spent his career studying philosophy and Arabic and Islamic literature and culture. Recently, he made an important discovery: Many of the images used to describe time in the Koran were also used not just in pre-Islamic Arab society, but also in ancient Greece and late antiquity.

Tamer’s finding is evidence that Islam has its roots in Hellenism, which is also at the root of Judaism and Christianity. As he puts it, the Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions are different branches of the same tree. This idea allows scholars to think of Islam not as a break from Hellenism, but as a continuation of it.

In the Koran, one way time is described is as God actively intervening to turn night into day and day into night. This means time is completely subjected to God’s will. This idea is a contribution to the development of the doctrine of predestination in Islam, Tamer argues. Muslims also point to the idea of God "turning" time in the Koran as a revelation of the Earth’s rotation to Muhammad centuries before the natural sciences became aware of this fact.

Tamer traces five verbs used in the Koran to describe God's active rotation of night and day: to intrude, to cover, to skin, to turn, and to wrap the turban. These verbs represent concrete actions common in pre-Islamic Arab society, showing not just God’s actions in relation to time, but also the historical context in which the Koran was written.

The Arabic concept of dahr , or endless time, also corresponds to the Greek concept of aion , which was personified and given power over human life. Both represent a cyclical concept of time which proceeds continuously, irreversibly affecting human fates.

In this book project, Tamer plans to explore the perception of past, present and future in the Koran, and to study how worldly time is related to the Hereafter. He will also ask whether the Koranic concept of time corresponds to the idea of Islam as "submission" or "subordination," and how far it allows for freedom of will. Finally, Tamer will discuss how the concept of time influences the political behavior of Muslims.

Tamer’s research is important for another reason: it subjects the Koran to hermeneutical analysis, based on historical-critical studies. Because Muslim scholars see the Koran as a divine revelation, they traditionally do not analyze it in this way. Tamer makes no comment as to the divine nature of the Koran – he sees that as a matter of faith, not scholarship – but does want to understand its text and context.

By understanding the historical context of the Koran, Tamer argues, we can better understand not only Islam, but how it relates to Judeo-Christianity. This can help us in structuring lines of communication between different cultures as well as religious and ethnic groups.

Investigators

Filters: 2008-2009, NELC

en العربية ar English en German ge

He is asking about time: is it created? Will it exist in Paradise? Will time cease to exist?

Publication : 24-10-2016

Praise be to Allah.

Allah, may He be glorified and exalted, says (interpretation of the meaning):

“By Al-‘Asr (the time).

Verily, man is in loss,

Except those who believe (in Islamic Monotheism) and do righteous good deeds, and recommend one another to the truth (i.e. order one another to perform all kinds of good deeds (Al-Ma‘roof) which Allah has ordained, and abstain from all kinds of sins and evil deeds (Al-Munkar) which Allah has forbidden), and recommend one another to patience (for the sufferings, harms, and injuries which one may encounter in Allah’s Cause during preaching His religion of Islamic Monotheism or Jihad)”

[al-‘Asr 103:1-3].

Ibn Katheer (may Allah have mercy on him) said:

‘Asr means time (zamaan) in which the deeds of the sons of Adam, good and bad, take place. Maalik said, narrating from Zayd ibn Aslam, that ‘Asr means the afternoon, but the first view is more well-known.

End quote from Tafseer Ibn Katheer (8/457).

Ibn ‘Uthaymeen (may Allah have mercy on him) said:

“By Al-‘Asr (the time)”. It was said that what is meant is the end of the day, because the end of the day is the best of it, and ‘Asr (afternoon) prayer is called as-salaah al-wusta, i.e., the best prayer, as the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) called it.

And it was said that al-‘Asr is time (zamaan), which is the more correct view. Allah swore by it because of what happens in it of changes in situations and alterations of matters, and the changing fortunes of people, and other things that are seen when present and spoken of when absent. Al-‘asr is the time (zamaan) in which people live, with the vicissitudes of hardship and ease, war and peace, health and sickness, good deeds and bad deeds, and other things that are well-known to all people. Allah swears by it that “Verily, man is in loss.”

End quote from Tafseer al-‘Uthaymeen (p. 307)

What is meant by time (zamaan) is the arena in which people’s deeds and actions take place. In general, it is the duration of their life in this world.

This time (zamaan) is something that Allah has created, because Allah, may He be exalted, is the Creator of all things. He is the Creator of time and the Creator of place.

Al-Bukhaari (4826) and Muslim (2246) narrated that Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) said: The Messenger of Allah (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) said: Allah has said: “The son of Adam offends Me. He inveighs against ad-dahr, but I am ad-dahr, in My hand is control, I alternate the night and day.”

Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah (may Allah have mercy on him) said:

The words in the hadith, “in My hand is control, I alternate the night and day” confirm that what is meant is not time (zamaan), because Allah tells us that He alternates the night and day, and time (zamaan) is night and day. The same hadith indicates that it is He who alternates and controls time, as is indicated by the verse in which Allah, may He be exalted, says (interpretation of the meaning):

“See you not that Allah drives the clouds gently, then joins them together, then makes them into a heap of layers, and you see the rain comes forth from between them. And He sends down from the sky hail (like) mountains, (or there are in the heaven mountains of hail from where He sends down hail), and strike therewith whom He wills, and averts it from whom He wills. The vivid flash of its (clouds) lightning nearly blinds the sight.

Allah causes the night and the day to succeed each other (i.e. if the day is gone, the night comes, and if the night is gone, the day comes, and so on). Truly, in these things is indeed a lesson for those who have insight”

[an-Noor 24:43-44].

Allah, may He be exalted, states in more than one place in the Quran that He created time, such as the verses in which He says (interpretation of the meaning):

“and originated the darkness and the light”

[al-An‘aam 6:1]

“And He it is Who has created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon, each in an orbit floating”

[al-Anbiya’ 21:33].

And there are other texts which clearly state that He is the creator of time (zamaan).

End quote from Majmoo‘ al-Fataawa (2/491-500)

See also the answers to questions no. 97739 and 131066

There is no place in this world in which there is no time; rather that cannot be imagined, for time and place are bound together. Time is the duration of the existence of this universe, and place is the space that is occupied by created entities when they exist. If they stop occupying space, then this means that they have ceased to exist and no longer exist. Similarly, if no time passes for them, then they never existed in the first place.

Shaykh al-Islam said:

No rational man should ever think that Allah is time (zamaan), for time refers to the measurement of movement, and the measurement of movement is a kind of description that is connected to something else, such as movement and stillness, black and white. No rational man can say that the Creator of the universe is a kind of description that is connected to some essence or item, for descriptions cannot be independent; rather they need something to be connected to.

End quote from Majmoo‘ al-Fataawa (2/492)

Events that happen must have a time and place in which to occur, and no event can be imagined without a time and place. These three are bound together.

Time (zamaan) will exist in paradise, but it cannot be compared to time in this world, as Ibn ‘Abbaas (may Allah be pleased with him) said: Nothing in Paradise resembles anything in this world except in name. According to another version: Nothing in this world will exist in Paradise except the names of things.

End quote from Tafseer at-Tabari (1/392)

The same applies to time (zamaan) and everything having to do with it in the hereafter: it will be different from what it is in this world.

Shaykh al-Islam (may Allah have mercy on him) said:

What exists in the hereafter is not the same as what exists in this world, even though they may be similar in some ways and the same names may refer to them.

End quote from Majmoo‘ al-Fataawa (5/207).

Shaykh al-Islam also said:

It is well-known that Allah, may He be glorified and exalted, created the heavens and the earth, and He originated darkness and light, then those who disbelieved held others as equal with their Lord. Allah, may He be exalted, says (interpretation of the meaning):

“Verily! In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, there are indeed signs for men of understanding”

[Aal ‘Imraan 3:190].

And there are other, similar verses in the Quran. It is well-known that the day is connected to the sun. As for the night, whether that refers to when there is no light, or it refers to a transient condition as some people say, or it refers to dark entities as others say, Allah has created all of that and He, may He be glorified and exalted, is as ‘Abdullah ibn Mas‘ood said: There is no night or day with your Lord; the light of the heavens is from the light of His Countenance. In the verse (interpretation of the meaning), “And they will have therein their sustenance, morning and afternoon” [Maryam 19:62], there is an indication that the people of Paradise will know when it is morning and afternoon by means of lights that will appear from the direction of the Throne. At some times there will be more light than at other times, for there will be no darkness there, and these lights are all created by Allah, may He be exalted.

End quote from Bayaan Talbees al-Jahamiyyah (2/284-286).

Ibn Katheer (may Allah have mercy on him) said in his commentary on the verse “And they will have therein their sustenance, morning and afternoon” [Maryam 19:62]:

That is similar to our time of morning and afternoon. It does not mean that there will be night and day there, but they will have times that come and go, and they will recognise it by certain types of lights.

End quote from Tafseer Ibn Katheer (5/218).

The people of Paradise will not need to calculate time as people in this world do. Allah, may He be exalted, created night and day, sun and moon, and He created time calculations so that people may know when to perform acts of worship and to keep track of interactions. But in paradise, they will not need any of that.

Time (zamaan) in this world will cease to exist, because what is connected to it will come to an end. The movement of the sun and moon will also cease. Allah, may He be exalted, says (interpretation of the meaning):

“Whatsoever is on it (the earth) will perish.

And the Face of your Lord full of Majesty and Honour will remain forever”

[ar-Rahmaan 55:26-27].

But time in the hereafter will never cease to exist. Allah, may He be exalted, says of the people of Paradise (interpretation of the meaning):

“But those who believe (in the Oneness of Allah - Islamic Monotheism) and do deeds of righteousness, We shall admit them to Gardens under which rivers flow (Paradise), abiding therein forever”

[an-Nisa’ 4:57].

And Allah, may He be exalted, says concerning the people of Hell (interpretation of the meaning):

“Verily, those who disbelieve and did wrong [by concealing the truth about Prophet Muhammad (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him)and his message of true Islamic Monotheism written in the Tauraat (Torah) and the Injeel (Gospel) with them], Allah will not forgive them, nor will He guide them to any way, -

Except the way of Hell, to dwell therein forever”

[an-Nisa’ 4:168-169].

Al-Bukhaari (4730) and Muslim (2849) narrated that Abu Sa‘eed al-Khudri (may Allah be pleased with him) said: The Messenger of Allah (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) said: “Death will be brought in the form of a black and white ram, then a caller will call out: O people of Paradise! And they will crane their necks and look. He will say: Do you recognise this? They will say: Yes; this is death – and all of them will have seen it. Then he will call out: O people of Hell! And they will crane their necks and look. He will say: Do you recognise this? They will say: Yes; this is death – and all of them will have seen it. Then it will be slaughtered, then he will say: O people of Paradise, it is eternal and there will be no death. O people of Hell, it is eternal and there will be no death.”

We advise the questioner not to occupy himself with such questions that may lead to confusion and frustration, and in which there is no great benefit. He should focus on that which is more useful and more beneficial, such as asking about Islamic rulings that he needs to know, and issues having to do with sound belief that he is enjoined to believe in, and virtuous deeds that will bring him closer to his Lord, and so on.

And Allah knows best.

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The Concept of Time in the Qur’an (Part 1 of series on Time)

Tushar Bhuiya , Wed 16 Rabi Al Awwal 1433AH 8-2-2012AD Spiritual Productivity 4 minutes

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A Muslim’s first source of guidance in life is the Qur’an, and so we turn to the Book of Allah for our initial inspiration in time management.

Surah Al-Asr

Allah begins the surah by taking an oath – ’Wa al-‘Asr’ – which means ‘by time’. Anything that Allah the Most High swears by in the Qur’an is a tremendous matter – such as ‘Wa al-Fajr’ (by the dawn) or ‘Wa al-Shams’ (by the sun). In the time of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), beginning with an oath was a method to draw the attention of the listener. Time is a concept that fascinated and awed the Arabs then, and it still fascinates Muslims now.

Inna al-insaana la fi khusr (Verily man is in a state of loss). The second verse starts by describing the general state of humanity – a state of loss, failure and a life which is a waste of time. However, the third verse starts with a glorious exception: Illa-allathina aamanuw (Except those who believe). Here then, the Qur’anic paradigm gives us, as Muslims, immense hope. No matter how lazy, inefficient, unproductive, mediocre or powerless we may be as individuals or as a community – as long as we live and die as Muslims – our life will not be a complete waste of time.

Conversely, no matter how busy, productive, efficient, successful and powerful non-Muslims may appear to be in this world – as long as they die rejecting Islam – none of their work is accepted. This reminds us of the timeless principle of Islam: innama al-‘amaalu bi in-niyyat (Actions are judged by intentions); any work or skill, be it running a company, serving the community or time management in general, must be acceptable to Allah for it to have any lasting benefit. For example, if we intend to set up a soup kitchen for the homeless and the whole project flops, as long as we intended it for Allah, we will be rewarded as if the project was the stunning success we hoped it would be. Yet if we succeed in building a massive corporate empire, we will gain nothing but regret in the next life, if we intended other than Allah’s good pleasure.

Even outwardly pious actions such as building masjids or helping other people or praying could even be punished if our intentions are to show off. So the Muslim’s first rule of time management is seeking acceptance from Allah – checking our intentions – which Surah al-Asr so succinctly reminds us.

Of course a Muslim is never complacent, relying only on belief for success. There must be work. And no other community can equal the Muslim ummah in terms of striving for both dunya and akhira – not neglecting the rights of Allah or the needs of fellow man. The second half of the last ayah explains why: wa ‘amilu-saalihaati (and do righteous deeds). Such good deeds include all the great acts of worship in Islam which encompass every possible beneficial use of one’s time: prayer, supplication, pilgrimage, charity, helping the poor, defending the weak, excellence in dealings and so on.

The last words of the surah provide one of the most important examples of such good works – good counsel: watawaa saw bi al-haqq Watawaa saw bi is-sabri (and enjoin upon one another truth [i.e. the beliefs and practices of Islam] and enjoin upon one another patience [from committing acts of disobedience]).

Hasan al-Basri, one of the greatest scholars in Islamic history from the blessed generation after the Sahaba ( Taabi’een ), is reported to have had the following inspiration about Surah al-‘Asr . On a sweltering hot day, on a street of Baghdad, he heard an ice-seller exclaim, ‘O people! Have mercy on one whose capital is melting away.’ Sheikh al-Hasan made an immediate connection with time. Just as the ice-seller would make a loss if his capital melted away, man in general will make a loss in the business of life, if we allow our capital to melt away. Our capital is time and Allah reminds us in Surah al-‘Asr that if we waste our capital (time) solely for the dunya then we make al-khusr (tremendous loss).

It is not unusual for Allah to use the metaphor of business to describe the life of this world and our purpose in it. One of the most powerful verses of the Qur’an talks of Allah ‘purchasing’ our lives:

Indeed Allah has purchased from the believers their very lives and their wealth, promising them Paradise in return ( Qur’an 9: 111 )

What an excellent transaction this is! So I pray that the readers and this needy author may benefit from the meanings of Surah al-‘Asr ; that we may recite it during salah with full concentration and that we live our lives according to it – thereby following a massive principle of Islamic time management: believe and do good deeds for Allah alone. Only then will we not waste our life.

Read the other parts of this series: Part 2 | Part 3

Written by Tushar Bhuiya

Tushar Imdad-ul-Haque Bhuiya is Assistant Director of Manara Academy, Leicester, where he teaches Islamic Studies and English ( www.manara-education.co.uk ). He also delivers workshops, coaches and writes articles on time management.

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HURLEY: Checking to see if I’m disappearing.

MILES: What?

MILES: You’re an idiot. [Takes a seat at the table]

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HURLEY: “Back to the Future”, man. We came back in time to the island and changed stuff. So if little Ben dies, he’ll never grow up to be big Ben, who’s the one who made us come back here in the first place. Which means we can’t be here. And therefore, dude? We don’t exist.

HURLEY: Am I?

MILES: Yeah. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t change anything. Your maniac Iraqi buddy shot Linus. That is what always happened. It’s just…we never experienced how it all turns out. [Hurley looks at Jack, confused.]

HURLEY: This is really confusing.

MILES: Yeah, well, get used to it. But the good news is that Linus didn’t die, so that means the kid can’t either. He’ll be fine.”

What Miles was explaining to Hurley was just exactly what is called a Time Travel Paradox.

Time Relativity

According to Einstein the great 20 th century physicist, physical time travel is a scientific phenomenon that can factually happen, yet there are few constraints. Einstein proposed the concept of time delay when he observed that light speed is the fastest universal speed that can’t be exceeded by anything in the cosmos.

He postulated time to be “expanding” when a beam of light is projected from a moving vehicle to preserve the speed of light as constant. Einstein found this really puzzling till he derived his famous special relativity equation from Lorenz equations.

The more the speed the more delay in relative time. This was the indirectly proportional relation that was finally bound by a single equation proposed by Einstein revealing a hidden mystery about time being a dimension, our 4 th dimension.

Speed of Light

Special relativity shows time to be relative, thus a moving vehicle approaching the speed of light shifts in a time delay that can’t be experienced by the vehicle’s driver, but by an external observer. This is what is known as the Twin Paradox.

When a twin brother decides to have a long spaceship journey and the other twin brother stays on Earth, the later will be an aged observer, while the traveling one will stay young due to his time travel in future.

Such a phenomenon is explained as a time delay that is not experienced by the time traveler, yet observed and felt by the reference point observer.

Time delay was experimentally proved in 1971 by Joseph C. Hafele and Richard E. Keating who flew Caesium atomic clocks showing that a-nanosecond time delay took place.

Time Travel Obstacle

In order to travel through time, some constraints need to be understood. Einstein’s theory of special relativity is based on variables and a constant. The variables are time, velocity, distance, and mass, while the only constant is the speed of light.

Traveling to the future is much easier than traveling to the past, since relative high velocities for long time journeys can trigger a future time travel. This is very similar to how the 2D projection of a line rotated into the third-dimension appears to get shorter.

Length isn’t conserved simply because we are ignoring one of the dimensions. Yet, traveling to the past needs a traveler to exceed the speed of light which is impossible according to Einstein’s special relativity.

When getting close to the speed of light a traveler’s mass relatively increases vigorously causing the traveler’s body to stop moving due to Inertia.

When reaching the speed of light, the traveler’s mass also becomes totally unpredictable. Even though, these obstacles are just part of the fact that the speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s and no such speed can be achieved by current technologies.

Time Travel Paradox

Differences between time periods needed for travelling via different speeds. Note: Omega Centauri.

It’s now clear that traveling to the future is possible, while past time travel is not achieved yet.

Though, let’s understand the concept Miles was explaining to Hurley. If a time traveler jumped to the period when his father didn’t get married and decides to kill him, will the time traveler be able to kill his father?

If the father was killed this means the traveler won’t be there anymore and he wouldn’t even die but vanish.

This is a paradox when the father has to stay alive till he gets married and the traveler gets born otherwise he won’t exist.

That’s why whenever the traveler tries to kill his father with a gun the gun doesn’t fire, or police officers arrive to stop him.

This is a philosophical concept that points at destiny. You can’t change your fate but can change how fate occurs. This is like having your arm broken as your fate, you can’t stop you arm from being broken but can choose the way it will be broken.

Ancient Chinese philosophers interpreted the book of changes the “I Ching” as the cycle of changing situations known as “hexagrams”.

According to Confusius and Lao Tzu you can’t stop changes, but you can have the best outcome of changes to pass to the next one.

To pass to the next change a wise man needs to find his inner traits and learn the art of yielding as explained in an earlier article.

This would always happen when a wise man acts through his superior self, acting through morals and noble values. That’s why a person should always accept destiny and find his way to inner peace.

Same concepts were adopted by the Ancient Mayan cosmology as an understanding of time as a series of changing events taking place due to ruling cycles of deities. This concept was explained in details in a previous article about the Mayan Long-Count Calendar.

In Islam, destiny is very clear when it comes to the story of Prophet Moses. The Holy Quran shows that Prophet Moses was destined to be who he is through different harsh situations in his life.

Prophet Moses’ fate was to be a man for a great mission and that’s why he had to get prepared for the unknown. At the point when he was ready, God revealed to him the mission of Exodus.

The Holy Quran says: “(20:37) We have shown favor to you for the second time. (20:38) Recall the time when We inspired your mother with this idea by means of a Revelation: (20:39) `Place this child in a box and put the box in the river; the river will cast it on to the bank and My enemy and his enemy will pick it up.

I Myself made you an object of love and so arranged things that you should be brought up under My supervision. (20:40) Recall the time when your sister was walking along; then she said: `May I inform you of one, who will bring up this child in the best manner?’

Thus We returned you to your mother so that her eye might be cooled and she might not be grieved. And (also remember that) you killed a certain person and We freed you from its evil (consequences) and put you through various trials and you stayed with the people of Madian for several years.

Now you have come back at the right time: (20:41) O Moses, I have molded you for My Mission. (20:42) You and your brother should go (on the Mission) with My Signs. And see that you do not show any negligence in remembering Me.” (Surat Taha).

Past Time Travel… Still Possible

Scientists never lost interest in achieving the impossible, that’s why Ronald Mallett from the University of Connecticut always wanted to achieve past time travel.

His time travel interest evolved when his father died of a heart attack when he was 10. Mallett believed in helping his father out of his heart attack.

Mallett built a time travel device based on circulating laser rings. He argues that at sufficient energies, the circulating rings can create frame-dragging affecting gravitational fields based on Einstein’s general relativity. According to his calculations such frame-dragging can cause past time travels.

Time travel is a very important field of research to fix frequencies due to time delays in satellite signals such as GPS, and other applications.

However, this is not all about time travels, understanding space-time properties reveal secrets of teleportation, higher dimensions, and more.

References:

“Whatever Happened Is Happened Script” Lost Season5 Episode 11.
Einstein Online.
Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory.
J. C. Hafele, Richard E. Keating, Around the World Atomic Clocks: Observed Relativistic Time Gains, Science Magazine, 14 July 1972, Vol. 177 no. 4044 pp. 168-170.
I Ching Methonds And Meanings.
Holy Quran With Translations.
Ronald L. Mallett.

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Importance of Time in Islam | From Quran and Sunnah

We all are familiar with the most famous proverbs “Time is money” and “Time is Gold”. Time has great importance in the life of human being. Humanity has always been anxious with time, the passage of time, the measurement of time, and the scientific qualities of time. Time is a blessing on all of us. We should concentrate on how we use time according to Islamic perspective. Allah Almighty has clearly stated the value of time in Quran. We should make the use of time wisely to increase our faith in this life and the hereafter too.

Our beloved Prophet (SAW) said about time in Hadith: “There are two blessings which many people lose: (They are) health and free time for doing good” (Bukhari). From this saying, we can conclude that we should utilize our time for doing good deeds for the sake of Almighty Allah’s pleasure. We order our lives around time, in Islam lives are structured around the daily prayers. We should offer prayers on time which are obligatory on every Muslim. In Islam believers are encouraged to be certain of time, to know its importance and to organize it intelligently. If human beings do not waste or abuse time, but rather think of it as a blessing from Lord then they have every reason to hope for success both in this life and in the hereafter.

Importance of Time in Quran

Allah Almighty has mentioned everything in Quran which is the source of Guidance for us. Similarly, Allah has stated the importance of time in Holy Quran that we will discuss below:

Indeed, we displease Allah the Most High when we misuse time. We must remember that time must be spent to fulfill our very purpose in life that is to worship Allah during our lives. Allah makes the importance of time very clear in the Quran when He says: “I have only created Jinns and Men that they may serve Me. No Sustenance do I require of them, nor do I require that they should feed Me. For Allah is He Who gives (all) Sustenance, Lord of Power, Steadfast forever).” (Quran, 51:56-58). From this verse we can say that we should use our time to worship Allah instead of doing some other useless things.

For every true believer knows that life on earth is temporary and its eternal accomplishment lies in terms of pleasing Allah (SWT) and living its life according to His Commandments. The Almighty Allah says in the Holy Quran in Chapter Al-Asr about the importance of time: “By time, indeed, mankind is in loss, Except for those who have believed and done righteous deeds and advised each other to truth and advised each other to patience.” (Quran, 103: 1-3). The Ayahs explain the worth of time in life of a Muslim. The Creator of the world of the worlds declares time as a great measure of one`s success or failure. The Exalted One says that with every advancing moment of existence, human has a great warning that is associated with it.

Time is one of mankind’s most precious resources since it can never be replaced or renewed once it has passed. When we waste our time it is much like someone investing his capital impulsively and not using it to generate profit. Invest time in Good deeds, our beliefs form the basic foundation of our life, and those, whose beliefs are established on the Quran, are normal to act on those beliefs by giving themselves to doing good deeds or we can say by investing their time in doing good deeds. Allah Almighty says in Holy Quran: “O ye who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the messenger, and make not vain your deeds!” (Quran, 47:33). From this verse we can say that we should do our best to utilize our time in doing good deeds instead of wasting in useless deeds.

Importance of Time According to Sunnah of Prophet (SAW)

We have so many examples from the life of our Beloved Prophet (SAW) to know about the importance of time. Below we will discuss some of them so we can take lesson and can utilize our time in best manner.

The Prophet Mohammad (SAW), used to call on Muslims to take the initiative to do good deeds before any obstacles arise. He (SAW) said, “Lose no time to do good deeds before you are caught up by one of seven calamities awaiting you: a starvation which may impair your wisdom; a prosperity which may mislead you; an ailment which may damage your health; an old age which may harm your senses; a sudden death; the Dajjal (Antichrist); or Doomsday, which is indeed the hardest and most bitter.” (At-Tirmidhi)

Prophet (SAW) also said in one of His Hadiths: “Take advantage of five matters before five other matters: your youth before you become old; your health, before you fall sick; your wealth, before you become poor; your free time before you become preoccupied, and your life, before your death” (Musnad Imam Ahmad). The whole hadith is about the limited nature of our life and how the time is running out. We should utilize the time in best manner before it’s too late.

In another Hadith Prophet Muhammad (SAW) said: “Allah said, ‘The son of Adam wrongs me for he curses Ad-Dahr (Time); though I am Ad-Dahr (Time). In My Hands are all things, and I cause the revolution of day and night’” (Al-Bukhari). The one who is misusing the time is doing things that are beyond Allah’s commandments. And those who act against Allah’s commandments will be in loss in this life and in the Hereafter too.

In short, humankind is told to be conscious of time. Allah Almighty reminds us that life in this world is but temporary and we do not know our appointed time of death. We should utilize our time in doing good deeds in best manner. As believers we must never waste or misuse time, instead we must value it as a blessing from Almighty Allah. We must all understand that wasting even a single moment is an opportunity gone, never to return. We are accountable to everything that we did in this life and when our time in this world will be up we can’t do anything because our time in this world is up and that time will never going to come back. Time is precious we should try to invest it in best manner!

Time plays a very important role in our lives. It has started from our very first day in this world and would never stop even for a second until our last moments in this world. In the whole life cycle time flows like running water, we could not pause or reverse it. Past, present, future all depends upon time. If we have good memories in past it is just because of quality time which we valued at that moment. We should know the worth of time because every passing second, minute, hour, if passed not comes back at any cost.

Importance of Time in Islam

Allah mentions the importance of time in Surah Adh-Dhariyat that time is limited for us. We should not waste time in useless things rather than we should spend time in worship of Allah. Usually we forget to fulfill the purpose of life and then claim that we do not have enough time for prayers.

“I have not created any of the jinn and men to serve me, for Allah is the one who gives (all) sustenance, the Lord of the Lord. Power which is unshakeable forever.” [Quran, 51: 56-58]

Time is all about Priorities

We heard in our daily routine that for some people time is too short and for some it is difficult to pass. Some are satisfied with their time while others busy in searching different tricks to save time. Time is fixed for all of us; it is never too long or too short? Actually we do what is prior for us not what we need to do. It is on our priorities that how we send our time and what we get later.

Allah says in Surah Al-Asr that if we would be successful then our first priority should be Allah’s commands and righteous deeds.

“By the time, in fact, humanity is in the loss, except those who have believed and performed righteous deeds and are mutually advised to patients”. [Quran, 103: 1-3]

Time Decides Success or Failure in Future

Future is the result of how we have spent our time in past. Allah advice in Surah Mohammad that time is precious therefore make your deeds valuable which benefits you. Avoid to waste time in worthless activities.

“O you who believe, obey Allah, and write to the messenger, and do not make your deeds valueless!” [Quran, 47:33]

Time is the Blessing given by Allah

Our Prophet Hazrat Mohammad said that time is one of the blessings given by Allah. Hence, we should take advantage out of time before it passes and nothing there would nothing left in our hands except regret and grief. Years have fixed months, months have fixed days, days have fixed hours and so on, it means that in terms of time Allah gives equal opportunity to all. Then why some people are successful while others complaining about the shortage of time. Because some people do not understand that time is the blessing and they waste it in useless things.

Hazrat Mohammad(PBUH) stated in one of his Hadith that:

“Take advantage of five questions before five other questions: your youth before you get old; your health before getting sick; your wealth before becoming poor; your free time before you become preoccupied, and your life, before your death” [Musnad Imam Ahmad]

It is concluded that time is very important and precious, if we waste time then there would come time when time itself spoils us. Time is never short or long, it is all about the management of time and our priorities. Allah gives us equal opportunity to take benefit out of time as much as we could. Those who do not understand the valve of time will be definitely in trouble in future and then they would always complain about the shortage of time.

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Home » Hanafi Fiqh » Askimam.org » Alternate Reality and Parallel Universe

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Question: What is the islamic position on the concept of time travel? Alternate/parallel worlds? Multiverse?
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Alternate Reality and Parallel Universe

As-Salaam-Alaikum. This question is follow up to fatwa no. 39742. I’d appreciate if Hussein Mohammed, student Darul Iftaa from Arusha, Tanzani could answer this. Is the concept of alternate reality or parallel universe compatible with Islam? This would essentially mean that there are infinite universes with infinite versions of the same human beings including the Prophets (PBUT) existing in these universes. A Muslim in one universe could be an unbeliever or vice a verse in another universe. Please clarify. Jazak Allah.

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

As-salāmu ‘alaykum wa-rahmatullāhi wa-barakātuh.

Brother in Islam,

The concept of an Alternate Reality or Parallel Universe is entirely theoretical with no empirical evidence. It is purely a speculative idea constructed by some scientists. There are many scientists that label this theory as unscientific and irrational.

The concept of an Alternate Reality is based on Everett’s Many-World theory. Hugh Everett III, an American physicist, was the first to propose the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics in his doctoral thesis at Princeton University in 1957.

Assurance that the Many-Worlds interpretation is theoretically possible, came in the late 1990s from a thought experiment – an imagined experiment used to theoretically prove or disapprove an idea- called quantum suicide.

Another theory which suggests that there are universes parallel to our own is the String Theory of the Japanese-American physicist Michio Kaku.

String Theory has been tested once with negative results. [i]

Till today this concept remains an extremely controversial view.

You enquire if the concept of Alternate Reality and Parallel Universe is compatible with Islam.

There is no mention of the concept of Alternate Reality or Parallel Universe in the traditional Islamic texts, rather certain matters related to this theory are contrary to Islam and its teachings.

According to the Many-Worlds theory, if an action has more than one possible outcome, then the universe splits into distinct universes to accommodate each of the possible outcomes. It is explained as the unravelling of two realities that were previously just possible futures of a single reality. [ii]

This also means that if one ever found himself in a situation where death was a possible outcome, then in a universe parallel to his, he is dead. [iii] This means a person is dead and alive.

Everyone has a fixed time and place of death. [iv] A person cannot be alive and dead at the same time.

Furthermore, the many-worlds interpretation is based on the logic of imkān (“absolute” possibility). If something is theoretically possible, irrespective of any empirical evidence, it will be regarded as a valid interpretation.

According to this logic process, it is possible that there are many parallel realities. Therefore, rendering the many-worlds theory as a conclusive and valid interpretation.

However, Islam does not agree with the logic of “absolute” possibility and its application to determine definite knowledge. As the possibility of existence of something does not necessitate its existence.

According to this logic process of “absolute” possibility, it is possible that the universe that Muslims believe to be haadith (preceded by non-existence) is qadeem and that Allah who is qadeem is haadith .

Haadith is something that is brought into existence from non-existence, and that there must be a causer that brings it into existence. It is the belief of all Muslims that everything besides Allah is haadith and that Allah is the causer of everything coming into existence.

Qadeem is something that is not preceded by non-existence and it does not have a causer for its existence. A being who is qadeem is ever-present without a beginning and will continue to exist without an end. Only Allah is that being who is qadeem and no other entity in the universe shares this quality.

To have the believe that other entities besides Allah are qadeem is to associate partners with Allah ( shirk ). This is contrary to our belief in Tauheed , the most fundamental and ultimate pillar in Islam. Having such beliefs will render a person kaafir .

Similarly, to believe that Allah is haadith leads on to believe that Allah has a creator. This is also kufr .

It will be irrational to consider this logic process in ones communal and personal life. For example, if this logic process was to be applied to determine the correct verdict between two disputants, then both the disputants will believe that their argument has the possibility of being correct. Thus, making it impossible to conclude who is correct.

In brief, the concept of parallel universe is based on assumptions, which is erroneous.

Consider the following verses of the Quran.

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اجْتَنِبُوا كَثِيرًا مِنَ الظَّنِّ إِنَّ بَعْضَ الظَّنِّ إِثْمٌ (سورة الحجرات:12)

O you who have Imān! Refrain from excessive assumptions. Verily, some assumptions are a sin. (Surah Hujurāt: Verse 12)

وَمَا يَتَّبِعُ أَكْثَرُهُمْ إِلَّا ظَنًّا إِنَّ الظَّنَّ لَا يُغْنِي مِنَ الْحَقِّ شَيْئًا إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ بِمَا يَفْعَلُونَ (سورة يونس:36)

Most of them follow only assumptions. Indeed (mere) assumptions is of no significance against the truth. Without doubt Allah has perfect knowledge of what you do. (Surah Yunus: Verse 26.)

Brother, we advise you not to waste your precious time behind these baseless and unsubstantiated speculations. Rather apply your intellect and mental capacity in pondering over the marvel feats and perfection of the universe. This will help to increase your Imān and attain true recognition of Allah.

Pondering on these speculative and hypothetical theories will only confuse you from the truth and cause great harm to your Imān .

Consider the following Hadith:

مِنْ حُسْنِ إِسْلاَمِ المَرْءِ تَرْكُهُ مَا لاَ يَعْنِيهِ. ]سنن الترمذي:ح2317[

Translation: It is from the excellence of a believer’s Islam that he should leave that which is of no concern to him. [Sunan At-Tirmidhi : 2317 ]

And Allah Ta’āla Knows Best

Muhammed Shafi

Student – Darul Iftaa

London, U.K.

Checked and Approved by,

Mufti Ebrahim Desai.

28-12-1440| 29-08-2019

[i] https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/parallel-universe.htm

[ii] https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-the-many-worlds-interpretation-of-quantum-mechanics-has-many-problems-20181018/

[iii] https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/parallel-universe.htm

[iv] سورة آل عمران (3145)

وَمَا كَانَ لِنَفْسٍ أَنْ تَمُوتَ إِلا بِإِذْنِ اللهِ كِتَاباً مُؤَجَّلاً

سنن الترمذي التأصيل (3/ 318)

حَدثنا أَحْمَدُ بْنُ مَنِيعٍ, وَعَلِيُّ بْنُ حُجْرٍ, المَعْنَى وَاحِدٌ, قَالاَ: حَدثنا إِسْمَاعِيلُ بْنُ إِبْرَاهِيمَ, عَنْ أَيُّوبَ, عَنْ أَبِي المَلِيحِ (1), عَنْ أَبِي عَزَّةَ قَالَ: قَالَ رَسُولُ اللهِ صَلى الله عَليه وسَلم: إِذَا قَضَى اللهُ لِعَبدٍ أَنْ يَمُوتَ بِأَرْضٍ, جَعَلَ لَهُ إِلَيْهَا حَاجَةً, أَوْ قَالَ: بِهَا حَاجَةً.

هَذَا حَدِيثٌ صَحِيحٌ.

This answer was collected from Askimam.org, which is operated under the supervision of Mufti Ebrahim Desai from South Africa.

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Time Management in Islam

Every minute is precious as it counts!

Why do you even think that time will run according to your pace? We belong to Allah and we have to return to Him someday. All that we have in this life comes through the loving-kindness and grace of Allah, and He has granted us the gift of time to work on ourselves. We often fall inadequate in different areas of life including education, professional and personal relations because of the scarcity of correct time utilization. Nevertheless, particularly when the workload is piled, the most important link we always forget is the most glorious relationship with Allah.

The first thing that you should know is that you have to manage your time. No matter what you do, time continues flowing. Every day you have 24 hours, 1440 minutes, or 86400 seconds to use as you deem appropriate. They say controlling means that, what you do, you have some control over it. You cannot control time in a day, but you can control what you do within 24 hours.

Therefore Islam is not a set of rules to observe solely in regards to the matter of prayer and fasting, but also concerning our communication time and personal efficiency with others. But according to the Prophets and Divinely-sent leaders, we must familiarize ourselves with time management in Islam as our acts must be in line with their lifestyle and supremacy.

“There are two blessings which many people lose: (They are) health and free time for doing good.” (Bukhari 8/421)

As it is said by Allah (S.W.T) in the Quran:

“By (the Token of) Time (through the ages), Verily mankind is in loss, Except those who have faith, and do righteous good deeds, and (join together) in the mutual teaching of Truth, and Patience and Constancy.”(The Qur'an 103:1-3)

Offer Fajr:

Get started for the day during Fajr lets you start ahead of anyone in the Dunya. Around noon, you find that most of the day's activities have already been completed productively. Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H) said:

“O Allah, bless my nation in their early mornings.” [ Sunan Ibn Majah]

Plan out your day and start anything with Bismillah:

Start planning out your day afore anything in the morning. Make a list of everything you have to do throughout the day and line it up according to the priority so that it gets easier for you to make up your mind accordingly. And never forget to say BISMILLAH before starting any task. Consider taking anything left at the end of the day and enter it in your list for the next day. You must add the remaining stuff on the day before that night. Place the stuff at the top of your list, if possible, so that you do not have a small list of things you keep tagging with you every week.

Muhammad (P.B.U.H) said

“Get holds of 5 things before 5 things happen: your youth before old age, your health before sickness, your riches before poverty, your leisure before business and your life before death.” (Tirmidhi)

Set your sights on a vision:

You must have the goal to ask whether you are heading in the right direction. Envision your goal! It builds your inner motivation to take the necessary measures. Note, your final destination must be connected to this goal. Those who become a scientist, restore the Khilafah, move to Madinah, do Hajj, open a gym, etc. When a task occurs, revert to your goal, and wonder if it helps or am I distracted from it?

“Fair in the eyes of men is the love of things they covet: Women and sons; Heaped-up hoards of gold and silver; horses branded (for blood and excellence); and (wealth of) cattle and well-tilled land. Such are the possessions of this world’s life, but in nearness to Allah is the best of the goals (To return to)”. [Qur’an, Family of Imran, 3:14]

Never be ignorant about hereafter:

The majority of us are happy those who have tried to build their lives around Islam, not build Islam around their lives. It is one of Satan's efforts to divert us from Allah by reminding us that we don't have time to pray on busy days, nor that it is necessary to hasten prayers so that we can return to work. These are signs that render us ignorant about the afterlife.

Every minute counts! In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

(I swear) by time, that surely mankind suffers loss,

except for those who believe and do good deeds,

and they enjoin Truth and they enjoin constancy.

–Surah Asr (Time)

Divide your day:

Every one of us often delays things for later, the planned out list slowly becomes so unfeasible that Satan presents many obstacles. But we can examine the principles of Islam concerning ethics and self-development and obtain advice and important steps that keep us away from the pity that we can become Muslims and individuals more effectively. It is important to keep our lives consistent, and we can look at Prophet Muhammad as a great example of how we should do so.

The Holy Prophet stated, “I have divided my time into three equal parts – one part for worship, one for my family affairs, and the last part I have further divided into two, one for social engagements and one for rest.”

Say no to Multitasking:

Multi-tasking is a source of stress most of the time and allows you to start many projects without doing anything. Alternatively, a single task executes the job with full focus and commitment, one project at a time. Your tasks will eventually gain commitment and get fully completed. Prophet Mohammad (P.B.U.H)) pertained for single or multiple tasks? We cannot find a single evidence of multi-task Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H) when we go through the Seerah and researches. He always appeared to be fully focused on the project or the person involved and paid full attention to them. During prayers, he focused completely on his Salah.

People seek to become physically, mentally, socially and emotionally more balanced. Since its advent, Islam has tried to allow human beings to reach their full potential by reminding them of their duty towards God, their fellow human beings and, of course, towards themselves.

When is Eid al-Fitr 2024 and how is it celebrated?

The three-day festival celebrates the completion of the fasting month of Ramadan by Muslims across the world.

As a new moon was not sighted on Monday evening after Maghrib prayers, Muslims in Saudi Arabia and neighbouring countries will fast one more day, completing 30 days of Ramadan. The first day of Eid will then be celebrated on Wednesday, April 10.

The first day of Eid al-Fitr is determined by the sighting of the crescent moon marking the start of the month of Shawwal, the 10th month of the Islamic (Hijri) calendar.

Keep reading

A ramadan no palestinian will ever forget, the cost of a ramadan iftar meal around the world, ramadan 2024: where do your dates come from, in washington, dc: celebrating ramadan, protesting israel’s siege of gaza.

Lunar months last between 29 and 30 days so Muslims usually have to wait until the night before Eid to verify its date.

Other countries follow independent sightings.

When the sighting has been verified, Eid is declared on television, radio stations and at mosques.

Muslim worshippers prepare to take part in a morning prayer on the first day of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, on April 21, 2023 [Yasin Akgul /AFP]

How do Muslims celebrate Eid?

Traditionally, Eid is celebrated for three days as an official holiday in Muslim-majority countries. However, the number of holiday days varies by country.

Muslims begin Eid day celebrations by partaking in a prayer service that takes place shortly after dawn, followed by a short sermon.

Palestinian Muslims perform the morning Eid al-Fitr prayer, marking the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan in Gaza City on May 2, 2022 [Mahmud HAMS / AFP]

On their way to the prayer, which is traditionally held in an open area, Muslims recite takbeerat, praising God by saying “Allahu Akbar”, meaning “God is great”.

Interactive_Eid_2024-How is Eid celebrated-1712214441

It is customary to eat something sweet before the prayer, such as date -filled biscuits known as maamoul in the Middle East. This particular festival is known as the “sweet” Eid – and the distribution of sweets is common across the Muslim world.

Muslims usually spend the day visiting relatives and neighbours and accepting sweets as they move around from house to house.

Each country has traditional desserts and sweets that are prepared before Eid or on the morning of the first day.

Children, dressed in new clothes, are offered gifts and money to celebrate the joyous occasion.

Children ride a swing on the first day of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, in the rebel-held town of Maaret Misrin in Syria's northwestern Idlib province, on April 21, 2023 [Abdulaziz Ketaz / AFP]

Girls and women in many countries decorate their hands with henna. The celebration for Eid begins the night before as women gather in neighbourhoods and large family gatherings for the application of henna.

A girl shows her hand decorated with henna at a market area ahead of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the Muslim holy festival of Ramadan, in Srinagar, on April 20, 2023 [Tauseef Mustafa / AFP]

In some countries, families visit graveyards to offer their respects to departed family members right after the morning prayers.

It is common for Muslim-majority countries to decorate their cities with lights and hold festivities to commemorate the end of the fasting month.

A general view shows the Alif Ki mosque illuminated during the holy month of Ramadan, ahead of Eid al-Fitr, in Ahmedabad on April 19, 2023 [Sam Panthaky/AFP]

Eid amid the onslaught in Gaza

For some 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza this Eid, this will be the first Muslim religious holiday after more than 33,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks. With little food aid, and very limited water, Gaza’s Eid al-Fitr will be mired in destruction amid the continuing attacks.

What are common Eid greetings?

The most popular greeting is “Eid Mubarak” (Blessed Eid) or “Eid sa’id” (Happy Eid). Eid greetings also vary depending on the country and language.

The video below shows how people say Eid Mubarak in different languages around the world.

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NASA Picks 3 Companies to Help Astronauts Drive Around the Moon

The agency’s future moon buggies will reach speeds of 9.3 miles per hour and will be capable of self-driving.

An illustration of a lunar rover that resembles a futuristic car with headlights on and an astronaut in a spacesuit sitting at the controls, sitting on the rocky surface of the moon. The words "Moon Racer" are illuminated above the astronaut's head.

By Kenneth Chang

NASA will be renting some cool wheels to drive around the moon.

Space agency officials announced on Wednesday that they have hired three companies to come up with preliminary designs for vehicles to take NASA astronauts around the lunar south polar region in the coming years. After the astronauts return to Earth, these vehicles would be able to self-drive around as robotic explorers, similar to NASA’s rovers on Mars.

The self-driving capability would also allow the vehicle to meet the next astronaut mission at a different location.

“Where it will go, there are no roads,” Jacob Bleacher, the chief exploration scientist at NASA, said at a news conference on Wednesday. “Its mobility will fundamentally change our view of the moon.”

The companies are Intuitive Machines of Houston, which in February successfully landed a robotic spacecraft on the moon ; Lunar Outpost of Golden, Colo.; and Venturi Astrolab of Hawthorne, Calif. Only one of the three will actually build a vehicle for NASA and send it to the moon.

NASA had asked for proposals of what it called the lunar terrain vehicle, or L.T.V., that could drive at speeds up to 9.3 miles per hour, travel a dozen miles on a single charge and allow astronauts to drive around for eight hours.

The agency will work with the three companies for a year to further develop their designs. Then NASA will choose one of them for the demonstration phase.

The L.T.V. will not be ready in time for the astronauts of Artemis III, the first landing in NASA’s return-to-the-moon program , which is currently scheduled for 2026 .

The plan is for the L.T.V. to be on the lunar surface ahead of Artemis V, the third astronaut landing that is expected in 2030, said Lara Kearney, manager of the extravehicular activity and human surface mobility program at the NASA Johnson Space Center.

“If they can get there earlier, we’ll take it earlier,” Ms. Kearney said.

The L.T.V. contract will be worth up to $4.6 billion over the next 15 years — five years of development and then a decade of operations on the moon, most of it going to the winner of this competition. But Ms. Kearney said the contracts allow NASA to later finance the development of additional rovers, or allow other companies to compete in the future.

The contract follows NASA’s recent strategy of purchasing services rather than hardware.

In the past, NASA paid aerospace companies to build vehicles that it then owned and operated. That included the Saturn V rocket, the space shuttles and the lunar roving vehicles — popularly known as moon buggies — that astronauts drove on the moon during the last three Apollo missions in 1971 and 1972.

The new approach has proved successful and less expensive for the transportation of cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station. NASA now pays companies, notably Elon Musk’s SpaceX, fixed fees for those services, more akin to plane tickets or FedEx shipments.

For the company chosen to build the L.T.V., the vehicle will remain its property, and that company will be able to rent it to other customers when it is not needed by NASA.

“It’s commercially available for us as a commercial business to sell capacity on that rover,” said Steve Altemus, the chief executive of Intuitive Machines, “and do that for international partners and for other commercial companies and space agencies around the world.”

The competition created alliances between small startups and larger, more established aerospace companies, as well as car companies. The Intuitive Machines team includes Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Michelin, the tire maker. Lunar Outpost added to its team Lockheed Martin, Goodyear and General Motors, which had helped design the Apollo moon buggies.

Astrolab is working with Axiom Space of Houston, which has sent private astronauts to the space station and is building a commercial module to the International Space Station. Astrolab announced last year that it had signed an agreement to send one of its rovers to the moon on a SpaceX Starship rocket as early as 2026. That mission is independent of whether it is selected by NASA, a company spokesman said.

While Lunar Outpost is competing with Intuitive Machines on this contract, it plans to work with the company separately, sending smaller robotic rovers to the moon on the company’s lunar landers.

Kenneth Chang , a science reporter at The Times, covers NASA and the solar system, and research closer to Earth. More about Kenneth Chang

What’s Up in Space and Astronomy

Keep track of things going on in our solar system and all around the universe..

Never miss an eclipse, a meteor shower, a rocket launch or any other 2024 event that’s out of this world with our space and astronomy calendar .

Scientists may have discovered a major flaw in their understanding of dark energy, a mysterious cosmic force . That could be good news for the fate of the universe.

A new set of computer simulations, which take into account the effects of stars moving past our solar system, has effectively made it harder to predict Earth’s future and reconstruct its past.

Dante Lauretta, the planetary scientist who led the OSIRIS-REx mission to retrieve a handful of space dust , discusses his next final frontier.

A nova named T Coronae Borealis lit up the night about 80 years ago. Astronomers say it’s expected to put on another show in the coming months.

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The Greatest Hits review – cutesy music romance plays a forgettable tune

Lucy Boynton plays a woman who can travel back in time with the power of a song in a high-concept, low-enjoyment fantasy

I n the often insufferably cutesy romance The Greatest Hits, our heroine travels back in time whenever a song from her past is played, nostalgia acting as a magical, transporting force. While watching the film, we too are pulled back but rather to all of the far superior films we’re inconveniently reminded of, from High Fidelity to Richard Curtis’s similarly high-concept About Time to the ’00s Sundance breakouts (500) Days of Summer and Garden State. It’s a film about the power that great music has in distracting us from the now that instead showcases the power that great films have in distracting us from the lesser ones they inspire.

But even without the many whiffs of familiarity, writer-director Ned Benson’s film would still be hitting a bum note. It’s all too self-consciously disheveled, every band T-shirt looking less like it was found at a gig and more like it was bought at an Urban Outfitters and it’s this slick cleanness that affects both style and story. Harriet (Lucy Boynton) is stuck in a grief spiral after her longtime boyfriend Max (new Superman David Corenswet) dies in a car accident. She’s shifted jobs, become withdrawn and walks around with ear plugs and a giant pair of headphones because it’s not just that certain songs take her mind back to certain moments with him, it’s that they take her entire body as well. If she hears a song that was playing at some point during their relationship, she’s thrown back to that exact moment. Her efforts to save him remain fruitless, though, and so her blessing becomes a curse.

Benson’s debut The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby – an ambitious trilogy of films following the dissolution of a marriage from different perspectives – offered up something tantalising in concept, but he never quite found enough truth or raw emotion to affect us in the way a film about something so difficult really should. We’re in glossier, more heightened territory here, but in a film about grief and how we struggle to course-correct after loss, and there’s also nothing wrenching within, everything too broad and stylised to get to us. The decision to only show Max either in Harriet’s brief journeys back or in fleeting montage means that we never really get to know him as anything but a handsome cipher, and so we’re told to mourn a relationship that means nothing. Her thankless gay bestie tells her “you lost yourself when you lost him,” which means very little when we don’t know who she or he ever was.

Harriet meets someone new – the charming Justin H Min – but their courtship is too twee and artificial as well as dated (at one moment, I said he’d better not be taking her to a silent disco, and he then takes her to a silent disco). It’s the kind of real-people-don’t-act-like-this romance that Min’s last film, Randall Park’s incisive comedy Shortcomings, would have ridiculed. Even the fantastical elements don’t make that much sense, magic with rules that are loose and undefined, leaving us with an eye-roll of an ending we can see from a mile away.

Premiering at SXSW, it moves more like a Sundance film from years prior or one a studio would craft to look like it belonged there, a calculated crowd-pleaser with a cold, synthetic feel. Despite that title, this one’s a miss.

The Greatest Hits is available on Hulu on 12 April in the US and on Disney+ elsewhere

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COMMENTS

The Islamic position on time travel
Answer. All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad, sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam, is His Slave and Messenger. If you mean by "time travel" moving between different points in time forward or backward, meaning physically visiting the past or the ...
Question: What is the islamic position on the concept of time travel
Answer: assalamu alaykum. Theologically, all of the things you mention are from the realm of the possible. In Islam, we affirm a type of 'alternate world' when it comes to the realm of the barzakh and the alam al-mithal. There are also reports from some of the Salaf, such as Ibn Abbas, that affirm multiple earths: "in every earth is a ...
The Quranic Concept of Time: Understanding Time in Islam
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at is a global Islamic movement known for its commitment to peace, justice, and the betterment of humanity. Time is an essential aspect of Islamic teachings and understanding the Quranic concept of time is crucial for comprehending the faith. This article explores the Quranic teachings on time and how the Ahmadiyya Muslim
Quranic Concept of Time
Providing a comprehensive view of Islam and Muslims to cultivate peace, promote universal values, and dialogue among civilizations since 1995 ... Of course Laa malja wala manja illa ilaika.So this is a reminder of the concept of time as beautifully narrated in the Quran and explained by the Holy Prophet (S.A.W) in various Ahadith to draw our ...
The Concept of Time in Islam
The Concept of Time in Islam*. people, one fifth of humanity. Islam occupies the center of the globe. It stretches like a broad belt across the map from the Atlantic to the Pacific, encircling both the "haves" of the consumer North and "have- nots" of the disadvantaged South.
Time in the Quran: Taking a Clue from Einstein's Theory of Relativity
According to the "time dilation" concept of Professor Einstein, when an object moves through space at a speed approaching that of light, its onlooker's perception of time ebbs slower and slower. When the speed of light is reached, the onlooker's time perception approaches zero and slows down 'infinitely.'.
Einstein, Iqbal, and the Concept of Time in Islam
From the advent of Islam up until the 20th century, Muslim thinkers and philosophers, in their quest for knowledge and truth, took a keen interest in the idea and concept of time — taking pains in trying to solve this ultimate puzzle, attempting sometimes to understand it in light of Quranic teachings and, at other times, making an effort to bring about an amalgamation of ancient Greek ...
Time Concepts In The Qur'an
1. Absolute-Comparative. For example, if we say that the event of 'Ashura took place in 61st Hijri, we are applying the concept of time to the day of 'Ashura by comparing it with a specific origin (i.e. the migration of the Prophet) while at also mentioning the date of its exact occurrence within a historical timeline. 2.
Time in Islam
In pre‐Islamic Arabia some elements seem to have related to time (dahr) as fate, an underlying force directing human and natural destiny. It was conceived as a power existing eternally and responsible for the happiness or agony of humanity. Thus the Qur˒ān refers to those who "say… 'nothing but time can destroy us'." [45:24/23]
Chronicles of the Divine Clock: A Comprehensive Analysis of Time Travel
The Quran is the book of knowledge on various subjects including cosmological phenomena. The theory of relativity proposed by Albert Einstein changed the traditional physics concept of space and time travel and introduced a new dimension to the concept of time and space concerning the relative motion and gravitational field. The study uses a qualitative approach i.e. descriptive and analytical ...
On the Concept of Time
1 - Different Concepts of Time. 3 - Linear Time vs. Ethical Time. 2 - Concept of Time In the Islamic Tradition. 4 - Linear Time - New Atheists' Agenda. 2.2 The Quran - different concepts of time. 5 - Time-Space And Infinity. 2.3 Surah ʿAsr (Time) 6 - Time acc. to Muyiddīn Ibn ʿArabi. 7 - Footnotes.
The Value of Time
Time even has economic value. Time is money. Time has social and personal importance; we use our concept of time to place events appointments and milestones in sequence. We order our lives around time, in Islam lives are structured around the daily prayers. In the 11 th century, Avicenna doubted the existence of physical time, arguing that time ...
The Concept of Time in the Koran
In the Koran, one way time is described is as God actively intervening to turn night into day and day into night. This means time is completely subjected to God's will. This idea is a contribution to the development of the doctrine of predestination in Islam, Tamer argues. Muslims also point to the idea of God "turning" time in the Koran as a ...
He is asking about time: is it created? Will it exist in Paradise? Will
What is meant by time (zamaan) is the arena in which people's deeds and actions take place. In general, it is the duration of their life in this world. Secondly: This time (zamaan) is something that Allah has created, because Allah, may He be exalted, is the Creator of all things. He is the Creator of time and the Creator of place.
The Concept of Time in the Qur'an (Part 1 of series on Time)
Anything that Allah the Most High swears by in the Qur'an is a tremendous matter - such as 'Wa al-Fajr' (by the dawn) or 'Wa al-Shams' (by the sun). In the time of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), beginning with an oath was a method to draw the attention of the listener. Time is a concept that fascinated and awed ...
Time Travel: Gate to Mysteries of Unknown
According to Einstein the great 20 th century physicist, physical time travel is a scientific phenomenon that can factually happen, yet there are few constraints. Einstein proposed the concept of time delay when he observed that light speed is the fastest universal speed that can't be exceeded by anything in the cosmos.
Importance of Time in Islam
The Almighty Allah says in the Holy Quran in Chapter Al-Asr about the importance of time: "By time, indeed, mankind is in loss, Except for those who have believed and done righteous deeds and advised each other to truth and advised each other to patience." (Quran, 103: 1-3). The Ayahs explain the worth of time in life of a Muslim.
What is Time in Islam
Time is the Blessing given by Allah. Our Prophet Hazrat Mohammad said that time is one of the blessings given by Allah. Hence, we should take advantage out of time before it passes and nothing there would nothing left in our hands except regret and grief. Years have fixed months, months have fixed days, days have fixed hours and so on, it means ...
Truth About Time Travel
Become A Sense Islam Member: https://www.patreon.com/senseislamSupport Us Through PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/senseislamIn This Video We'll Show You Abou...
What is the concept of time in Islam?
In Islam a lot of thing are strictly time based like. For example. Ramadan starts from this day in the evening to this day in the evening. The reward for prayers is more in Ramadan. Laylat al-Qadr (Lailatul Qadr/Shab-e-Qadr) happens on a particular moment in the last 10 days of Ramadan (in the middle of the night). Prayers are taken at ...
Alternate Reality and Parallel Universe
Brother in Islam, The concept of an Alternate Reality or Parallel Universe is entirely theoretical with no empirical evidence. It is purely a speculative idea constructed by some scientists. There are many scientists that label this theory as unscientific and irrational. The concept of an Alternate Reality is based on Everett's Many-World theory.
Time Management in Islam
You cannot control time in a day, but you can control what you do within 24 hours. Therefore Islam is not a set of rules to observe solely in regards to the matter of prayer and fasting, but also concerning our communication time and personal efficiency with others. But according to the Prophets and Divinely-sent leaders, we must familiarize ...
Portals , Time Travel , Teleportation
What does Quran say about Portals, Time Travel and Teleportation?And the Channel Sahil Adeem is mentioning in this video is @ASimpleArgument .....
When is Eid al-Fitr 2024 and how is it celebrated?
8 Apr 2024. 03:23 PM (GMT) Save articles to read later and create your own reading list. As a new moon was not sighted on Monday evening after Maghrib prayers, Muslims in Saudi Arabia and ...
NASA Picks 3 Companies to Help Astronauts Drive Around the Moon
NASA had asked for proposals of what it called the lunar terrain vehicle, or L.T.V., that could drive at speeds up to 9.3 miles per hour, travel a dozen miles on a single charge and allow ...
The Greatest Hits review
Lucy Boynton plays a woman who can travel back in time with the power of a song in a high-concept, low-enjoyment fantasy In the often insufferably cutesy romance The Greatest Hits, our heroine ...

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Chronicles of the Divine Clock: A Comprehensive Analysis of Time Travel in the Quran

On the Concept of Time

1 - Different Concepts of Time

2 - Concept of Time In the Islamic Tradition

2.3 - Quranic Verse Regarding Time

3 - Linear Time vs. Ethical Time

4 - Chris Hedges: Linear Time

5 - Time-Space And Infinity

6 - Time acc. to Sh. Muyiddīn Ibn ʿArabi

7 - Footnotes

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