وَمَا الْحَيَاةُ الدُّنْيَا إِلَّا مَتَاعُ الْغُرُورِ
“…The present world is only an illusory pleasure…”
Guy Debord speaks of the commodity as having colonized social life, leaving man not with an authentic social life but one beset with illusory images and false representations. It is, through commodification, the “colonization of social life.” I want to suggest that we push this critique further, drawing on our Qur’ān. The dunyā is not merely the space of spectacles. It is, in itself, the meta-spectacle. It is the illusion of all illusions. The dunyā refers to that which is lowly drawn near to one’s sight and consciousness. It is described in the Qur’ān. It is a spectacle because it lacks any grounds and is ever-ephemeral. The Qur’ān encapsulates this groundlessness with the term bāṭil, which denotes a lack, or what is ephemeral in its duration in contradistinction to the stability of haqq, or truth. Bāṭil is characterized by hāwa, which connotates falling or emptiness as in the case of the noun hāwiyyah, which literally means an abyss. As a space of diversion, the dunyā is the space of alienation, inhibiting basīrah (insight) only to sublimate basar (sight). The Qur’ān disrupts the spectacle, it is revealed as a breaching of the spectacles narrow representations. It is also a breach in that it reveals to us the reality of this world: that the totality of all existents are signs of the grandeur of God. The Qur’ān allows our consciousness to move from the spectacle and meta-spectacle to the world as âlam (lit. that which is a sign).
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