All praise is for Allah—Lord of all worlds,1
In describing our existential situation, Martin Heidegger speaks of man as being-in-the-world. I am not referring to the world as that physical-temporal object that is external to the mind. Rather, “The world is what we perceive.” In other words, the nature of the world in which we find ourselves depends on our attitude towards the world, which is grounded in our perceptions of the world. I suggest we extend this insight, drawing on the Qur’an, to two existential situations: and states: being-in-the-dunyā and being-in-the-‘alam. Thus, one can perceive the world in one of two senses: the world as a closed dunyā or the world as an open ‘alam. These represent two radically different existential orientations which, being existential, determine our perception and relation to the world.
The dunyā, which means that which is drawn near to consciousness, is the world of alienation, concealment, and diversion. It is the closed world and as such, is fetishized in that it appears to be absolute and self-sustaining (al-istighna). It alienates man from his God-given primordial self (the fitra) and, in turn, alienates man from God. The Qur’an describes the dunyā as groundless. 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 means an abyss. The dunyā, as the Qur’ān describes, is the ever-ephemeral world of illusions beset by desire. It is groundless because it lacks permanent grounds (i.e., exteriority, which means that which is beyond itself, such as immutable laws or God.)
On the other hand, the ‘alam, which means ‘sign’, is that world that points to the grandeur of God. The Moroccan philosopher Taha ‘Abd ar-Rahman expresses when he distinguishes between man as a vertical being and man as a horizontal being: al-inwijād wherein man dwells in one world (the seen, divorced from the unseen, the transcendent) and al-tawājud wherein man dwells in two words, the seen and the unseen. The task at hand is to transcend the closed dunyā in our drive towards the Sublime (See forthcoming essay, Islam and the Meta-Order).
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