Quran Garden

Session 337

Chapter 3

Verses 14

Beautified for people are the love of desires of women, sons, heaped piles of gold and silver, and pure bred horses, cattle, and tilth; Such are the enjoyments of the worldly life; yet with God is the best resort. (Chapter 3, Verse 14)

This verse comes right after the discussion of the historical battle of Badr.  It may seem off-topic:  a verse talking about women, children and riches right after discussing war.  In reality, Allah is alerting you that proper faith demands that you devote yourself to God and abandon the pleasures of life.  This is especially important when you are called to defend Islam.  Faith should override greed and make the faithful sacrifice wealth and self to safeguard God’s teaching.  A person who is chasing life’s pleasures usually shies away from participating in war. So the placement of this verse makes perfect sense following talk about war. 

Let’s take a moment to discuss the pleasures of life, whether money, the opposite sex, property, and so on.  Life is inherently unfair; you may work hard and do everything right only to see a criminal or a drug-dealer do far better than you in life.  Even if you attain all your desires in life, one of two things is guaranteed to happen: either you will depart these pleasures in death, or these pleasures will depart you in a loss.  Life’s pleasures are fleeting. 

This is in sharp contrast to the pleasures of the hereafter.  If you work hard and follow God’s teachings, God guarantees you amazing results.  The luxuries of life are according to the abilities and resources of humans; whereas, the luxuries of paradise are according to the infinite ability and resources of the Almighty.  Lastly, in the hereafter, you will never die and leave the pleasures behind, nor will paradise disappear and leave you behind.  The pleasures of the hereafter are far superior and everlasting.   God says:

The life of this world is merely an amusement and a diversion; true life is in the Hereafter, if only they knew. (29:64)

Thus, when the call to defend Islam arises, God made it a sign of proper faith to leave life behind and stand up to secure faith.  He says:

Say, ‘Do you expect something other than one of the two best things to happen to us? Well, we expect God to in?ict punishment on you, either from Himself or at our hands. So wait; we too are waiting.’ (09:52)

The ‘two best things’ mentioned here are both triumphs for the believer: either victory over the disbelievers in battle, or attaining the status of martyrs in Paradise; both are beautiful.

This brings us back to the verse.  The word ‘Beautified’ should alert you that something is being artificially embellished beyond its true nature.  Beautification is often the dividing line between the pleasures that God permits and the pleasures that He forbids.  For example, a woman is naturally beautiful and attractive; but if she further beautifies herself in public with makeup, surgery, or revealing clothes, then this adornment is something above the essence of her natural beauty, and it is prohibited in Islam.

Does that mean that you should live an ascetic life? No, Allah wants you to embrace life, not shun it.  The key is to embrace life’s necessities and not to lust after its embellishments.  God says:

Seek the life to come by means of what God has granted you, but do not neglect your rightful share in this world. Do good to others as God has done good to you. Do not seek to spread corruption in the land, for God does not love those who do this,’ (28:77)

The second word we should study is ‘desires.’  What is desire? It is a strong craving of one’s self towards something.  Here we should distinguish between reasonably following the desires that are necessary to sustain life –which God likes-, and foolishly lusting after these desires –which God hates-.

Take the example of perhaps the strongest human instinct, which is the sexual desire.  Animals also share this instinct.  Let’s compare the two because –in some sense- animals often manage sexual desire better than humans.  How, you may ask? We answer that animal sexual behavior is reproductively motivated; once animals mate and the female is pregnant, she does not allow another male animal to approach her for mating.  Similarly, as farmers well know, a bull will not mate with a pregnant cow.  Animals practice sexual behavior within the boundaries necessary to preserve the species.  In that sense, we humans are unfair to animals when we say: “so and so are humping like animals.”

There is, however, another side to sexual desire.  God does not only want to preserve humankind through mating, but He also wants to preserve human values through family ties and proper parenting.  When it comes to animals, most have a very short childhood that hardly requires any parenting.  A pigeon, for example, feeds and cares for its young until they fly away.  After that, the relationship is completely severed.  Some animals, such as turtles, never meet their young.  The story is different with us.  Raising a child requires continuous care for over a decade; the mother and father have to work day and night to properly raise a child.  Thus, Allah created an appropriate balance between human desire and sexual pleasure on the one hand, and the duties and hardships of raising a child on the other.  If human sexuality were without pleasure, no one would ever have a child.  God is best aware of His creation.  

This brings us back to the verse.  God says: ‘Beautified for people are the love of desires of women, sons, hoarded treasures of gold and silver, and purebred horses, cattle, and tilth’ But who exactly is beautifying these desires? We answer that Allah placed beauty in everything, but if beauty is artificially enhanced in excess of the natural and necessary, then it is the work of Satan.  Take the example of how advertisers use sex, greed, and envy to hijack natural human desires for profit.   

The verse continues: ‘‘Beautified for people are the love of desires of women, sons.’ You may find it interesting that God mentions the desire for male children, and did not mention ‘daughters.’ Why? We answer that throughout the ages, cultures have preferred sons over daughters because they believed that sons are the only ones capable of carrying the family name and honor.  Before Islam, some of the Arabs used to bury their newborn daughters alive because they feared a daughter may bring shame to the family.  Islam put an end to this horrendous practice.  Even in our modern era, when China instituted a one-child policy, the practice of aborting female fetuses became common because the family would rather have a son as the only child.  God says describing the scene on the day of judgment:

When the sun is shrouded in darkness, when the stars are dimmed, when the mountains are set in motion, when pregnant camels about to deliver are abandoned, when wild beasts are herded together, when the seas boil over, when souls are sorted into classes, And when the female infant, buried alive, is asked: For what offense was she killed? (81:1-9)