How Can We Understand Qiyamah? | Mufti Abu Layth

how do you see is it to be taken literally or as or as a more personal calamitous experience from person to person uh zainab that's a incredibly profound question on it's interesting because there's many ways of looking at it you see um there is an understanding of this whole realm this whole dimension the world as we know it when it comes to an end there will be a different dimension they will

reality will exist differently that this interval is simply a comma but not a full stop so there is that way of looking at it and then this description that people have that the the sun will be brought down and there will be everything will be happening and people will be gathered and they will be risen and so there is this imagery that we find some of it in the quran about when people are you know when people are risen and

they will they will say how long were we out whoa that you know wasn't it just a moment we were out was it half a day or you know this is what the quran quotes them saying the people will there will be this panic this anxiety so that's one way and then you find certain narrations saying that you know mata if one of you dies his happened so you find certain narrations that saying well actually maybe it's experienced subjectively

on on a personal basis because really in that realm there is no time so if there is no time then the moment you enter it you are in a timeless reality and therefore it has already happened because there is no directionality of time so now

you know that that's obviously that's very difficult to understand and there's one way of looking at it is well asking well the imagery is the imagery is the imagery literal or is it something that is symbolic and and one can look at it in both ways one can look at it as literal and say well you know this is literally how it will be happening and many people have looked at it literally and said that this is how the afterlife it will be bodies like this and they will be running and they will be all these kind of things and some people have understood it as

symbolic that because nothing in the afterlife has any similitude or any conceptualization in this world as the hadith says that you know um that no insane could even conceptualize any aspect of the afterlife so therefore you couldn't even imagine so anything you have imagined is wrong so in that sense that these verses are speaking about an imagery and the imagery is most symbolic in and what it's resonating you it has a

reality but you don't know what that reality how it looks like does it look like bodies it probably doesn't look like bodies as in any kind of understanding of a body it probably doesn't look like maybe use you know it's comp like it's like saying entities it's like saying existence but not like any kind of existence and and that's difficult to then explain because people would think well how do you experience that and this is why some ulama have said well it's about consciousness ibn rust the great maliki muslim

philosopher and scholar speaking about consciousness and many other people speaking about how it's about uh but the truth is we have no real grasp of what the akhira will manifest us what is it like it's difficult yeah so anything that we are looking at is in any way some form of an approximation isn't a symbolic approximation is it a uh figurative approximation an allegorical

approximation a metaphorical approximation these are all subject to people's you know how people want to take them really the main thing is that the quran is telling you that life does not end here and that you need to always endeavor on the path of goodness and that there will be a state of bliss this is as much as the quran is explaining now when it's giving the imagery the rest is all of that you can take it literally you can take it uh symbolically you can take it however

you take it the quran is the see the quran is saying allah is the light now people will say that's you know symbolic the quran is saying allah so for example the quran says that um the jannah that people will have one of the jannah's its width will be if you measured from the earth to the skies now even ashore and all these people will say this you see yes people can take it literally they could say well today we could let's

say we could measure in light years and we could say well there's this many light years in these kind of because he's not talking about jannah this is talking about samawat now if a person was to say well okay i want the exact measurement in this many light years is the width of a janna let's say or that's maybe they'll have an interpretation saying no these are not the seven samawaa to what uh even though that verse doesn't say seven it just says samawat uh so the skies now is that the exact dimension of the width of jannah so many the facility will say no it's just

symbolic and trying to tell you that it's of unimaginable expanse that you can't comprehend it that is the purpose so yeah so this is how it is and really whatever helps a person you know be a better believer whatever helps them with their faith alhamdulillah it's all good and these are not things to really police people over because this this is all something nobody can truly grasp i mean if you think about it even

altered states of consciousness you know when people alter their states of consciousness either through meditation or through you know through training or by taking certain medicines certain plants right they experience dimensions and realities that they can't explain in words i mean they can't explain it in words and that's think about it that's things that people have actually experienced how do you think they could explain things that are inexplicable it's to say to think the unthinkable it's like if i asked you to

think of space you can always only think of space inside a greater space like even if i tell you to think of the entire universe let's say the universe is laid out flat generally as astrophysicists understand that the universe is flat now let's say the universe i don't mean galaxies but the entire universe is more or less kind of flat so now this universe now let's say you think of you however you think of it you're thinking of it as a space inside another space

because the human mind cannot think of non-space it's hardwired to only conceptualize space so even if you consider space itself you have to consider it inside another space a metaspace so yeah so these are profound questions and i i would say that as allah says in the quran that read the books read the ayat sorry the verses with in pondering and allow

the mind to to wander with amazement you know not all who wonder are lost allah i hope that's of some help