booke

introduction by muhammad shahrur 13dimension, ‘becoming’, can be seen as a horizontal coordinate thatdisplays the extent to which existence is developing and changing.If we take this model into the earliest possible time period, we observethat all three dimensions were manifested during the Big Bang atthe beginning of our world. After the explosion, the first materialcomponents, the photons, turned into hydrogen; hydrogen thenturned into helium; helium into nonorganic beings; nonorganicbeings into organic beings; organic beings into living creatures ofprimitive, protoplasmic cells; primitive cells into animals; and finallyanimals into human beings. Such chains of transformations point toa continuous process of ‘becoming’ which has, since then, become aconstant feature of nature’s two other dimensions: ‘being’ and ‘progressing’.If we take our model into the future and see what will happen atthe end of this world, we recognise a rather two-dimensional existence:‘being’ and ‘becoming’ will exist without ‘progressing’, existencein all its manifestations will freeze in time: ‘being’ comes to astandstill and time, as we know it, will cease to exist. Existence willdegenerate as its outward manifestations infinitely regress. Such asituation is manifest in the Book’s description of Hell and Paradise,where time is nothing but an accumulation of eternally fixed realities.Existence in the fire of Hell, for example, will be frozen, the outwardmanifestations of suffering and pain will not change, and the soulsof the sinners will be tortured forever. In verses 106-7 of Sårat Hådwe hear:As for the wretched, they shall be in the Fire; they shall have thereingroaning and moaning; abiding therein forever, so long as the heavensand the earth shall endure, except as you Lord pleases. [MF]This new life (in Hell or Paradise) requires, however, a prior transformationof existence from a state in which time is a factor of materialexistence into a state in which time has come to a standstill. TheBook refers to this when it predicts the coming of the Last Hour. Itpredicts that the end of this world leads to an acceleration of ‘progressing’,at the end of which, upon the debris of the old world, anew kind of existence will be born wherein no ‘progressing’ existsany longer. This is a form of negation or destruction mentioned inthe following verse: