What value does time have in Islam?

A new year allows for resolutions but also reflections on the passing of time. In Islam, time, a major theme, is variously mentioned in the sources: “time” (dahr, ‘asr), “instant” (waqt), “fixed term” (ajal musammâ), “eternity” (khuld), or even “the Hour” (sâ’a). Several verses are even oaths in the form of temporality: “By time” ; “By dawn” ; “By night when it extends.”

Many verses express the fundamental tension of existence: from initial creation to final annihilation (“in short, like a wink”: Quran 16, 77), then the “new creation” (the Resurrection). In this context, evanescence is the truth of the world (“Everything perishes except His Face”) (1) and meditation on the remains of previous generations, a spiritual exercise. “ Time » (the end of times) is thus central in Islam, the ultimate revelation of history: time is running out. In this sense Seneca’s formula could be Islamic: “You have to learn to die all your life. »

The Quran constantly encourages us to meditate on the passing of time

But Koranic temporality is also relative, almost timeless. In the Koran, the resurrection is sometimes narrated in the past, sometimes in the present or the future, and sura 79 warns: life here below will seem to have lasted only “than an evening or a morning”.

The Quran constantly encourages us to meditate on the passing of time by observing its signs: “The alternation of day and night is a sign for those gifted with intelligence.” And heaven is God’s desired measure: “He made the sun and the moon the measure of time” (2).

These two stars have a function in the rites. The time of daily worship is solar: the five obligatory prayers (“prescription at a specific time”, Koran 4, 103) follow the trajectory of the sun, from dawn to night, leading the Turkish poet Ahmet Hâshim (died in 1933) to say that “the first hour of the day is the ablutions, the prayers (…) It is to be the first to see the sun that the minarets with their copper spiers rise into the air”. The annual rites are lunar, like the calendar: “Ramadan” is the name of the month where fasting is prescribed; the pilgrimage takes place during the first ten days of Dhûl Hijja, the twelfth lunar month of the year.

The metaphysical dimension of time

Islamic temporality therefore has three dimensions. First the time of the ulama, prescriptive: determining the times of the rites and the various cycles enveloping the believer. The spiritual dimension derives from the awareness of death and the injunction to truly live: an abundant literature is thus devoted to “the value of time” and relates the “blessing in time” of scholars and saints capable of producing an immense work in a few days.

But the value of time comes, ultimatelyof its metaphysical dimension, as indicated by this word of God, transmitted by the Prophet: “I am Time (al-Dahr)the Order is in My Hand, and I alternate day and night. »