...the angels, for all their splendour, are ‘peripheral’ beings, in the sense that each represents a particular aspect of the divine Plenitude; no si… - Gai Eaton

All human enjoyment is limited. Paradise is by definition boundless, for it opens out onto the Infinite. On the human level this can be suggested only in numerical terms - we shall have a thousand joys, ten thousand, a million and so on - or in terms of increase without end, but without repetition. Erotic love, for example, will have all the wonder and all the freshness of 'first love' (the 'perpetually renewed virginity' of the 'Houris', which causes so much amusement to Western students of Islam, is an obvious reference to this). Every drink is like the first drink of a thirsty man, though none thirst in Paradise, and every taste of food is like the first taste taken by a starving man, though none starve there, and every meeting is true friendship discovered for the first time, and there is nothing is Paradise that is not newly minted and to be enjoyed with the fresh appetite of youth....The greatest marvel is always overtaken by a greater marvel, the sweetest companionship is forever growing sweeter, and love - though from the very start it seems perfectly consummated - still grows limitlessly. The people of Paradise are constantly surprised, for every time they think that they hold perfection in their hands, and that there can be nothing better than this, they find before them something better still. 'The lowest place of any of you in Paradise,' said the Prophet, 'is that in which Allah will tell him to make a wish, and he will wish and wish again. Allah will then ask him if he has expressed his wish and, when he replies that he has, He will tell him that he is to have what he wished for together with as much again.

One of the greatest weaknesses of contemporary Islam is the eagerness with which Muslims ignore facts and lose themselves in dreams, contrary to the example of the Prophet, who was a realist in every possible sense of the term. Realism is by nature serene, because it cannot be surprised or disillusioned, and it is in this spirit of serenity that the Muslim is required to observe and endure the vicissitudes of time and history, fortified by a quality of stillness and of timelessness which is at the heart of his faith. Everything around him moves and changes, but he must remain rooted in stillness; and this is one reason why Muslims claim that all other religions have been, in one way or another, corrupted and altered by the passage of time, whereas Islam, in accordance with God's solemn promise, remains and will always remain what it is.

The modern Westerner, persuaded that he has a right to 'think for himself' and imagining that he exercises this right, is unwilling to acknowledge that his every thought has been shaped by cultural and historical influences and that his opinions fit, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, into a pattern which has nothing random about it. Statements which begin with the words 'I think...' reflect a climate created by all those strands of belief and experience - as also of folly and corruption - which have gone to form the current mindset and to establish principles which cannot be doubted by any sane and reasonable man in this place and at this point in time.