The Qur’an For All Humanity
The Goal of Life
~ 60 ~
THE GOAL OF LIFE
I only created mankind and the jinn that they
might worship Me. I demand no livelihood of them,
nor do I ask that they should feed Me.
God alone is the Munificent Giver, the Mighty
One, the Invincible. The lot of the wrongdoers will
be like that of their predecessors. Let them not
challenge Me to hurry it on. Woe then to the
unbelievers when the threatened day arrives!
(The Qur’an 51:56-60)
God has power of His own in all matters. However,
He has created angels in order to manage His vast
empire. But the situation of human beings is
different. They have not been created to fulfill any
personal or managerial requirement of God. Their
sole purpose is the worship of God.
Worship means surrendering before the Almighty
in the full sense of the word. According to Ibn
Jurayh worship, in essence, is realisation
(ma’rifah)
of God (Ibn Kathir,
Tafsir)
. It is desired of man that
he should make his own discovery of God. He
