Maarifah—the Goal of Mankind

Maarifah—the Goal of Mankind Scholars have defined maarifah as being man’s first obligation. It would be more precise to say that maarifah is the purpose of life. The life before death is the beginning of maarifah, and the life after death is the culmination of maarifah. In the present world, a person receives God’s maarifah in the sense of a preliminary discovery. In the world Hereafter, he will receive God’s maarifah in the complete sense. The truth is that maarifah is an intellectual process, which begins in this present world and will continue eternally in the world Hereafter. Chapter 51 of the Quran tells us that man and the jinns were created for the worship of God alone (51:56). The purpose of this creation was that man and the jinns should be granted the sublime ability to achieve the realization of God in the highest degree. Therefore, on the one hand, the jinns and men were given the elevated intellectual capability required for this great purpose, while, on the other hand, they were given all the external resources necessary for them to carry out this task. Maarifah literally means realization of something in the perfect sense. Maarifah, in other words, may be called intellectual discovery. This discovery does not relate to any short-lived familiarity with the truth but is rather another name for a long journey. The God that man is supposed to realize has such attributes as are alluded to in the Quran: “If all the trees