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Which life to Pursue?
It is reported that Al-Hasan Al-Basrî often used to say, “O youth! Seek the hereafter, for we often see people pursuing the hereafter and finding it as well as the dunyâ (worldly wellbeing), but we have never seen anyone pursue the dunyâ and gain the hereafter as well as the dunyâ.”
Al-Bayhaqî, Al-Zuhd Al-Kabîr, article 12.
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Asalamo alaikom
What does it mean to persue the dunya? So a person who seeks secular education to pay zakah is persuing the dunya?
Wa alaykumus-salam,
Here it means to seek the material things and strive for worldly benefit at the expense of one's efforts for the good of the hereafter. In response to your question, a person who does something in order to fulfill a duty in Islam is not pursuing the dunya, but in fact working for the hereafter, if his intentions are true and pure.
As Br. Owais (hafidhahullah) has mentioned, if you seek "secular" education with the intention to earn halaal rizq, serve the Muslims, be self-sufficient so that you don't have to beg the people, etc. then infact you are seeking it for the HereAfter. If you are seeking that education just for "honor" amongst the people or for fame or show or for earning money with greed for money and at the expense of not praying on time, not fasting, not fulfilling other acts of ibaadah, then that is blameworthy.
naa'am….may Allah increase us all in beneficial knowledge and make us of those who act upon it, and then call to it. ameen.
May Allah also move us far from what distracts our hearts from His remembrance. ameen