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ONE notion that is as commonly held as it is, arguably, patently untrue is the notion that balancing deen (religion) and dunya (world) is an ideal worth striving for. It is a fallacy repeated even in the most religious of households. For so many, it articulates what it means to live a good life.
Ask a religious man what makes this ideal so ethically authoritative, and he will likely point to the life of the Prophet of Islam (PBUH). After all, he traded, organised a polity, signed treaties and went to war. There is no denying that the Prophet lived in this dunya and pursued what, to us, are worldly pursuits. But when the Prophet’s life is pointed to as the justification of the deen-dunya balance as an ideal, what is really being pointed to is deen itself. For who would say that the Prophet was in any way separable from the religion he lived and perfected? So, to justify a balance between deen and dunya, the Muslim naturally (and rightly) refers back to his deen.
The implication is important: deen and dunya are not equals meant to be balanced. They are not ends of a spectrum which must be harmonised through a golden mean. In fact, as is obvious from the reasoning above, deen enjoys a primacy and a priority over dunya that renders false any ideal inviting us to balance the two.
Dunya derives its meaning from deen. It is deen that tells us what is of value in the world and what we ought to do with it. That is why the religious mind is compelled to refer to deen in order to substantiate even an erroneous notion such as the deen-dunya balance.
Put simply, ‘deen’ is why we are here.
Take, for instance, this verse of the Quran: “[He is the One] who created life and death in order to test which of you is best in deeds. …” (67:2). And another: “I did not create jinn and men except to worship Me” (51:56). Put simply, deen is why we are here. The world is merely the inescapable field of action where deen has to be lived out. This dunya is our only chance at getting deen right. And that is what makes it significant.
One sense in which the word ‘dunya’ is often used, and which is at play in the notion of balancing deen and dunya, is one that refers to all those pursuits that we are compelled to engage in by virtue of being in this physical, material world. These might include things like raising children, earning a livelihood, and organising collective living.
But even in this sense, why should dunya stand apart as something other than, and equal to, deen, something that must be balanced with it because it tends in an opposite direction? After all, the first community of Muslims engaged in politics to establish justice in the world. They amassed wealth to spend it in Allah’s way.
In its most perfected form, then, one’s deen ought to encompass the dunya within it. The pursuit of all that is of this dunya must be subsumed by the essential reality of the human being, which is the reality recollected for him by deen. It is the reality of servitude: “Say, “Surely my prayer, my sacrifice, my life and my death are all for Allah — Lord of the worlds” (6:162).
And how could it be any other way? If the fabric of the universe is a religious fabric, ie, if the dunya was brought into being for deen, then it follows that there is nothing in the dunya that is devoid of spiritual meaning. There is no moment empty of moral content. No place where the divine cannot be found. And no event comes to pass but in it are signs of God for people who are alive and aware.
Those who impress upon us the deen-dunya distinction as the basis of a questionable ideal are the inheritors of a secular worldview that insists on breaking up human life into distinct spheres: business, family, politics and so on. Religion, too, is supposed to be just another one of these spheres.
But such an understanding of religion is problematic. For how can the idea of God be made to retreat to one sphere of our experience? No. God and deen are all-encompassing. The spheres of business, family and politics fall within the larger sphere of deen, which is indistinguishable from the whole of life itself. Deen is all that matters. Dunya is simply where we must show that to be the case. What is needed is not disregard for dunya, but a determination of its appropriate place in our worldview. That is what justice consists of: giving to each what is its due. The injustice of equating deen with dunya is obvious.
And what we may regard as duties of the dunya are not destined for an anti-religious fate. Once we subject our dunya to the rule of deen, with one epic turning of our intention towards God, an apparently worldly duty can acquire religious meaning — meaning which was always latent within it and which yearned for itself to be realised.
The writer studies law at Oxford.
Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2026
