“Dunya is not the resting place, it is the testing place.”

This is a modern English saying rather than a classical text, which is why it is kept here as a reflection. Its classical relative is a saying Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr gives as ‘Ali’s in Bahjat al-Majalis: “this world is a place of passage on the way to a place of rest.” What both restate is Qur’anic: Surat al-Mulk opens by naming why death and life were created at all — “to test you as to which of you is best in deed.”