MUSLIM WORLD

With the founding of Islamic principles the sense of the time has taken an opposite idea to that previously spread among the Arabs.

This different view is summed up in a Muhammad Hadith: "Do not curse time, because God is the time." Even taking into account the fact that the word al-Dahr expresses the idea of not measurable time, this statement may interpreted as enigmatic and singular, especially in contrast with the strict monotheism of Islam.

Actually it is perfectly understandable if we see a negation of linear and impersonal time. The very personality of the Islamic God, with absolutely and unpredictable freedom is transmitted to the cycle time: behind the passing of days, there is always a principle that in itself is immutable and unaffected.

The idea of Islam as Dahr as one of the leading powers that governs the flow of the universe and in this description is underlined and in time there is a freely act of what they define as divine providence.

We have a sort of attractive force that is manifested in the world of the sky, an endless become all consuming, while the other force is set essentially as a reflection of that does not change but because of that is subjected to all the mutations.

The clear distinction between Zaman and Dahr, allows us to better understand some feature of the Islamic traditions particularly related to the complex relationship that exists between the duration of God and human time.

The return set out by Islam to a lunar calendar, with fluctuating between 29 months and 30 days and moving in the true season of the year represented a return to the undefined time and his continued mobility, and this led to not consider the temporal flow as a linear and fate always equal to itself, by perceiving the contrary, the presence of a primordial and immutable principle which is not party to the passing of days. This approach is a whole difference with the Christian idea of the living presence of God in the human history with His sorrowful vicinity than the Islamic God.