Milk and honey are expressions of Allah’s riches that are overabundant in Paradise, and in which the abundance manifests as a flow.
It may be a beautiful vision, yet in Paradise they are provision, not just display. If they were only for display, the significance would be something else.
In Paradise, rivers of milk and honey are not just for display, but for provision, and they are obtained by desiring and taking rather than by transaction.
The significance of being freely available is that they are a manifestation of God’s grace in the form of generosity.
Dear Readers,
Please find below a guest post by ‘MILK AND HONEY IN ISLAMIC AGRONOMY’, by Abdullah Reed. This is part of a series and we thank Abdullah Reed for his contribution. We hope you’ll incorporate this drink of paradise in your diet and enjoy it’s immense blessing.
MILK AND HONEY IN ISLAMIC
AGRONOMY
Milk and honey have to be respected as Heavenly bounties.
They flow there in rivers. This article explores what that means for us in agricultural terms.
Abdullah Reed
1445 Hijri
Please forgive me for the mistakes and help me to improve this work. If you have advice, I will welcome it, in shaa Allah. Email: 1abdullahreed@gmail.com.
They Flow Abundantly in Paradise, Manifestations of God’s Generosity
Milk and honey are expressions of Allah’s riches that are overabundant in Paradise, and in which the abundance manifests as a flow.
It may be a beautiful vision, yet in Paradise they are provision, not just display. If they were only for display, the significance would be something else.
In Paradise, rivers of milk and honey are not just for display, but for provision, and they are obtained by desiring and taking rather than by transaction.
The significance of being freely available is that they are a manifestation of God’s grace in the form of generosity.
And so it is with the expression “a land of milk and honey”. That is how God described the blessed land that He promised Israel in ancient times. Its no wonder they were disappointed when He told them to leave.
For the inhabitants of Paradise, milk and honey, along with non-toxic wine, are blessed provisions that are actually part of their prosperity.
In a world of transactions, you have to pay for something before it can be yours. Your prosperity does not include things you don’t own.
Yet Paradise is simply a place of success and prosperity. Paradise is a mafaaz (Qur’an 78:31). The milk and honey in Paradise are provisions there that belong to whoever wants them.
For the people of Paradise, unlimited free honey is not symbolic, but is real prosperity.
Next, let us remember that we are all descendants of a man who lived in Paradise before coming to earth. Our own ancestor Adam was a human being like us and was really there in Heaven. He really ate from Paradise and saw its sights. Glory be to God!
Adam Was Alive in Paradise
The story of Adam is more certain for believers than the theory of Darwin or any other theory, and is actually history.
Real history. Factual history. A real man, and a real woman, human in every way just like us, and they were really there.
They lived in Paradise. God has told us this.
The Qur’an tells us of Adam living in Paradise
In The Name of God, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful
And We said, “O Adam, dwell, you and your wife, in Paradise and eat therefrom in [ease and]abundance from wherever you will. But do not approach this tree, lest you be among the wrongdoers.”
Qur’an, surah Al Baqarah, verse 35
The Qur’an tells us of Rivers of Milk and Honey in Paradise
In The Name of God, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful
Is the description of Paradise, which the righteous are promised, wherein are rivers of water unaltered, rivers of milk the taste of which never changes, rivers of wine delicious to those who drink, and rivers of purified honey, in which they will have from all kinds of fruits and forgiveness from their Lord, like that of those who abide eternally in the Fire and are given to drink scalding water that will sever their intestines?
Qur’an, surah Muhammad, verse 15
Earthly Harvests
They both flow. They are liquids. Not only do they flow in Paradise, but also here on earth. Everything on earth that flows eventually ends up on the ground or in the sea, but not milk and honey, because we have to harvest them and consume them.
It drives us to action. Some fruit can sit on the ground for weeks without spoiling. Some vegetables, too, like pumpkins. However, milk and honey must be harvested by hand and either stored or consumed domestically.
If left, they are not available to us. They require agricultural intervention. Furthermore, they require knowledge from us. Without learning about the animals that produce them, we cannot harvest them easily. So we have to learn about cows and bees and their communities.
God motivates us to act. He drives us to gain insight into his creation. He is The Most Wise.
Ecosystem Drivers on Earth
In islamic agriculture, man is seen as the chosen and appointed steward of the earth, not just an evolutionary roll of the dice, nor a visitor in a wildlife sanctuary. In light of this position, every agricultural unit can be seen as having the potential to improve the land.
Mankind, as the appointed caliph of God on earth, is able to manage the earth for beautification, amelioration, and usufruition.
Within the production cycles found in agriculture, milk and honey production can facilitate a high flow rate within the whole environmental system.
Milk production drives agricultural production, and biomass turnover, because livestock that provide us milk have to be fed heavily and at the same time produce a lot of agricultural manure that we use as fertiliser.
Ruminants consume grass and leaves, their consumption of grass stimulating pasture to grow back more vigorously, while their consumption of tree leaves pushes trees to produce more growth hormones and thus more foliage. The right herd of livestock will promote the greening of almost any ecosystem, in shaa Allah.
Meanwhile, honey production drives bioversity and biomass turnover as bees are pollinators.
These blessed crops cause both man and nature to prosper, and so if they’re managed in the right way they will bring us significant prosperity. Remember what I claimed earlier: I claimed that the milk and honey in Paradise are part of the prosperity there.
Physically, these bounties facilitate human growth and health, which in turn facilitate our livelihood generally and praise be to Allah The Most Gracious.
Milk and honey make very significant contributions to building and maintaining the human body and are therefore a part of prosperity for those who can obtain them.
Unlike in Paradise, though, milk and honey are not free on earth. They may support prosperity, but can only counted as the prosperity of a people when the society and the economy make them available.
On earth, religion, justice, knowledge, and work facilitate access to God’s bounties and are drivers of prosperity.
Summarising The Prosperity in Milk and Honey
Well, milk and honey are found both on earth and in Paradise. We should now be wondering if they are linked to worldly prosperity or only Heavenly prosperity.
Yes, milk and honey production can drive real agricultural production and thus real prosperity. However, on earth milk and honey are goods that are traded, not obtained without transaction.
So, whether by direct consumption and the access to the physical benefits of these blessed foods, or through sales, the many benefits they bring establish them both as genuine sources of prosperity.
The higher prosperity is in consuming them, not trading them or producing them. Let’s analyse: In Heaven, do you trade honey or eat it? You eat it. If trading it was a higher prosperity, Heaven would have honey markets, not rivers of flowing honey. So consuming milk and honey is both for our physical prosperity here in this body and in order to know God’s grace and long for it, in shaa Allah.
Efficiency in Dairying
When you look at the production profile of livestock, its easy to see that producing milk is efficient.
Both a cow that is milked and one that is not milked live for roughly the same number of years. Taking milk is more productive than keeping a cow and not milking it, then, because only a small increase in inputs is required to get a large increase in produce. Milking greatly increases efficiency in our livestock management.
Islamic Agronomy: Maximise the Benefits before Slaughter and Target the Final Reckoning
In islamic agronomy, the livestock animal is ideally sent to Mecca for slaughter after benefits have been taken from it.
God has said:
In The Name of God, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful
Therein are benefits for you for an appointed term; and afterward they are brought for sacrifice unto the ancient House.
Qur’an, Surah Hajj, verse 33.
In conventional agronomy, the afterlife value is not calculated. Neither our sending forward for it, nor how the animal inspires us to do good deeds while it is alive. That style of agronomical science is almost useless because it ignores the final account.
Truly beneficial agronomy must acknowledge the benefits of charity and obedience to God. They will be weighed on the Day of Judgement so they must be included in islamic agronomic calculations.
Islamic Agronomic Afterlife Insight Inspires Earthly Production
When we know that milk can flow like a river, we should be inspired to feed our livestock with the best feedstuffs.
Not only in dairying, in all kinds of agriculture, better quality inputs will yield better quality produce.
Civilisational Benefits of Dairying and Beekeeping
These industries force us to build housing for animals, to clean them, and to make vessels to store the blessed nectars they produce.
We also have to understand the animals well enough to avoid stressing them and to keep them alive and comfortable.
Allah said milk is given to us (An Nahl 67), and yet it has no packaging.
What that means is that we need vessels to hold it. We usually produce such vessels from metal or clay. Interestingly, drinking vessels are described among the blessings found in Paradise.
There are goblets and jugs there. When we farm milk and honey, we will produce vessels, God willing. It will inspire us to be civilised and I mean to behave like they behave in Paradise.
Even bananas have a skin, and corn cobs have a covering, but milk has no packaging when it comes out. One reason is availability. A baby can’t peel a banana but it can squeeze milk from its mother.
Any experienced dairy farm manager will also tell you that sanitisation is essential in dairying. Sanitisation is another civilised activity that dairying and beekeeping motivate us to carry out.
Pasture and Forest are Good Investments
Pasture is a good investment. God brings it out and He dries it up. Allah knows best. He is the All Knower.
Glorify Almighty God
Glory be to God, The Almighty!
