Chapter 5
![]()
And so the time has come. Isrāfīl blows the Horn. An attentive angel, Islamic tradition has it, his luminous body is covered by down… So begins the chapter that squares with Islamic stories about death and the world’s going to wreck and ruin. Islamic lore relies on stories to teach how to live in the light of finitude and human accountability. Anticipations of death and the End do not dispirit day-to-day efforts but, quite on the contrary inspire a form of “eschatological activism.” This form of activism and sensibility begins with a capacity to dread the End so as to better focus on the present and on doing everything to stall the Apocalypse, while all along striving to do that which one will not regret. The chapter explores eschatological meanings of the honeybees and asks why is it that that Islamic eco-cosmology presumes the human and apian fates inseparable.
The End. God’s promise.
And so the time has come. Isrāfīl blows the Horn. An attentive angel, Islamic tradition has it, his luminous body is covered by down… So begins the chapter that squares with Islamic stories about death and the world’s going to wreck and ruin. Islamic lore relies on stories to teach how to live in the light of finitude and human accountability. Anticipations of death and the End do not dispirit day-to-day efforts but, quite on the contrary inspire a form of “eschatological activism.” This form of activism and sensibility begins with a capacity to dread the End so as to better focus on the present and on doing everything to stall the Apocalypse, while all along striving to do that which one will not regret. The chapter explores eschatological meanings of the honeybees and asks why is it that that Islamic eco-cosmology presumes the human and apian fates inseparable.
