Gharūr al-Dunyā
Definition
Gharur al-dunya — the deception of the world — is al-Ghazali's name for the fundamental spiritual danger of excessive worldly attachment: the world presents itself as permanent, satisfying, and worthy of the heart's deepest investment, while it is in reality temporary, ultimately unsatisfying, and incapable of providing what the heart most deeply needs. The Muslim who is not regularly reminded of the world's transience — through meditation on death, through the Quran's descriptions of the Hereafter, through the company of those who have achieved zuhd — will naturally be deceived by the world's appearance and invest in it what should be invested in something infinitely more enduring.
As understood in the classical tradition of Imam al-Ghazali and the scholars of his school.
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