In a sense, it was overly ambitious to demand concrete answers to such questions. How could minds that know only the earthly world parse descriptions that were no more than crutches for imagining an unknowable realm? Only through metaphor could scripture constrained by human language and its lexicon of imagery convey glimpses of the unseen. Sunni discussions of the Afterlife thus frequently quote a report of God declaring, ‘I have prepared for my righteous servants what no eye has seen nor any ear heard nor what has ever occurred to a mortal heart,’ and their affirmations of the ultimate truth
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