To the people around him, it was a ludicrous endeavor. They mocked and ridiculed him, unable to grasp the divine wisdom behind such an unusual command.

"...and whenever some of the chiefs of his people passed by, they mocked him."
(Qur'an 11:38)

Yet, Nuh remained steadfast. He did not falter, nor did he doubt the promise of Allah. He kept building the ship, plank by plank, nail by nail.

When the floodwaters finally came, it was that very ark—seemingly useless in their eyes—that became the salvation for Nuh and those who believed. The ark, built under ridicule and against all worldly logic, was the vessel that preserved the faith and carried it forward into the future.

"And ˹so˺ the Ark sailed with them through waves like mountains…And it was said, “O earth! Swallow up your water. And O sky! Withhold ˹your rain˺.” The floodwater receded and the decree was carried out. The Ark rested on Mount Judi."
(Qur'an 11:42-44)

I would like to turn our attention to a missed thematic setup of the two oppositions in this story, that of the disbelievers and of Nuh and his people (the believers).

What we see from the disbelievers is a deep commitment to the oppressive system that they upheld in the dunya. In the Quran, Allah describes the world as dunya, a space of diversion because it appears closed, stripped of any relation to the divine. It becomes a space of alienation (b’ud) and estrangement (ghurba). Allah declares it an illusion,

"...The present world is only an illusory pleasure.."
(Qur'an 3:185)

..a veil between the real and the unreal. Conceived falsely as a closed world, it legitimates hegemonic claims to power as the dunya knows no reality beyond itself. Thus, a system grounded in the dunya sees nothing beyond itself and looks to eliminate dissenters. When Nuh approaches such a system and proclaims to its adherers the groundlessness of their lives and to turn to a higher consciousness, they reject him, but more importantly, the system is in panic mode. A system that refers only to itself is threatened by an exteriority (tawhid) that plunges into its barriers and breaks down the false veil it has set up. The elites of such a system, beset by desire (hawa) offered in the dunya, attempt desperately to ward off such a threat to maintain the veil, resorting to mockery and harassment.

For Nuh and his few followers, tawhid resituates for them the world not as dunya but as a’lam, the dunya is a closed world, whereas the a’lam is an open world that signies that which is beyond itself, the grandeur of God. This does not mean that there are two worlds, only that there are two existential orientations towards that world. The Moroccan philosopher Taha ʿAbd ar-Rahman expresses this in the distinction between man as a vertical being and man as a horizontal being. For ʿAbd ar-Rahman, there are two ways of existing in the world: al-inwijād, wherein man dwells in one world, the seen world divorced from the unseen, and al-tawājud, wherein man dwells in two words, the seen and the unseen. These two orientations to the world—being-in-the-dunyā and being-in-the-ʿālam correspond to the two modes of existence highlighted in Nuh’s story. Nuh lives and invites others to an existence of authenticity where truth and the full conceptual understanding of reality is accessible and everyone lives a free life dedicated to God, yet the disbelievers insist on an existence of alienation where they remain ignorant of reality, distracted by illusions.

This story holds profound lessons for us. In today’s world, we also bear the burden of facing a global oppression that also insists on the existence of only the dunya, the modern secular order. For the first time perhaps in human history, this system explicitly upholds an ideological metaphysical commitment to the sovereignty of the world, by forging an image of the world that is sealed-off in its totality with no relationship to the divine. It presents itself as closed, its origin and legitimacy appear absolute, as if brought into existence ex nihilo, out of nothing, or as though it has always been. This process is what Enrique Dussel refers to as fetishization, where that which is contingent and relative appears as though it is necessary and absolute. Thus, the world transforms into a domain of pure power, embodying the full spectrum of possibilities—the threshold between the real and the unreal, the legitimate and the illegitimate. Enclosed as a self-contained totality, the world ceases to be the world-as-ʿālam, directing beyond itself, and instead becomes the world-as-dunyā, perpetually reflecting back upon itself.

Thus, the story of Nuh becomes for us a mirror reflecting our own existential challenges. Like Nuh, we are called to build— not physical arks, but the ark of faith, commitment, and steadfastness in a world that mocks, ridicules, and denies divine truths. His unwavering trust in Allah amidst a sea of disbelief is a blueprint for us to commit to Islam as a complete way of life.

This commitment demands a reorientation of how we see and live in the world. Just as Nuh and his followers recognized the ʿālam in the face of a dunya-centric system, we too must reject the illusion of a closed world and embrace the reality of tawhid. This tawhid must inform our politics, our economics, our markets, our ideas, personal lives, family matters, our communities, our love, our hate, every effort we endeavour upon, in short it must inform our entire existence itself, we must exist as nothing but servants of God if we are to exist authentically.

The secular order has enveloped the world into a state of crisis: an alienation of man from the cosmos, the ʿālam. In an age beset by a secular order, the Qurʾān and the story it tells of Nuh serves as a launching pad for a more just world, a return to building ships that carry us to the world-as-ʿālam, and an escape from humanity’s collective state of alienation.

Nuh dared to face the challenge for around a thousand years mostly by himself. His example is that of an extraordinary heart and mind, and he leaves us this message: that true existence is not rooted in illusions but in aligning oneself with the reality of tawhid. By committing to Allah's command, even when it defies worldly logic and invites mockery, the path to authentic existence lies in tearing down and transcending the self-enclosed barriers of the dunya. His life teaches us that to truly live is to resist the alienation of a closed world and to embody a faith that opens the world to its divine purpose, even if it requires building a ship in the middle of the desert.

"...Flee, therefore, to Allah..."
(Qur'an 51:50)