Salaam
This is a somewhat drawn out discussion on the issue of worldliness.I will very quickly try to throw little light based on my own level of exposure to a topic which drawn my attention and has lead to a lot of contradictions
The question goes;if attachment and bondage to anything is a kind of unhealthy condition that leads to abandonment of human values and cause stagnation,inertness and inertia of the human personality,what difference does it make if that thing is something material or spiritual,thisworldly or otherworldly or as the saying goes "the Lord or the apple"?it may be said that if the aim of islam by prohibiting and warning against bondage to tempporal things is to safeguard the human beings identity and rescue him from servitude and to protect him him from stagnating and vegetating in life,it should have encouraged man to acquire absolute freedom and to consider everything that compromise and confines it as kufr;for such is the staandpoint of some modern schools of philosophy which considers freedom to be the essence of mans human identity.these school of thought equate mans human identity with his cappacity to rebel and disobey every form of servitude and assert his absolute freedom.accordinly,every manner of bondage,confinement and submission to them inconsistent with mans real identity and leads to self alienation
They say tha man realizes his true humanity only by refusing to submit and surrender. It is characteristic of attachment that the object of love absorbs man's attention and compromises his self-awareness.this results in his forgetting his own self and subsequently this aware and free being called man whose identity is summarized in his awareness and freedom become a slavish creature devoid of freedom & self-awareness . In forgetting his own identity man also becomes oblivious of his human values in this state of bondage and servitude he ceases to progress and edify his self and becomes stagnant and frozen at some point.If islams philosopphy of struggle against worldliness aims at the resurrection of human identity and personality,it should oppose every form of servitued and liberate man from every form of bondage this,however, is not the case, for islam undeniably advocates liberation from material for the sake of spiritual servitude. Freedom from the world is acquired for the sake of the fetters of the hereafter & the apple is renounced for the sake of the Lord
From the viewpoint of irfan,one must be free of both the worlds but should surrender totally to love.As Hafis says,the tablet of the heart must be clean of every name except that of the beloved.the heart should be cleansed of every attachment except the love of God whose love brings redemption from all sorrows and woes
However from the view point of the so called humanistic philosophy freedom of the arif beimg only relative does not take us anywhere,because freedom from everything for total surrender and servitude to one being whatever that may be. Servitude is after all sevitude and bondage is bondage,regardless of the angent towards which it is directed this is the objection raised by the followers of the modern humanistic philosophies. In order that the issues involved may be further illuminated,we are compelled to refer to certain philosophical issues
FIRST of all one may ppoint out that to assume that there exists a kind of human selfhood and identity and insist that this identity should be safeguarded in itself amounts to the negation of movement,progress and development of this selfhood,because motion and change necessarily result in alienation from this selfhood. This is something one is not ;it implies continous transcendence of selfhood and embracing of otherness. Obviously if we acceppt this view,it is only by means of immobility and stagnation that one can preserve his identity for development necessitates self alienation.for this reason som ancient pphilosophers defined motion in terms of otherness and self estrangement. Accordingly,to assume that there exists a certain kind of human self and to insist that this self should be safeguarded and pprotected from becoming non-self and to speak of movement progress and evolution in the same breath involves an unresolvable contradiction
Some in order to free themselves from this contriadiction have said that mans identity lies in being deviod of a kind of self whatsoever. Man they say is a creature absolutely undefined in his essence and free from any kind of limit form or essence. His essence and lies in his being without any defined essence. Man is a creature devoid of a fixed nature and essential necessity. Any attemppt to define limit and confine him amounts to depriving him of his real self and identity
Such a view may be aptly considered poetry and flight of imagination rather than a philosophy. The absolute absence of a fixed form and essence is possible in any of the two cases.firstly such a being should possess infinite perfection and pure and unlimited actuality that is it should be a bieng unlimited and unconfined, encompassing all times and spaces and predominant over all existents,such as the Being of the Creator. For such a being movement and growth is impossible ;because motion and growth involve overcoming of imperfections and defects,whereas such a being cannot possibly be supposed to posses any imperfection.

Secondly it may apply to a being deviod of every kind of actuality and merit. This is,it should be pure possibility and sheer potentiality, a neigbour of nothingness ,existing only on the remotest frontiers of existence. It should be devoid of any innate reality and essence though capable of assuming any form or essence.such a being which itself absolutely undefined is always associated with definite being,though shapeless and colorless in itself it exists in the protective shadow of a being possissing form shape and color such a being is what the philosophers call the primal matter.it occupies the lowest status in the the hierachy of existence and stands on the extremity of being, even as the Divine essence ,being absolute perfection stands on the other extremity of existence
Man like all other creature is situated somewhere between these two extremes and cannot possibly lack any defined essence admittedly he is different from other creatures,but unlike them there is no limit to his movement towards perfection$whereas other creatures remain confined to certain definite limits which they cannot transcend,there is no end to the possibilties of human development
Man possesses a special kind of being but contrary to the view of the philosophers who believes in the precedence of essence and reduce the being of every thing to its quiddity and who deny the ppossibility of transcendence and essential change as being self contradictory and considers all changes to occur at the level of accidents, the existential nature of human like that of any other material thing is fluid with the difference that its movement and fluidity knows no limit.
Some commentators of the koran in their explanation of the verse "O people of yathrib there is no abiding here for you"33:13 have generalized it yo cover all humanity.they hold that man is a creature which does not move to a certain and definite stage or halt;the further he moves the greater are the possibilities open to it. Also in the hadith about the prophet's ascensin(al-mi'raj) Gabriel who accomppanies the prophet at a certain ppoint gives up his journey declaring "I will get burnt if I move an inch further" while the prophet leaves him behind and moves further.this is an allusion to the truth mentioned above
Man does not have nayt ultimate limits but he has a path.the Quran lays a great empphasis on what it calls the straight path which is an unambiguous path before man.Man is not constrained by stages so as to be force to stopp at every stage in his journey . Instead there is an orbit in which he should move.this is the orbit of human pperfection which is different from those of the animals. This means the movement in a specific orbit a movement which is orderly not haphazard

DOES EVOLUTION INVOLVE SELF-ALIENATION
Now returning to what we said earlier,does movement and evolution necessitate alienation from one's self? Should every being,in order to remain itself,abstain from change and evolution? Does it mean that either man should retain his human identity or if he choose an evolutionary course bcome something alien to his essence?
The answer is that the true evolution of anything is a movement towards the perfect state which conforms to its nature.in other words,transformations during movement on the straight path of nature by no means necessitate any loss of specific identity. That which constitutes the real self of a being is its existence,not its essence. Accordingly,any change in essence does not impply mutation of the self into a non-self. Mulla sadra who is the champion of this philosophy,holds that man does not have any definite essence;rather every developing being passing through the stages of its evolution is not a single species but a plurality of species.the relation if an imperfect being with its ultimate stage of perfection is not a relation of otherness rather it is a relation of the thing to itself.it is the relation of an imperfect self to the pperfect self. A thing while evolving toward its perfect state is in movement from its self to its self.in a sense it can be said to be in movement from the non-self towards the true-self. A seed that breaks the ground & sprouts leaves and sends out branches & flowers does not move from the self to the non-self. If it were aware of itself and aware of its ultimate evolution it would not feel self-alienation
That is why d love of true pperfection is the love of a higher self,On the basis of what has been said so far it can be surmised that there is a great difference btw desiring God the movement towards God the love of God and submission to Him, and love and servitude to God from Love,submission and servitude to other things. The servitude to God is freedom itself. It is the only relation and tie which does not stagnate the human personality or make it inert and immobile it is the only kind oh worship which does not imply self forgetfulness and self alienation. Why? Because HE is the absolute perfection and the ultimate goal and the DEStination of all existents "and unto thy Lord will be the end of all things"53:42