Is the world a hell for the believer and a paradise for the unbeliever?

No. The well-known hadith does not speak of hell but of a prison, and it is a prison the believer chooses for himself by giving up things he considers unworthy. It is precisely there that he finds his true paradise.

People often say that the world is a hell for the believer. But that is not what the hadith says. It says that the world is a prison for the believer and a paradise for the disbeliever. That is a big difference. Hell is punishment. A prison, here, means limits.

Why is the world a paradise for the other? In paradise you can have whatever you want. A person who sets himself no limits feels free in this world to do whatever he likes and to enjoy life as much as he can. In that sense he lives as if in paradise.

The believer’s prison has no walls. No one locks him in. He could do anything he wants just as well, but he freely chooses not to. He considers certain freedoms unworthy and does not want them. He has built this prison himself, just as the verses above describe a person who, in awe of God, keeps his soul away from base desires.

That is where the deeper meaning lies. No one would freely accept limits unless he had found something better. The fact that the believer lives this way shows that his real paradise lies inside this self-chosen prison, in peace of heart and nearness to God. The paradise of the others is only an apparent one. So the hadith is not a complaint about a hard life. It points to where true happiness is found.