PORTRAIT OF ABDU'L-BAHA'A non-muslim once asked: If God exists,then why all this beating around the bush? Why doesn’t He just come out and say so?”
Islam’s response: Moral responsibility. In this life we are not only concerned with outward actions but with what we believe, our aqeeda – creed, and the strength with which we believe it. If belief in God and other eternal truths were effortless in this world, then there would be no point in God making us responsible for it. It would be automatic, involuntary. There would be no point making someone responsible for something impossible not to believe. However, the responsibility Allah has placed upon us is belief in the unseen, as a test for us in this world to choose between disbelief and belief/ faith, to distinguish believer from disbeliever and some believers above others. The world we see around us is composed of veils of light and darkness: events come that knock the faith out of some of us, and Allah tests each of us as to the degree of certainty with which we believe the eternal truths of religion.
– Sh. Hamza Yusuf
Why is it that a number of population are over fed while an entire continent are starving to death? Why are some obese and much more malnourished? Why is food being over produced and trashed, while we do see the underprivileged searching the trash? Why is it that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Why is it that celebrities are the highest paid while a boy/ girl with a master degree unemployed or underpaid – And, why do celebrities – that indeed are the highest paid – get offered everything for free? Why is our food cancerous and our water plagued? Why and why and why.
These are not my questions to God, they are to the state of an unbalanced and unjust world. Questions that I wonder do others ever ponder, and while we ponder do we try to be the change?
Our Maker tells us that He has fashioned man in the most perfect form as well as He has honoured him, yet man chooses to dishonour himself in straying away from the Divine and worshipping his own Self.
God is good, God is Truth. and all of creation has been created with love. His will for humanity was paradise yet based on a mistake we made we fell into a world of struggle. – Ihsan Alexander Torabi
God, Most Hight, in the Holy Quran says: “By the dawn and by ten [nights] and by the even [number] and the odd and [by] the night when it passes, is there [not] in [all] that an oath [sufficient] for one of perception? Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with ‘Aad who had lofty pillars, the likes of who had never been created in the land? And [with] Thamud, who carved out rocks in the valley? And [with] Pharoah, owner of the stakes? [All of whom] oppressed within the lands. So your Lord poured upon them a scourge of punishment. Indeed, your Lord is in observation. And as for man, when his Lord tries him and is generous to him and favours him, he says, “My Lord has honoured me.” But when he tries him and restricts his provision, he says, “My Lord has humiliated me.” No! when the earth has been leveled – pounded and crushed – And your Lord has come and the angels, rank upon rank. And brought [within view], that Day is Hell – that Day, man will remember, but what good to him will be remembrance? He will say, “Oh I wish I had sent ahead [some good] for my life.” – Quran [The Dawn 89: 1 – 24]
