Speaking Tree | TOI | October 31, 2010

Suffering is not an evil. There's a positive side to it. It gives you challenge. It gives incentive to work. It activates one's mind; so suffering is a blessing in disguise. History shows that many of those who faced hardships and disadvantages emerged as achievers. It is rightly said that it is not ease but effort, not facility but difficulty that makes men.

Speaking Tree | TOI | May 8, 2011

We should thank God by acknowledging the bounties He has bestowed on us. This acknowledgement is called shukr or gratefulness. God is the giver and we are the takers. It is the taker's duty to acknowledge the giver. Acknowledgment is the only thing that is expected of you for all that God has given. One who fails to do this small act of thanksgiving has no right to enjoy the divine blessing.

Man is an eternal creature. However, his life-span has been divided by God into two parts. A very tiny part of it has been placed in this world, while all of the remainder has been placed in the Hereafter or the Akhirat. The present world is the world of action, while the world of the Hereafter is the place for reaping the harvest of actions. The present world is imperfect, but the world of the Hereafter is perfect in every respect. The Hereafter is a limitless world where all things have been provided in their ideal state.

God has placed His heaven-full of all kinds of blessings-in that world of the Hereafter. Those who prove to be God-fearing and pious in this world will enter into that world to find the gates of heaven eternally open for them.

But those who are oblivious of God in this present world or who opt for the path of contumacy in regard to God's matters are criminals in God's eyes. All such people will be deprived of the blessings of the Hereafter.

God is invisible in this present world, and will appear in all His power and majesty only in the world of the Hereafter. Then all human beings will bow low before Him. But at that time, surrendering will be of no avail. Self-abnegation and acceptance of God is desired only while God is still invisible. Surrendering before God after seeing Him in the Hereafter will not benefit anyone.

Death is not the end of a person's life. It is only the beginning of the next stage of life. Death is that interim stage when man leaves this temporary world of today for the eternal world of tomorrow. He goes out of the temporary accommodation of the world to enter the eternal resting place of the Hereafter. The coming of this stage in the Hereafter is the greatest certainty in one's life. No one can save himself from this fate in the Hereafter.

Man is an eternal creature. However, his life-span has been divided by God into two parts. A very tiny part of it has been placed in this world, while all of the remainder has been placed in the Hereafter or the Akhirat. The present world is the world of action, while the world of the Hereafter is the place for reaping the harvest of actions. The present world is imperfect, but the world of the Hereafter is perfect in every respect. The Hereafter is a limitless world where all things have been provided in their ideal state.

God has placed His heaven-full of all kinds of blessings-in that world of the Hereafter. Those who prove to be God-fearing and pious in this world will enter into that world to find the gates of heaven eternally open for them.

But those who are oblivious of God in this present world or who opt for the path of contumacy in regard to God's matters are criminals in God's eyes. All such people will be deprived of the blessings of the Hereafter.

God is invisible in this present world, and will appear in all His power and majesty only in the world of the Hereafter. Then all human beings will bow low before Him. But at that time, surrendering will be of no avail. Self-abnegation and acceptance of God is desired only while God is still invisible. Surrendering before God after seeing Him in the Hereafter will not benefit anyone.

Death is not the end of a person's life. It is only the beginning of the next stage of life. Death is that interim stage when man leaves this temporary world of today for the eternal world of tomorrow. He goes out of the temporary accommodation of the world to enter the eternal resting place of the Hereafter. The coming of this stage in the Hereafter is the greatest certainty in one's life. No one can save himself from this fate in the Hereafter.

This is not a contradiction. As far as your being is concerned, you must live as an idealist. But when you are amidst others, then you should be pragmatic and accommodating. If someone is pragmatic for self-interest, that is evil. But when we realise that we cannot abolish God-given freedom and adjust with that, it is a form of worship. The only point of caution is that it should not be done for one's vested interests but for disseminating the Word of God.

Speaking Tree | TOI | October 31, 2010

According to Islam, paradise is the goal of every human being. And the purpose of life is to make yourself a deserving candidate in the hereafter.

A: Test means that man is free to perform or not perform an action. His success and failure is determined by use or misuse of freedom. And the test paper is commensurate to man's situation.

A: Test means that man is free to perform or not perform an action. His success and failure is determined by use or misuse of freedom. And the test paper is commensurate to man's situation.

Everything is a test paper. Negative means that if someone provoked you and as a reaction, you became negative. It is of course a part of the test to see, whether you succumb to negativity or not.

This is not a contradiction. As far as your being is concerned, you must live as an idealist. But when you are amidst others, then you should be pragmatic and accommodating. If someone is pragmatic for self-interest, that is evil. But when we realise that we cannot abolish God-given freedom and adjust with that, it is a form of worship. The only point of caution is that it should not be done for one's vested interests but for disseminating the Word of God.

Source: The Seeker’s Guide

According to Islam, paradise is the goal of every human being. And the purpose of life is to make yourself a deserving candidate in the hereafter.

Speaking Tree | TOI | October 31, 2010

A: Test means that man is free to perform or not perform an action. His success and failure is determined by use or misuse of freedom. And the test paper is commensurate to man's situation.

Everything is a test paper. Negative means that if someone provoked you and as a reaction, you became negative. It is of course a part of the test to see, whether you succumb to negativity or not.

Source: The Seeker’s Guide

The Speaking Tree | Sunday, August 15, 2010

Yes. Prayer means establishing contact with the higher reality and that higher reality is the source of all kinds of inspiration. It is also a source of great solace. So prayer, if it is genuine, will certainly help in developing focus and making you a better person.

The Prophet said: "God will not show mercy to one who does not show mercy to his fellow-men."

A: There is no objective criterion for this. The journey begins when man finds out that his sole concern is God. The Quran gives the criterion to discern between those who would be rewarded in the hereafter and those who would not be.

The first criterion pertains to one who would become deserving of punishment in the hereafter. The Quran says for such a person

He used to be happy with his own people. (84:13)

According to this criterion, those who earned and exhausted their resources on their family did not discover God! They could not think beyond their kith and kin.

The second criterion pertains to those who would be rewarded in the hereafter. For such individuals, the Quran says,

When we were among our families, we were full of fear of God's displeasure. (52:26)

Such people were always actively thinking about their accountability towards God. In other words, despite being with their family, their sole concern was God.

Faith is the discovery of God. This discovery produces certain qualities in a human being. One such important quality may be called fear of God (khushu or taqwa), always going in fear of being accountable to God. That is, God will take us to task for all our misdeeds. By introspection, one must remind oneself of the accountability on the Day of Judgement. It is a sign of true faith. The true believer is only that person whose most significant concern is God. The true believer’s focus of thinking is only one, which is fear of God. He never forgets that he will be called to account by God. Such a person is always conscious of God.

The personality of a believer is made up of these two feelings. On the one hand, he loves God the most. Moreover, on the other hand, he fears God the most. The love of God is such as is filled with agony. Similarly, the fear of God is such as is filled with the love of God. It is a relationship that man hopes to have with the Being he fears lest He deprives him of His blessings. It combines love and fear, which can be felt but not expressed in words.

Source: The Spirit of Islam

It is possible to feel God's existence through intuition. Of late, science has discovered that there is a unique spot in the human mind- they call it God Spot. The fact is that the consciousness of God is interwoven in the nature of every human being. So, potentially every one possesses this kind of feeling. What is needed is to turn this potential into the actual through deep contemplation.

Speaking Tree | TOI | October 31, 2010

The essence of faith is ma'arifah, (realization or discovery of God). When a man consciously seeks out and finds God, and thereby has access to divine realities that is what constitutes faith.

This discovery is no simple matter. God is the Creator and Owner of all things. He will award or punish all, according to their deeds; none is free from His grip. The discovery of such a God shakes to the core of the whole life of man. His thinking is revolutionized, for God becomes the centre of all His emotions.

With God as the principal focus of his attention, man becomes God's servant in the fullest sense of the word. He becomes a man whose living and dying is all for God.

Such a faith ultimately results in all of man's behaviour and his dealings taking on the hue of God. When the believer speaks, he is conscious of the fact that God is listening to him. When he walks, he does so with modesty so that his gait may not be displeasing to God. When he deals with people, he is always worried lest he deal unjustly and be punished by God in the next life.

The impact of this degree of faith makes the entire life of man akhirat-oriented. In all matters his eyes are focused on the Hereafter. Instead of immediate gain he makes gain in the next life his goal. Whenever there are two aspects of any matter, one pertaining to this world and the other to the next world, he always prefers the latter.

Faith, another name for the recognition of the Supreme God, becomes for the believer a fountainhead of limitless confidence in his Creator. When this recognition takes root in an individual's heart and soul, his whole personality becomes regenerated. Knowing that in all circumstances he may depend upon God, he becomes a new man.

Taqwa means piety, that is, leading a life of caution and restraint in this world.

Umar Farooq, the second Caliph once asked a companion of the Prophet what taqwa was? He replied, "O leader of the believers, have you ever crossed a path which has thorny shrubs, on both sides?" But the companion instead of replying asked another question, "What did you do on such an occasion?" Umar Farooq replied, "I gathered my clothes close to me and moved ahead cautiously." The companion said, "This is the stuff of taqwa."

The present world is a testing ground. Here, various kinds of thorns have been scattered for the purpose of testing man, such as negativity, false issues raised by non-serious people, the lure of worldly things. Besides these, there are many unpleasant occurrences, which disturb people's minds and lead them away from the path of virtue.

All these things are like thorny shrubs lining both sides of the path of life. At any moment it is feared that man may embroil himself in these thorns and then instead of going forward, remain entrapped in these snares of life.

In such a state of affairs the wise man is one who travels the paths of life by gathering up his clothes to avoid becoming, entangled in these unpleasant snares. In this way, he is able to continue his journey unhampered. Yet at all times he must remain conscious of the fact that he must protect himself. He has to adopt the path of avoidance, not of entanglement.

Man has been created with an upright nature. If no hindrance comes in the way, then every man will, on his own, take the right course. That is why; the utmost precaution must be taken against allowing unnatural obstacles to come in the way.

Then, guided by this upright nature, man will continue to walk along the right path until he meets his Lord.