When I was growing up, the world was a perfect place. The only problem is, that it wasnt. I used to believe that everything could always be fair. To me, that meant no one should ever be wronged, and if they were, justice must be served. I fought hard for the way I believed things should be. But in my struggle, I overlooked a fundamental truth about this life. In my childish idealism, I failed to understand that this world is inherently imperfect. We, as humans, are inherently imperfect. So we will always mess up. And in those mess-ups, we will
inevitably hurt others, knowingly, and unknowingly, intentionally and unintentionally. The world would not always be fair.
Does that mean we stop struggling against injustice, or give up on Truth? Of course not. But it means we must not hold this worldand others–to an unrealistic standard. But thats not always easy. How do we live in a world so flawed, where people let us down, and even our wn family can break our heart? And perhaps, hardest of all, how do we learn to forgive when we have been wronged? How do we become strong, without being hard, and remain soft, without being weak? When do we hold on, and when can we let go? When does caring too much, become too much? And is there such thing as loving more than we should?
To begin to find these answers, we have to first take a step outside our own lives. We need to examine whether we are the first or the last to feel pain or be wronged. We need to look at those who came before us, to study their struggles, and their triumphs. And we need to recognize that growth never comes without pain, and success is only a product of struggle. That struggle almost always includes withstanding and overcoming the harms inflicted by others.
Recalling the shining examples of our prophets will remind us that our pain is not isolated. Remember that Prophet Nuh was abused by his people for 950 years.
The Quran tells us: Before them the People of
Noah rejected (their apostle): they rejected Our servant, and said,
Here is one possessed!, and he was driven out. (Quran 54: 9) Nuh
was abused so much that he finally called on his Lord: I am one
overcome: do Thou then help (me)! (Quran 54:10)
Or we can call to mind how the Prophet was pelted with stones, until he bled, and how the companions were beaten and starved. All of this harm was at the hands of others. And even the angels understood this
aspect of human naturebefore we even came to be. When Allah told the angels that He would create humanity, their first question was about this harmful potential of humans. Allah tells us: Behold, thy Lord
said to the angels:
I will create a vicegerent (humanity) on earth. They said: Wilt Thou place therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood? (Quran 2:30)
This potential of humanity to commit horrific crimes against each other is a sad reality of this life. And yet many of us are so blessed. Most of us have not had to face the type of calamities that others have endured throughout time. Most of us will never have to watch as our families are tortured or killed. And yet, there are few
of us who could say we have never been hurt, in one way or another, at the hands of someone else. So although most of us will never have to know the feeling of starving to death or standing helpless as our
homes are destroyed, most of us will know what it means to cry from a wounded heart.
Is it possible to avoid this? To some degree, I think it is. We can never avoid all pain, but by adjusting our expectation, our response, and our focus, we can avoid much devastation. For example, putting our
entire trust, reliance, and hope in another person is unrealistic and just plain foolish. We have to remember that humans are fallible and therefore, our ultimate trust, reliance, and hope should only be put in Allah.
Allah says: whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah
hath grasped the most trustworthy handhold that never breaks. And
Allah heareth and knoweth all things. (Quran 2: 256) Knowing that
Allah is the only handhold that never breaks, will save us from much
unneeded disappointment.
And yet this is not to say that we should not love or that we should love less. It is how we love that is important. Nothing should be our ultimate object of love, except Allah. Nothing should come before Allah in our hearts. And we should never come to a point where we love something, other than Allah, in such a way, that it would be impossible to continue life without it. This type of love is not love, but actually worship, and it causes nothing but pain.
But what happens when weve done all that and still we have been hurt or wronged by othersas will inevitably happen? How can we do what is hardest? How can we learn to forgive? How can we learn to mend our
scars and continue being good to people, even when they are not good to us?
In the story of Abu Bakr, is a beautiful example of exactly this. After his daughter, Ayesha, was slandered in the worst way, Abu Bakr found out that the man who began the rumor was Mistah, the cousin who
Abu Bakr had been supporting financially. Naturally Abu Bakr withheld the charity he had been giving the slanderer. Soon after, Allah revealed the following ayah:
Let not those among you who are endued
with grace and amplitude of means resolve by oath against helping
their kinsmen, those in want and those who migrated in the path of
Allah. Let them forgive and overlook. Do you not wish that Allah
should forgive you? Indeed Allah is oft-Forgiving, most Merciful.
(Quran 24:22)
Upon hearing this ayah, Abu Bakr resolved that he did want Allahs forgiveness, and so he not only continued to give the man money, he gave him more.
This type of forgiveness is at the very heart of being a believer. In describing these believers, Allah says:
And who shun the more heinous
sins and abominations; and
who, whenever they are moved to anger, readily forgive.” (Qur’an 42:37)
But most of all, the ability to readily forgive should be driven by an awareness of our own flaws and the fact that we wrong Allah every single day of our lives, when we sin. Who are we compared to Allah?
And yet, Allah, Master of the universe, forgives by day and by night. Who are we to withhold forgiveness? And if we hope to be forgiven by Allah, how can we not forgive others? It is for this reason that the Prophet teaches us: Those who show no mercy to others will have no mercy shown to them by Allah. [Muslim]
This hope for Allahs mercy should motivate our own desire to forgive and to one day enter the only world that really is perfect, when we all grow up
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