Calamity: Allah Tests
November 5, 2012 – 9:50 amNatural calamities may be divided into physical and biological calamities. Earthquakes, floods, cyclones and hurricanes, etc., are examples of physical phenomena which may cause devastation.
Widespread diseases, epidemics and pandemics, etc., are the examples of biological calamities.
Social Calamities are those which are caused by corruption, injustices, moral disintegration, economic exploitation and political oppression, etc.
Accidental Calamities are caused by some accident, such as rail, road, sea and air mishaps.
During the time of Biblical prophets God’s chastisement befell a people when they turned against their Prophet and willfully rejected the message of truth, and, secondly, it befell only the opponents of the Prophet without harming the believers.
Disasters and calamities, however, should definitely have a lesson in them for every wise person. They must remind us of the temporariness and fragility of our existence in this world.
And, every such incident should certainly strengthen our faith in God and remind us of our duty to our fellow human beings.
However, when the people fail to fulfill the demands of the laws of nature, they may fall victim to the otherwise positive and beneficial natural changes ( Think about the issue of Ozone)
God almighty has endowed human beings with free will within a certain domain. In that domain, they are accountable for their deeds.
Substandard collective socio-politico-economic behaviour of a community may cause what is here termed as social calamities. When a community stops living according to the Divine moral values like justice, equality, rule of law, truth, love, care and sacrifice, and indulge in injustices, corruption, exploitation, dishonesty, and indecency etc., backwardness in all spheres of human living, lack, or poor standards, of basic human needs, overspread of crimes, etc. will ultimately appear as a consequence. This is explained in the Holy Qur’an at a number of places. In surah al-Rum (30:41), it is said:
“Corruption has appeared on land and in the sea as an outcome of what men’s hands have wrought: and so He will let them taste [the evil of] some of their doings, so that they might return [to the right path].”
This post was submitted by pa.amin.
One Response to “Calamity: Allah Tests”
Do we learn any lessons from calamities, threatened storm around Brunei, Sandy Hurricane etc?
All religions believe that since both evil doers and righteous suffer from natural calamities, for the evil doers it is a punishment, whereas for the righteous it is a test of their faith.
As Qur’an states in Sura Baqara Chapter 2 Verse 155
“Be sure We (Allah) shall test you with something of fear and hunger, some loss of goods or lives or the fruits (of your toil-labour, work) but give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere”.
In all tests if people remain patient and faithful to God, they are rewarded
Does testing people increase God’s knowledge about who is faithful and who is not?
NO, of course NOT. God has eternal knowledge.
But if God judges between the faithful and unfaithful without testing them, the faithful would pass and be pleased, but the unfaithful, who fail, would argue that at least they should have been given a chance to prove themselves. So this life is a test. Judgement will be based upon the difficulty of the test.
http://peacebk.blogspot.in/2011/11/if-god-is-just-then-why-people-suffer.htmlA
By pa.amin on Nov 6, 2012