FINDING ALLAH’S JUSTICE IN THE QURAN

Bismillah ir Rahman ir Raheem

                                                                    By Ummumar ©2007

Finding Allah’s Justice in the Quran

Years ago when I first began to learn about Islam, someone gave me a copy of Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall’s English translation of the Holy Quran.  As I began to read it, I assumed a critical stance and prepared to pick it apart.  Needless to say, that didn’t happen.  There are no flaws in Allah’s book; and somewhere around halfway or two-thirds of the way through it, I knew I had found in the Quran answers to things that Christianity didn’t and couldn’t provide.  By the time I finished that first reading of the Quran, I’d already taken my shahadah.

Quite simply, I had never come across any religion or philosophy that adequately addressed the question of why life is not fair.  We all know that life is not fair.  We can phrase the question many different ways:  why, if there is a God, does He allow so much suffering in the world?  Why do so many bad people do such terrible things and never get punished?  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Why do good people suffer and the bad guys never get caught?  How is it that some people seem to live “charmed lives” and others never get a break?

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

Bismillah ir Rahman ir Raheem

You Are What You Eat
By Ummumar © 2007

There are many of us who don’t know that years ago American food industry lobbied hard and got leeway in a number of states, if not all of them, to label meats with inaccurate labels.  I was living in Michigan in the 1980’s when it became legal to label beef and beef products “100% beef” when some percentage of the meat was actually pork.  Was it two percent? Five percent?  I’ve forgotten now.

I don’t know what the laws currently are in every state, but the point is this: foods labeled “all beef” or “100% beef” may contain, legally, some percentage of pork.  And if that is true in one state, there is no way of knowing how many other states the products have been shipped to.  The current pet food crisis is a good example of that with the falsely labeled, tainted product originating in China and shipped through various companies all over the United States.  The deception would have never been discovered if the pet food wasn’t fatal.  Since sneaking a little pork into our meat isn’t going to kill us, no one is out there unraveling the trail of pork-contaminated beef products, especially if that contamination is legal somewhere.

FISABIL ALLAH

Bismillah ir Rahman ir Raheem

FISABIL ALLAH

By Ummumar
© 2007

We Muslims often speak of doing things fisabil Allah, or for the sake of Allah. I admit to not really understanding what that meant until recently.  But in the time I have spent caring for my mother, I speak now with what I hope is gratitude, humility and sincerity toward Allah ta’ala when I say I have learned through this experience at least something of the meaning of fisabil Allah. 
At the beginning my intention was to care for her because she was my mother, and I knew, of course, that I was fulfilling my obligation to Allah at the same time.  With the passage of time, however, I am grateful to find that Allah has been purifying my intentions so that the care I give her now is based upon my intention to seek the pleasure of Allah.

CARING FOR AN ELDERLY PARENT

Bismillah ir Rahman ir Raheem 

Caring for an Elderly Parent
By Ummumar © 2007

My mother’s health is failing.

Whenever I tell people that my mother is the strongest person I know, they always smile and think I’m just a loving daughter.  But I have seen my mother’s resolve in face of the decline in her health as it has deteriorated slowly, excruciatingly slowing, over the last twenty-five years. In the face of surgeries and setbacks due to complications from those surgeries.  In the face of twenty-five years of progressively worsening pain.

Equal to her resolve to live is her resolve to live on her own terms. Despite the cost to her health, she is a woman who would only do so much to take care of herself.  She refused to give up what she considered were her essential pleasures in life.  As a result, she made a few, minor adjustments in her diet when a complete change was called for.  And then there were the cigarettes—a pack a day for decades. 

Predictably, there has been an ongoing, accelerating decline in her health.  Now, I am helpless as one by one her body’s systems falter and teeter on complete failure.  She is in chronic, unremitting pain.  Yet she still insists, at times, on eating things that are bad for her; she still smokes whenever she can get someone to smuggle cigarettes into the house.

And for more than thirty years, she has been unbending in her dislike of Islam.

As a Muslim, what is my response to this?