Keep Calm and Fear Allah
Allah, the Most High, explains in His book everything which humans need to understand on their path to salvation. Of the most crucial things, He has revealed why things do or do not happen in this world. Of these actions of Allah are various crises and tribulations which He afflicts with whom He chooses.
He explains:
{And we send not the signs except as a warning} [Quran 17:59]. {And we have already sent [messengers] to nations before you, [O Muhammad]; These messengers sent to each nation are sent to recalibrate their moral compass and define for them right and wrong, good and evil, and inform them of the consequences of each. But if the people ignore what the messengers inform them of or deny the messenger’s validity after the truth has been totally clarified to them out of arrogance or pride Allah afflicts them with crises that will break through this arrogance and pride that the truth may reach their hearts and bring out the good in them if there is any good therein. {Then we seized them with poverty and hardship} the affliction is in their wealth and health, their society at large and in their individual personal lives {that perhaps they might humble themselves [to us]}.
So we are told that these afflictions, whereas a kind of wakeup call for the masses, that they may be humbled and turn to Allah in hope and fear, that people might be shaken out of their slumber and reflect on their mortality and responsibilities toward their Lord and others. {Then why, when Our punishment came to them, did they not humble themselves?} This is the antidote to the chaos. We surmise from this that humility to Allah by way of earnest repentance and observance of His commands will alleviate these crises. {Instead, their hearts became hardened} with sin, {and Satan made attractive to them that which they were doing} of disobedience and transgression of the laws of Allah. Being that no matter their state of being, they were dedicated to disbelief and sin and transgression, their affliction, which was really a blessing an opportunity in disguise which now became their undoing.
{So when they forgot that by which they had been reminded} What’s meant by ‘forgot’ here is that they treated the commands of Allah with total disregard as if they had totally forgotten that a messenger was even sent to them. {We opened upon them the doors of every [good] thing} which they desire of the life of this world of wealth and health and technology and various comforts. {Until, when they rejoiced in that which they were given} Becoming proud and deluded believing that what they were given of luxury was an indication they were beloved to Allah and endowed. {We seized them suddenly, and they were [then] in despair} [Quran 6:42-44].
For this reason, we see that our Prophet ﷺ who has the least to fear with regards to punishment, would react with instant humility and fear and reverence of Allah whenever he would observe anything that could be understood as a prelude to the punishment of Allah.
{And mention, [O Muhammad], the brother of ‘Aad, when he warned his people in the [region of] al-Ahqaf – and warners had already passed on before him and after him – [saying], “Do not worship except Allah. Indeed, I fear for you the punishment of a terrible day.” They said, “Have you come to delude us away from our gods? Then bring us what you promise us if you should be of the truthful.”
He said, “Knowledge [of its time] is only with Allah, and I convey to you that with which I was sent, but I see you [to be] a people behaving ignorantly.”
And when they saw it as a cloud approaching their valleys, they said, “This is a cloud bringing us rain!” Rather, it is that for which you were impatient: a wind, within it a painful punishment,
Destroying everything by the command of its Lord. And they became so that nothing was seen [of them] except their dwellings. Thus do we recompense the criminal people?
And we had certainly established them in such as we have not established you, and we made for them hearing and vision and hearts. But their hearing and vision and hearts availed them not from anything [of the punishment] when they were [continually] rejecting the signs of Allah, and they were enveloped by what they used to ridicule} [Quran 46:21-26].
Narrated Aisha (the wife of the Prophet): “Whenever he (the messenger) saw clouds or winds, signs of deep concern would appear on his face. I said, O Allah’s Messenger! When people see clouds they usually feel happy, hoping that it would rain, yet when you see clouds, I notice signs of concern on your face. He said: ((O `Aisha! What is the guarantee for me that there will be no punishment in it since some people were punished with a wind? Verily, some people saw (received) the punishment, but (while seeing the cloud) they said, ‘This cloud will give us rain’)) [Bukhari: 4828].
It is surely troubling to see people, many of which are Muslim, making a mockery of the world’s current state, with memes and satirical songs and various social media posts, etc. If worldwide illness, war, famine, occupation, and economic collapse on a scale rarely if ever observed in human history does not humble us to Allah, then I ask… what will? The Hajj and Umrah are suspended, for only the fourth time in the history of Islam, we observe the Kabah empty with no one circumambulating, standing, bowing, and prostrating in its arena. The world is at the brink of war at the drop of a hat; children are dying of starvation in the capitals of Syria and Yemen. The Palestinian conflict has gotten its worst, with detailed plans of completely severing the West Bank from its capital of Jerusalem and making it totally inaccessible without a passport to its neighboring villages.
Countless lives have been lost in Burma and India with the mass armed public lynching of Muslims for being suspected of possessing beef. In the communist state of China, millions of Muslim men women and children have been shipped off to concentration camps dubbed “re-education centers” scattered throughout the country. Muslim children have been forcefully taken from their parents and entered into such camps to be stripped of their identities and made to march around in formation singing the praises of the communist state and stripped of even their language, let alone their religion and cultural identity. Suicide rates are at an all-time high, especially amongst the young. Drug use, fornication, and sexual perversion and depravity have become commonplace. If this does not stir us as Muslims and human beings from our slumber, I ask, what will?
By Sh. Ali Mashhour