It is very easy not to commit a harâm and to observe the rules of Islam. It seems difficult to the sick-hearted. Yes, there are many jobs that are easy for healthy people. Yet they are difficult for the sick. The sickness of the heart involves not believing in the Ahkâm-i-islâmiyya in the full sense. Even if such people say that they believe, it is not a real confirmation. It is a confirmation through words. A symptom that indicates the existence of a real confirmation, true îmân in the heart, is to feel it easy to follow the path of the Ahkâm-i-islâmiyya.
Allâhu ta’âlâ gives favours, blessings, gifts, i.e., His kindness reaches everybody every moment, good and evil people alike. Without discriminating, He sends everybody property, children, food, the right way to Islam, guidance, safety, and every goodness.
The difference is in the way people accept and receive Allah’s gifts, or in their not being able to receive them. It is purported in the thirty-third âyat of Sûrat-un-Nahl:
“Allâhu ta’âlâ does not torment or do injustice to His born slaves (men). They treat themselves cruelly and torment themselves with their own evil thoughts and loathsome deeds that draw them to torments and sufferings.”
As a matter of fact, while the sun shines over the laundryman and over the linen in the same manner, it tans the man’s face, while it whitens the linen.
[By the same token, though it shines over the apple and over the pepper in the same manner, it reddens and sweetens the apple, whereas it reddens the pepper and makes it bitter. Though the sweetness and the bitterness are caused by the rays of the sun, the difference between them is not from the sun; it is from themselves. Because Allâhu ta’âlâ pities all people very much, more than a mother’s mercy upon her child, He has declared in the Qur’ân al kerîm how every person, every family, every society and every nation, all over the world, in each century should act in each of their undertakings, in what way they should run their activities, and what they should avoid in order to be comfortable in this world and in the Hereafter. The Ahl-i sunnat scholars learned all these with their keen insight, and, writing millions of books, they communicated them to the whole world. This means to say that Allâhu ta’âlâ has not left people free in their actions. Consequently, there is not a place left on the earth where Islam has not been conveyed. Islam cannot be separated from worldly affairs. Attempting to do so means to strive to eradicate Islam and the Muslims from the earth?]
The reason why people will not attain the blessings of the Hereafter is thatthey turn away from Him. He who turns away will certainly get nothing. A container covered over the top will certainly not get April’s rain. Yes, many people who have turned away still seem to live in worldly blessings and so they are considered as not being deprived. But those things are given to them as a reward for their struggling for this world. However, things that are regarded as worldly blessings are, in actual fact, the seeds of torment and calamity. They are disasters which Allâhu ta’âlâ deceptively gives their owners by misrepresenting them as blessings. As a matter of fact, it is purported in the fifty-sixth âyat of Sûrat-ul-Mu’minûn: “Do disbelievers presume that We are doing them a favour or helping them by giving them property and many children? Do they say that We are rewarding them because they disbelieve my Prophet and dislike the Islamic religion? No, it is not the case. They are wrong. They do not understand that these are not blessings, but disasters.” Then, the worldly things that are given to those whose hearts have turned away from Allâhu ta’âlâ are all desolation and calamity. They are like the sweetmeats given to the diabetic.
Source: Endless Bliss (Se’âdet-i Ebediyye) by Hüseyn Hilmi Işık, Nineteenth Edition, Hakikat Kitabevi, 20014
