Hey Rustam as for ruzkys first answer I thought it was kind of complicated but for that question I would answer that if there was no life other than god than who would admire his creation other than a free-willed creature (us). Anyway would you like to be nonexistent .

That is why we have to revive sister scholarship and encourage and invest in them!

Hi Rustam,

I hope you are well. I see that you asked these questions many months ago and I just stumbled upon this page now. I’ll try my best to provide some answers 🙂 I warn you that it’s long! (But you did ask a lot of questions) 🙂

Question 1: This verse refers to what purpose that we, as human beings, should adopt in order to gain the most out of this life. It does not mean that God needs us to worship him. If this was really the case – that God ‘needs’ us to worship Him – then we would not have a choice rather we would be forced to worship Him by innate nature. The fact that we can choose to worship or not indicates that the issue of worship is down to us to decide what route we would take in life. This is further explained in the Quran, chapter 67, verse 2:

“It is He who created death and life to test you as to which of you is best in deed – and He is the Exalted in Might, the Forgiving.”

So life is a test to see which route we will take. And each person has the ability within them to find the way to God and God continuously makes ways for him or her to reach Him.

Question 2: God expects us to believe in Him because it is not too complicated. What maybe complicated to some people is making sense of certain things at a certain point in time. It is common sense to arrive at the belief in God. This has always been the case from philosophers of antiquity (Aristotle etc) to phenomenal scientists (Isaac Newton). Belief in God has always existed, endured, persisted and continues to be believed in. If you believe that a person can only believe what he/she can see then this is a flawed way of thinking. Let me give you an example. Let us take love. Can you see it? Do we have any empirical proof of there is something called love? We don’t. Yet we believe in it. Belief in God is much more than this. A person can observe (nature and much more), contemplate, rationalise and one logically arrives at the conclusion of a Creator as opposed to the lack of one (we can talk more about this if you want).

Question 3: I’m very sorry as I don’t understand the point that was made in relevance to the article (I’m hungry at the moment and I can smell Mum’s cooking and that is very distracting!)

Question 4: This is a very subjective matter. Some people would be very ‘angry at God’ but this is not everyone. I have seen many people who are very happy with their ailments (I’m a medical student so I get to see people at such a point in their life where they either believe or cease to). These are the second group of people who view the world in the way Sr Yasmin beautifully described as the second world view and the lens with which it is viewed through. It is a view and a realisation that there is more to life than this fleeting existence. And how would you know health if you didn’t know illness? And happiness if you did not feel sadness? And life if you didn’t know death? The thing is every single thing in life has the potential to bring you closer to God. It’s how you view it. If you haven’t tried these pair of lenses to view the world then you really should – it’s a beautiful view in which your mind is put at rest and you are happy through every moment in life 🙂

Question 5: This is related to the above question. But I’ll just add in some questions for you to think about. How much intervention from God would you like? I mean, the reason why we can’t see God is because He wants us to believe in Him through reason, logic and common sense. If we take that plane crash for example, would you like God to just pluck the babies from the air and make them float to the nearest comfy bed? And if this happens, how would the babies feel growing up without their parents? What if they end up with horrible foster parents? Or perhaps He should save the parents as well? But they have to die someday right? Will the babies, now grown up, not mind then? Will they not have developed much more stronger attachments and feel more pain that their parents now leave them? So should they all live forever? You see, us humans cannot come up with concrete answers to questions like these because we are not the ones bringing about the turn of events hence we do not know the ultimate reason behind it. Just because we do not know the reason behind it doesn’t mean that whatever happened was bad. However, on the Day of Judgement, we will know everything as the entire history of the universe will be played out in front of everyone’s eyes. And this is a movie to look forward to! Depending on how you have cast your character in this life!

Question 6: In Islam there is no concept that children have to suffer for the deeds of their fathers or mothers. In fact no one bears the sins of another or suffers for another’s deeds. Below is just one of many such verses that are in the Quran:

“And no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another (sins). And if a heavily laden soul calls another to carry some of its load (sins), nothing of it will be carried, even if he should be a close relative. You can only warn those who fear their Lord unseen and have established prayer. And whoever purifies himself only purifies himself for the benefit of his soul. And to Allah is the final destination.” Chapter 35, verse 18

Question 7: To be entirely honest with you, I do not see this question as something that would disprove the existence of God. Perhaps you could elaborate?

I have written a lot! If you have got to the end then I thank you for your patience! 😀 I would love to hear from you soon.

Take care,
Ruzky

I was born a Muslim, but never was a religious person and recently became even less religious because of this particular topic. Please explain me couple questions I have here:

1)When God says I created humans to worship me, that creates a logical question in my mind-Why do you need someone to worship you? Isn’t it kind of egoistical?

2) If everything will make sense in the end, but its too complicated for us, mere humans, with our limited minds to comprehend, why does God expect us to believe in him, without any common sense proof? If you believe in Santa Claus, people will say you are crazy, since nobody ever seen one and they take him as a fictional character to keep kids happy.

3) As to pleasure maximizing, as Solomon the wise said: “Eye never gets full of seeing and ear never gets full of hearing.”-Its pointless. 99% of what we live we end up forgetting anyways.

4) When you talk about loss of material things, you can argue that it brought you closer to God, but there is line to everything. If a child gets a disease early in his/her life and spends next 10 years in bed, and ends up dying from hunger-I really doubt that brings you closer to God.

5)Since humans are imperfect, no matter how hard we try, we can not bring perfect justice, casualties happen every day. Sacrificing 10 to save 1000, would make a sense from human perspective, but if its God, who is almighty, any casualties are unacceptable, in my humble opinion. And when plains crash babies that die are innocent no matter how bad their parents could be.

6) Why children have to suffer for deeds of their fathers?

7) Why men can have multiple wives, while women cannot have multiple husbands?

I’d really love to be proved wrong, so that I could restore my religious views, but the only answer I got so far, was “It will all make sense in the end”-type of answer.

Peace.

Good point there. It seems if one wants, there can be a thousand different excuses to blame Him for the “bad” that happens, be it on a personal or a community level. If one, however, were to get past the ego within, it becomes so much easier to acknowledge, trust and be grateful for His Infinite Mercy, again both on a personal and on a community level. Subhanallah for people like the ones working on this site and the commentators… for giving everybody newer perspectives and new-found resolves to becoming better servants of Allah.