About this blog

In recent times a plethora of misconceptions, misrepresentation and myths have been forged about Islam
and Muslims. Many western influentials from politicians, policymakers to judges have taken it upon
themselves to undermine the Islamic beliefs, values and rules so to make it palatable to their
egotistic minds and the secular liberal thoughts.

This blog is dedicated:-

1. To argue the point for Islam in its belief and systems and to refute the misconceptions.
2. To expose the weakness and contradictions of all forms of secularism.

8 Jul 2009

The Problem of Evil

Some western philosophers, like John Stuart Mill, have maintained that because evil exists there is no proof for God's benevolence or that God cares about us individually or that God has some final purpose to be achieved by creating human beings. The existence of evil is seen as incompatible with the description of God [Allah] as Al Rahman Al Raheem (roughly meaning all Benevolent and all Merciful). However, if God was considered to be limited and not omnipotent (i.e., not having unlimited power) there would be no problem of evil, because in such circumstances the presence of evil can be explained as the result of conditions over which God had no power to control.

In recent years Christian theologians have attempted to explain away the existence of evil in such terms, thus God is spoken of in terms very unlike an all omnipotent being with unlimited power and unlimited benevolence. But such approaches to explaining away the problem of evil contradict both Qur'anic and alleged current Biblical statements, such as:

“He has the power to will anything” [Surah Al Hadid (57) : Ayah 3]

Even the current alleged versions of the Bible state: "with God all things are possible" [Matthew 19 : 26]

Or consider: “Allah is the Creator of all things” [Surah Ar-Ra’d (13): Ayah 16]

To limit God's power is to disbelieve in the Almighty God of Islam. The so called problem of evil can be explained without limiting God's power.

Free Choice

When God informed the angels that He was going to create a human being with the capacity of free choice they said as conveyed by the Qur'an:

“Will You place thereon one who will work corruption there and shed blood, while we proclaim Your praise and call you holy? He said: Assuredly I know which you do not know” [Surah Al-Baqarah (2): Ayah 30]

Evil arises because the world is inhabited by beings with free choice. The existence of free beings capable of making a choice over their actions demands the potential for evil. An omnipotent God is not incompatible with such a world.

God could have created a world in which there was no evil, but this could not contain beings with free choice.

To this someone may say, but if God is Almighty he can by definition do anything and therefore you can have a world with beings with free choice and no evil. Such a statement is wrong because although God is omnipotent certain things are intrinsically impossible to alter since it will question the concept of reason and rationale. For example its not possible for there to exist a four sided-triangle or a square circle. A shape that has four sides can never be a triangle. The intrinsic nature of a triangle is that it has only three sides. Applying the term triangle to a four sided object would be nonsense. Likewise, to eliminate evil God would have to create humans with no power of choice as to whether or not to do evil. It is as intrinsically impossible to have beings with free choice who have no power of choice, as it is to have a square circle.

Qadar

For a human being to have free choice he must exist in an environment with things to choose from. The environment must be stable and independent of our will, like a neutral field in which we exist rather than control. For example, wood posses a quality which enables us to use it as a wooden beam for supporting structures, this same quality, which is of its nature, also allows us to use wood to hit a cricket ball or someone’s head. If a wooden bat became as soft as jelly and it was used to strike somebody then wrong actions would be impossible, and thus there would be no free choice. To give another example, sound waves travel through air, thus if the air only permitted the sound of praising God and other good sounds to travel, there would be no free choice. If the air molecules refuse to carry harmful remarks there can be no free choice. Carried to its logical conclusion, evil thoughts would be impossible because the brain would refuse to carry out its task when put to an evil purpose. Accordingly, the existence of free choice demands that humans occupy a world where matter has a fixed nature that allows actions to be carried out with predictable results.

“Behold, everything have We created in due measure and proportion (Qadar)” [Surah Al Qamar (54): Ayah 49]

The fixed nature of matter is God given, it is termed “Qadar”. The nature of the matter does not in itself initiate action, because it is independent of our will. Moreover, the fixed nature of matter cannot be characterised as good or evil. The description of matter as good or evil is not based on the essence of the thing but on an external factor, namely, whether or not it is agreeable to the individual. But a consequence of us living in an environment independent of our will, where matter has a fixed nature and obeys constant laws, is that a state of affairs agreeable to one person may not be agreeable to another. For example, the rain which gives joy to the farmer may be the cause of an illness for the person who is homeless living on the street. Thus not all states of affair will be equally agreeable to the wishes of everyone; if a person pushing a pram is having to go down a hill, the person pushing a pram in the other direction has to go up the hill. Naturally the person pushing the pram down the hill will consider the gradient of the hill good, while the person pushing the pram up the hill will consider the gradient of the hill bad. Although it is understandable that human beings judge upon such states of affairs as good or bad it is incorrect to do so.

“But it may happen that you hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you. God knows and you know not” [Surah Al-Baqarah (2): Ayah 216]

Matter is not good or evil, these terms are applied as a result of external considerations. The Muslim belief is to accept the nature of matter as it is; matter is not inherently evil or good. The terms good and evil are used to describe mans actions that are enacted with free choice. Good being those actions which accord with the divine law, and evil being those actions which violate the divine law. This is the basis for reward and punishment. Evil is therefore a direct consequence of human beings being vested with free choice. There is, therefore, no contradiction between God’s omnipotence and the existence of evil in this world.

“Whoso does right it is for his soul, and whoso does wrong it is against it. And your Lord does not wrong His creatures” [Suarh Fussilat (41): Ayah 46]

[Article written by Abdul Karim Hassan]
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

What they said...

“Islam represented the greatest military power on earth…It was the foremost economic power in the world…It had achieved the highest level so far in human history, in the arts and sciences of civilization...Islam in contrast created a world civilization, poly-ethnic, multiracial, international, one might even say intercontinental.”





[Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Orientalist and Historian, 2001]





"There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world. It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts…the civilization I'm talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600… Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage"





[Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard, 2001]





"For the first three centuries of its existence (circ. A.D 650-1000) the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques and quiet universities where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the Moslem world offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk in the night of the Dark Ages."





[Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D (Harvard), American political theorist and historian, 1932]





"Medieval Islam was technologically advanced and open to innovation. It achieved far higher literacy rates than in contemporary Europe;it assimilated the legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that many classical books are now known to us only through Arabic copies. It invented windmills ,trigonometry, lateen sails and made major advances in metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering and irrigation methods. In the middle-ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe rather from Europe to Islam. Only after the 1500's did the net direction of flow begin to reverse."





[Jared Diamond, UCLA sociologist and Author, 1997]



"No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity and endeavour so many and so varied races of mankind. The great Muslim communities of Africa, India and Indonesia, perhaps also the small community in Japan, show that Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of the East and west is to be replaced by cooperation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition."





[Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, Professor at Harvard University, 1932]





“The Muhammadan Law which is binding on all -- from the crowned head to the meanest subject is a law interwoven with a system of the wisest, the most learned and the most enlightened jurisprudence that ever existed in the world.”





[Edmund Burke, British Statesman and Philosopher, 1789]





"The Exile here is not like in our homeland. The Turks hold respectable Jews in esteem. Here and in Alexandria, Egypt, Jews are the chief officers and administrators of the customs, and the king’s revenues. No injuries are perpetuated against them in all the empire. Only this year, in consequence of the extraordinary expenditure caused by the war against Shah Tahmsap al-Sufi, were the Jews required to make advances of loans to the princes."





[David dei Rossi, Jewish Traveller 17CE, quoted by Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands]





"The notable religious tolerance towards Christians and Jew under Muslim rule had given way to the uncompromising zealotry of Spanish Inquisition. Jews and Muslims thus fled Spain with large numbers of Jews immigrating to the Ottoman Empire which was known for its tolerance to the Jews."





[Graham Fuller, Author and former CIA, 1995]





“If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure, which stems, I think, from the straightjacket of history, which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and systems of beliefs, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history”





[Charles Philip Arthur George, HRH The Prince of Wales, 1993]





"...Not being subject to the Sharia, Jews and Christians were free to go to their own religious authorities for adjudication of disputes; but in many cases they went instead to the [Muslim] Qadi"





[Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History and Author, 2004]





"Here in the land of the Turks we have nothing to complain of. We possess great fortunes; much gold and silver are in our hands. We are not oppressed by heavy taxes and our commerce is free and unhindered. Rich are the fruits of the earth. Everything is cheap and each one of us lives in freedom. Here a Jew is not compelled to wear a yellow star as a badge of shame as is the case in Germany where even wealth and great fortune is a curse for a Jew because he therewith arouses jealousy among the Christians and they devise all kinds of slander against him to rob him of his gold. Arise my brethren, gird up your loins, collect up your forces and come to us."





[In his book 'Constantinople', Philip Mansel quotes a rabbi in Turkey writing to his brethren in Europe where they were facing increasing persecution after 1453]





"Praise be to the beneficent God for his mercy towards me! Kings of the earth, to whom his [the Caliph’s] magnificence and power are known, bring gifts to him, conciliating his favour by costly presents, such as the king of the Germans, the king of the Gebalim, the king of Constantinople, and others. All their gifts pass through my hands, and I am charged with making gifts in return. (Let my lips express praise to the God in heaven who so far extends his loving kindness towards me without any merit of my own, but in the fullness of his mercies.) I always ask the ambassadors of these monarchs about our brethren the Jews, the remnant of the captivity, whether they have heard anything concerning the deliverance of those who have pined in bondage and had found no rest."





[Hasdai Ibn Shaprut (915-990 CE) Jewish physician, chief minister of Islamic Caliphate in Cordova, 'The Jewish Caravan']





"In Baghdad there are about forty thousand Jews, and they dwell in security, prosperity, and honour under the great Caliph [al-Mustanjid, 1160-70 CE], and amongst them are great sages, the Heads of the Academies engaged in the study of the Law…’"





[Benjamin of Tudela, Rabbi in Baghdad in the year 1168 CE, 'The Jew in the Medieval World']





"Those Eastern thinkers of the ninth century laid down, on the basis of their theology, the principle of the Rights of Man, in those very terms, comprehending the rights of individual liberty, and of inviolability of person and property; described the supreme power in Islam, or Califate, as based on a contract, implying conditions of capacity and performance, and subject to cancellation if the conditions under the contract were not fulfilled; elaborated a Law of War of which the humane, chivalrous prescriptions would have put to the blush certain belligerents in the Great War; expounded a doctrine of toleration of non-Moslem creeds so liberal that our West had to wait a thousand years before seeing equivalent principles adopted.





[Leon Ostorog, French Jurist]





"The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence"





[Robert Briffault, Novelist and Historian, 1928]





"The only effective link between the old and the new science is afforded by the Arabs. The dark ages come as an utter gap in the scientific history of Europe, and for more than a thousand years there was not a scientific man of note except in Arabia"





[Oliver Joseph Lodge, Writer and Professor of Physics, 1893]





“Thus, when Muslims crossed the straits of Gibraltar from North Africa in 711 and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, Jews welcomed them as liberators from Christian Persecution.”





[Zion Zohar, Jewish scholar at Florida International University, 2005]







“Throughout much of the period in question, Arabic served as the global language of scholarship, and learned men of all stripes could travel widely and hold serious and nuanced discussions in this lingua franca. Medieval Western scholars who wanted access to the latest findings also needed to master the Arabic Tongue or work from translations by those who had done so.”





[Jonathan Lyons, Author, Writer and Lecturer, 2009]