Islam The Voice of Human Nature

Islam The Voice of Human Nature

1988 6 June 19-22 Islam: The Voice of Human Nature (1350) Our present world, in comparison to the universe, is like one tiny grain of sand out of all the sand on all the shores of the greatest oceans on our globe. Why, when the universe is so incredibly vast and so rich in potentialities, has it revealed only a minuscule fraction of its scope upon this earth. The answer to this question can be found only in belief in the Afterlife……It is only in the Hereafter that our finest dreams will become a reality.

Suppose a heavy branch of a storm-struck tree broke off just as you were passing under it, and it fell down and injured you, would you pick a quarrel with the tree? Of course not. The tree had done nothing deliberately to harm you. Your first thought would simply be to get prompt medical attention. But suppose someone had picked up that same branch from the ground and beaten you about the head and shoulders with it. You would be so outraged at the deliberateness of his act that your first thoughts would be of revenge and punishment. You would have a great desire to rush, not to the hospital, but to the law courts so that this wrong doer might get his just deserts.

Let us again take the example of the tree, but this time, of one which does us a great deal of good – the mango tree. It showers us with the abundance of its delicious fruits and we eat our fill of them. But we do not feel any necessity either to thank or to reward the tree. The mangoes which we do not harvest either fall to the ground or are pecked away by the birds. Whatever the case, the tree is left with none of its own fruit. But we feel no sense of regret about this. No one is ever heard to remark, “What a pity the mango tree produced so much belt, but could not eat any of it itself!” On the contrary, if a human being spent his entire life’s savings on building the house of his dreams only to die as soon as it was ready, everyone would say how sad it was that he had not lived long enough to enjoy the fruits of his labours. They would feel it regrettable that all his hard work had gone un-rewarded.

Let us reflect upon the difference between a tree and a man. When a tree is ‘guilty’ of a ‘misdeed’, we do not feel the necessity to punish it for its ‘wrongdoing.’ But in the case of a man, we feel that he must be rewarded for his good deeds and punished for his wickedness. It is our moral sense which tells us that this must be so. It is our moral sense which demands justice.

This is a demand which comes straight from human nature, and all disciplines of knowledge testify to its importance. Yet, of all human desires, it is one of the most difficult to satisfy. The most outrageous example of human inability to achieve justice was in the failure even to spell out a punishment which would fit the enormity of Adolf Hitler’s crimes. He waged a war, after all, in which five crore people were killed, yet it was quite beyond human imagination to conceive of a punishment which would be commensurate with the unspeakable bestiality of his actions. Even if Hitler could have been reborn five crore times, so that he might be executed an equal number of time, this punishment would have seemed pitifully inadequate in the face of the evil he had perpetrated. The maximum, in reality, that could have been done to him under the circumstances, was to shoot him dead. (As it happened, Hitler evaded justice by committing suicide.) In the case of oppressors like Hitler and Stalin, the inadequacy of the punishment is glaringly obvious because of the magnitude of their crimes. Yet, even when a common man, a petty criminal, commits a crime, its effects are often so ramified that no worldly court is capable of investigating all its aspects, and a mere term of imprisonment, even with hard labour or solitary confinement, frequently falls short of being a true punishment. It happens on many occasions that criminals and other wrong doers retire from this world without ever having been satisfactorily punished. And this happens even when the whole of humanity is crying out for justice.

The same is true of rewards. What reward can there be for genuine altruism? Can we really reward a man who has attained a high position but has chosen to devote himself to serving the common people? In what way can we recompense him when he decides not to allow himself to become a ‘Pharaoh’, but to give all his wealth to the poor and needy? Is it possible to reward those who, having acquired great knowledge, devote themselves selflessly to the enlightenment of humanity? There is little in our experience of life to suggest that this is possible. It is difficult even to reward good deeds which are performed on a much smaller scale. Just as a bad deed can be a source of affliction with incalculable consequences, so does a good deed become a source of goodness and blessing in so many ways that its effects cannot be measured. Who is there really who can collect such exhaustive data on such acts that they may be adequately rewarded?

And what of the time factor? Consider that the true reward which a human being has is the feeling of happiness which results from his being rewarded. But happiness, as a state of being, is so short-lived that there would have to be repeated occasions on which it was experienced for it to add up to a reward in the real sense of the word. Even if we could reward the doers of good deeds with ‘paradise’ on earth, it would remain in their grasp for such a short period of time that the effect of being rewarded would soon wear off, and, in the absence of the accompanying euphoria, the reward itself would begin to seem inadequate. Even when a man lives on to a ripe old age, the time he spends on earth is not sufficient for him to enjoy the consequences of his rewards. It would take an everlasting paradise to recompense some of the great good deeds of this world, but that is the very thing which cannot be created on this earth. Life, evidently is too short, and the world deficient in too many ways for real justice to be done. This shows that another world – one of absolute, timeless perfection – has perforce to come into existence.

Our present world, in comparison to the universe, is like one tiny grain of sand out of all the sand on all the shores of the greatest oceans on our globe. Why, when the universe is so incredibly vast and so rich in potentialities, has it revealed only a minuscule fraction of its scope upon this earth. The answer to this question can be found only in belief in the Afterlife. To comprehend this, we must first have it clear in our minds that man’s total range of activities is divided into two distinct periods. The first covers his life in this world, while the second spans his existence in the Hereafter which gives meaning to all the finest desires and ambitions cherished by man. They may, or may not be realized in this world, for it is not given to everyone to be successful, but even if an individual overcomes all obstacles and ultimately shapes his life to his entire satisfaction, these seemingly positive factors are sooner or later rendered meaningless by old age and death. It is only in the Hereafter that the satisfaction of rewards may be savoured to the full. It is in focussing our attention single-mindedly upon the Hereafter that our efforts will find their true direction. It is only in the Hereafter that our finest dreams will become a reality.