THE CREATION PLAN OF GOD — Discover Meaning

There is another verse to this effect: Do you suppose that you would enter the Garden, without God knowing those among you who would strive hard for His cause and endure with fortitude? (3: 142). Yet again the Quran addresses Muslims in these words: Do you [O believers] think that you will be spared without God identifying which of you have struggled and did not take any one for friends and protectors except God, His messenger and the believers? God is fully aware of all your actions. (9:16) The truth is that in this world what is desirable to God is not the Ideal Society but the Ideal man. And as we learn from the Quran, such an individual is produced in conditions of ‘severe affliction’ (33: 11), and not in normal, peaceful circumstances. The truth is that the recurrence of disturbance and dissension in society is essential to the realization of the Creation Plan itself, for good people of the highest calibre are produced in unfavourable rather than in favourable situations. God looks with favour upon those human beings who, finding themselves in the midst of a jungle of theories and ideologies, are able to discern the truth and then to persevere in their adherence to it. He gives His approval to those human beings whose faith remains unshaken even in the face of severe problems and dire adversity; whose hearts, even when they are subjected to all manner of persecution, are untainted by negative sentiments; who when threatened with calamity, do not lose heart, but undergo a process of brainstorming which will lead to their intellectual development; who even when faced with such untoward events which are likely to divert them from the Straight Path, remain staunch in their faith in God; who feel the great tumult of the awakening of spirituality in their hearts, bringing them closer to God. The man most desirable to God is one worthy of inhabiting the refined and ideal world of Paradise. Such a person, the rarest of rare phenomena, is greater than all that is great in the Universe. Such a human being takes a new birth. He is born, not in peaceful circumstances but in great strife and turmoil. He faces darkness in this world, so that he may live in the eternal light of the Hereafter. He treads a thorny path in this life, so that he may enjoy a flower-filled environment in the afterlife. Here he suffers loss, so that he may be blessed with the joys