This is modified form of a speech given at an interfaith symposium in Buffalo, NY, on June 10, 2013 to some 50-70 non-Muslim guests.

By Ataul Wahid Lahaye, Canada

As a Muslim, we recite the first chapter of the Holy Quran, the Fatiha, in every of the daily five prayers.  The Fatiha, which has seven verses,   means a short open book.

This chapter mentions the 4 main attributes of God, which every Muslim should not only believe in but also understand, for the understanding of this chapter is the key to understanding life and is my lead in to the subject of this article.

The first attribute is Rabilalameen or Lord of all the worlds.  It means that God through his attribute of Rab, is the Designer, Planner, Creator and Sustainer of the entire universe and this attribute applies to all animate and inanimate alike.

The second attribute is Rehman or Graciousness, by which God has created life and provided all that life needs to progress and succeed, and this is not based on merit or reward.  It is a general grace that extends to all life, but has a narrower scope than Rab.  As it is said the sun shines for the saint and sinner alike.

The third attribute is Raheem, or Mercy, whereby God rewards those who fulfill their responsibilities to God and fellow man.  Again a more narrow scope that is not confined to any one religion.  It applies to those who believe and do good works.

The fourth attribute is Maliki yaumedeen which means that all reward, punishment, forgiveness and compensation is exclusively in the hands of God, in this life and the next.

So, when God tells us in the Holy Quran:

Blessed is He in whose hand is the kingdom, and He has power over all things.  It is He who has created death and life that He might try you—which of you is best in deeds, and He is the Mighty, the Most Forgiving. (Al Quran 67:2-3)

It is through trials, which bring some degree of suffering that God determines reward, forgiveness and compensation and those people who will be recipients of His Raheemiyyat or Mercy.  For it is easy to do good deeds when life is easy, but to do good deeds when one is suffering and undergoing difficult trials is far more challenging.

Islam is a practical religion and does not lead us to a fool’s paradise.  Islam presents the basic realities in life and explains that this life is a life of trial and effort and the next is a life of compensation, sometimes good and sometimes not so good.

Allah says:

And know that your possessions and your children are but a trial and that it is Allah with Whom is a great reward.  (Al Quran 8:29)

Therefore, one who is taught to expect trials, it makes life far less stressful for him than for one, who thinks trials are a form of punishment from God or that life should be free from all suffering and misery.

Looking at the issue of suffering from another perspective, we observe that most scientific investigations and innovations lie in mankind’s ongoing quest to relieve pain and suffering.  In many cases, these innovations produce luxury goods which further enhances our level of comfort.

From the perspective of reward or punishment we realize that man has the ability to choose to do or not to do something based on free will.  If, as a natural consequence of man’s willful action, nature provides a reward or a penalty, none can be blamed except man himself.  Many a time, people suffer without realizing that they themselves are to blame.  Every action does not result in an immediate punitive consequence, however, a delayed reaction can cause suffering many decades later.  An example of this is people are now contracting hepatitis C in their sixties.  A result of their sexual promiscuity decades ago, as it has been discovered that the virus has a latency period of several decades.  I guess you can’t fool mother nature after all.

Again, building on the theme of consequences, why are some children born with certain congenital defects that puts them at a great disadvantage?

Why are they made to suffer, it is of no fault of their own.  To understand this issue, we must realize that all suffering is not some type of punishment, nor happiness a reward.  These children are also part of the wide plan of creation, and play a meaningful role in the general advancement of human society.  People who care for these children and show them compassion and love, fall under God’s mercy (Raheem) and the children will be compensated in the hereafter.

From another perspective, why should anyone be born with a congenital defect and what is the resolution of this issue?  Should God create all babies equally healthy or unhealthy?  Should God, in the name of justice create every human exactly alike in health or looks?  Or should God be given liberty to create diversity and variety to break the monotony?  We can criticize God for these perceived injustices, but to replace His plan with a more just one becomes more complicated, because somewhere along the road of evolution there must be suffering and want.

Health and disease, ability and disability, fortune or misfortune, congenital advantages or defects are themselves indispensable to the grand scheme of things and they play a causative role.  Suffering in its causative role produces a wide spectrum of useful effects.  Suffering has been a great teacher, cultivating and culturing our conduct.  It develops and refines our sensibilities, teaches humility and prepares humans to be able to turn to God.  It drives exploration and creates necessity, which is the mother of all inventions.   Suffering, for its subtle creative role in the scheme of life is indeed a blessing in disguise.

Life is constantly moving from a lesser state of consciousness to a higher state of consciousness with continuously sharpening faculties of awareness.

In the most rudimentary forms of life the awareness of gain or loss is obscure, but we know from observation that they do possess some vague sense of awareness.  This sense of perception gradually developed into sensory organs with our brain developing as an essential counterpart.  The more evolved consciousness, the more intense the sense of loss as suffering and sense of gain as pleasure.  Thus the sensory perceptions to be able to recognize pain and pleasure are indispensable to each other.  Disease, defects and shortcomings all have a role to play in effecting improvement.  This is how species went on evolving gaining greater consciousness.

Reduce the ability to feel pain and suffering and the capacity to feel pleasure and happiness must also be reduced.  God did not create suffering as an independent entity, but only as an indispensable counterpart of pleasure and comfort.  Suffering could only be considered objectionable if it were created as in independent entity, but without the taste of suffering, the feeling of relief and comfort would also vanish.  This is the key to understanding the struggle for existence, which in turn leads to a constant improvement in the quality of life and helped to achieve the ultimate goal of evolution, mankind.  Both suffering and pleasure participate equally in propelling the wheels of evolution.  One cannot be done away with alone without the other, thus nullifying the entire creative plan of evolution.  The very existence of life would lose purpose, and the steps of evolution would stop dead in their tracks.

This is the grand plan of creation, but why has God designed it so.  That He might try you—which of you is best in deeds, is the answer of the Holy Quran.

If all forms of life must be equally afforded an equal share of happiness and no portion of suffering, how and where would we introduce this new scheme?  The new rules could only be introduced at the beginning of creation.  But, try as we may, if implemented, we would not be able to take a single step forward because an equal distribution of happiness and no suffering would eliminate the driving force of evolution.  There would be no struggle for survival, no struggle for existence and not a single progressive step would be taken by the first rudimentary forms of life.

So the real question is whether to choose a system with suffering, perpetually pushing evolution towards greater consciousness, or to abandon this plan altogether for fear of unavoidable suffering.  Therefore the only question left is to be or not to be?

From the perspective of natural disasters, they are not disaster at all, but are a part of a hidden power throughout our planet.  Our planet earth, that is a dynamic living organism where nature’s unseen forces interconnect in extraordinary ways, in a vast and ancient cycle to ultimately sustain life itself.  Let’s take a hurricane as an example.  It is a storm so powerful that at any one moment it generates power equivalent to the entire world’s electrical output.  It is the power of the sun on the ocean that is very destructive and those affected, curse their misfortune, yet, we owe our lives to the remarkable process that produced this storm.  A hurricane acts as a release valve when the ocean gets too warm and helps balance the climate by redistributing the heat around the planet, returning the ocean to equilibrium.  Yet, it is a tiny brushstroke in a much bigger picture.  Everything is interconnected on a planetary scale.  These hidden connections ultimately keep us alive.  Monsoons in India and China sustain 3.5 billion people.  Yet, these rains do create a degree of suffering.

The Antarctic winter has temperatures of -80 C and this super low temperature plays a vital role in supporting life thousands of miles away.  Antarctica, the driest, coldest, windiest place on earth, where beneath the ice a life sustaining process emerges based on the physics of salt water and bone chilling temperatures.  In the winter, 25,000 gigatons of ice forms around the continent.  As the sea water temperature falls to -1.5 degrees  C,  the sea begins to freeze.  Sea water must release its salt as it freezes causing the remaining water to become saltier.  This forms a brine that drips down narrow elongated tubes in the freshly made ice.  The brine is denser and heavier and sinks downward carrying oxygen from the air above to the depths below.  Every second 1.5 million cubic meters of dense salty water sinks downwards, and unstoppable vertical current equal to 500 million Niagara falls.  This cold, oxygenated  brine resurfaces thousands of years later and thousands of miles to the north.  It oxygenates all the worlds oceans and regulates the ocean water temperature to within 0.5 degrees C, allowing life to prosper, protecting us from dramatic climate swings.

Yes, these and the other processes that sustain life on this planet do create suffering, but these are the systems and processes that God has created and sustains for our survival.  If you want to remove all suffering, you will have to replace all of these systems with something better.  Yet, we come back to the same dilemma.  Try as you may, any changes to the system will interfere with the very protective mechanisms that got us here in the first place and life will abruptly grind to a halt.

For those of us who believe in God, the Creator, there is be problem, because we see enough direction, balance and purpose in creation, to submit to the wisdom of the plan in its totality. An odd thorn jutting out here and there from a most artistically arranged, colorful and fragrant bouquet of flowers will not provide sufficient cause for the rejection of the bouquet, or the Master who created it.