Re: hurting people, torture and killing
where do people learn to be so inhuman? why Allah swt allows such people to be able to torture, and kill?
Dushwari,
The questions that you have asked may look different extraneously because where one of them is about human nature, other pertains to the Sunnah of Allah (SWT), however in essence they merge to the same philosophy with one mighty exception that in the first question, we, human being have forgotten the soul of that philosophy and in the second query Allah (SWT) observes it. By now you must have understood that I am referring to the day of Judgment.
Before I write my perspective about this, I wish to share my views that I wrote before in some other post about shaitan, I am writing this because it is not only relevant to the question itself but someone also mentioned that inhumanity is the work of shaitan. We should know that shaitan is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, anyone with this kind of understanding is trying to find parallels with Allah (SWT), which is shirk. The relationship of shaitan with human beings is horizontal (one to one)as oppose to vertical (one to all)relationship that Allah (SAW) maintains with us. Shaitan, before he turned into Iblis, was leader of Jins and owing to his obedience and IBADAT was elevated and joined the ranks of Angles, however not without the sense of superiority which later brought the demise of spiritual elevation. What made Shaitan , Iblis was his defiance of Allah (SWT). We all know that human beings are made of clay, mud, and the characteristics of mud are that the seeds of cactus never grow roses. Disobedience is seed of Iblis and one defiance paves the way for more, at the same time we find ways to justify the acts of disobediences. First victim of this seed was no one but ADAM (AS). To my understanding Allah’s (SWT) disobedience is not an act in isolation, it induces permanent results in the form of gene mutation which we pass onto our next generation. The seeds of defiance that ADAM (AS) passed onto next generation resulted in the first heinous crime that one human being inflicted upon other fellow human when Habeel (Abel) killed Qabeel (Cain).
To understand inhumanity we need to understand human beings, their nature and the reason for their existence. Being a Muslim we all believe that human beings are the best among all the life forms (Ashraf-ul-Makhlooqat) that Allah has created. To me human beings are composed of three things, body, Soul and the intelligence. Where as body has the characteristics of clay, the ingredient of the body has this ability to regenerate themselves, mutate, and acquire the characteristics of intake, both intellectual and material. Human intelligence is an amazing phenomena, it sits between and understands the language of both the body and the soul, it is a very imbalanced force that can go either way. The real culprit that makes a human an inhuman is hidden in the history of human evolution. The history of human civilization is the history of struggle of the mankind against the environment, against the fellow human beings and against the other life forms. Life itself has an ingrained capability to guard against the threats to its very existence; survival was and is still the biggest challenge for the human beings. Not to mention that in the race of survival we have committed heinous crimes against our own race. Like I said before every defiance has a permanent effect on human body and intellect , crime against humanity is one of the biggest delict.
Soul is “Amer-e-Rabbi”, its inert to desire of defiance, however it gets alienated as human being indulge themselves into the acts of defiance. Soul keeps its resistance in the shape compunction but at certain level the crooked human intelligence finds an intellectual justification to overcome this compunction*. The real test of human beings is to use human intelligence to resonate the voice of soul through human body. A body that is completely inert to any desire of defiance under any circumstances. Mankind can only be human beings when this milestone of human civilization is achieved. Unfortunately the philosophy of human survival has not found the way to survive by means of sharing, but by means of acquiring, assuming, consuming and owning more and more for him/herself rather than for the society.
“If the son of Adam had two valleys full of Gold, he would wish for a third, for nothing can fill the belly of the son of Adam except dust when he dies. And Allah forgives the one who repents to Him”
The devil of inhumanity is the greed to acquire and own more than our share, it lives in us and we pass it to our future generations.
Your second question has been discussed in details among philosophers that belong to different schools of thought; some people link this question with the existence of God. Hindu religion gives it a different twist by attributing all the “good” to one god and all the bad to another. The question in itself is very genuine, especially when we believe that Allah is omnipotent and omniscient, why is Allah so indifferent towards Allah’s creation. I am sure that you have read and heard the story of Hazrat-e-Mosa (AS), and Hazrat-e-Khizar (AS), we understand only what we can understand within our perception of the events and their impacts, most of the time the real truth is not what we can understand.
We are Muslim only when we have strong faith in the Day of Judgment, we must also understand that Allah has not promised to stop all the suffering of all those who can not defend themselves. On the contrary Human beings have been invested with the responsibility of being “naib” to Allah on earth. As a Muslim we have been asked to do observe “amr-bii-ma’roof” and ‘ nahya anil’munkar”. This world where we live is not a place meant to be a place for rewards for good deeds and punishment for bad deeds, this is a place to test the integrity of human beings. We all stand accountable for our deeds in the life hereafter.
The Prophet (SAW) said: “The feet of a servant will not move on the Day of Judgment until he has been questioned about four things): his life - how he spent it, his knowledge - how he acted upon it, his wealth - where he earned it and how he spent it, and his body - how he used it.”