"Are we humans on this earth as a reward, or as a punishment?" Dr. Saad Al-Arifi (8:12)
From the episode
- His answer. We were in paradise, and came down to earth after Adam's disobedience. In his view our presence here began as a punishment, so we should not expect a life tailored to our wishes.
- The locked room. If he were angry with Ahmed and locked him in the room next door, would he go and check that the air conditioning was cold? He stresses that God is far more merciful than this; the point is only what to expect from this world.
- An oath to test us. He reads "We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and loss of wealth, lives and fruits; and give good news to the patient", noting that its grammar is that of an oath.
- Patience, again and again. He says patience is mentioned about 90 times in the Qur'an, a sign that life cannot be completed without it.
- Evil comes first. In "We test you with evil and good", evil is named first.
- From the womb of joy. Hardship sometimes arrives in the middle of happiness: the trip planned for three months, the family day at a farm.
- The neighbour at the mosque door. Twenty-five years ago a neighbour stood lost among the shoes after the noon prayer; he did not know whether he had come barefoot. The month before he had booked a beach chalet for his family. On the first morning, his 21-year-old daughter did not come to breakfast. They found her dead in her bed.
- The pebble jar. A man dropped a pebble into a glass jar on every good day. Asked his age, he emptied the jar and counted: he counted only the days he had spent at ease and happy.
- Blessings and hardships in the balance. In his view, the more blessings you have the longer your reckoning in the hereafter, and the more hardships the greater your reward.
- "May you never see harm." A wise man heard someone say it and replied that it was like wishing him death, since the living must see harm.
- No one is spared. Not heads of state, kings, princes or ministers: each has worries suited to his life.
- Life comes in pairs. Life and death, health and sickness, happiness and misery, sweet and bitter, ease and hardship. Everyone must drink from both cups.
The idea, explained
Expecting the weather
His argument is about expectations. If you believe life should be smooth, every hardship arrives as an injustice and hurts twice: once as the event and again as the outrage. If you expect hardship as part of the climate, it still hurts, but only once. That is why he insists that no one is spared, from neighbours to kings, and that "may you never see harm" is, strictly, a wish for death.
Some adversity, not none
Research supports a version of this. In a large study following people over several years, those who had lived through some adversity were more resilient and more satisfied with life than those with a lot of adversity, and also than those with none (Seery, Holman & Silver, 2010). People who have drunk from both cups seem to handle the next bitter one better.
The pebble jar
The man who counted only his good days was keeping a different kind of record: not how long he had lived, but how much of his life he had actually enjoyed. It is a useful question to ask of a week, too: how many pebbles went in?
Patience in the Qur'an
The figure he gives, about 90 mentions of patience, goes back to Imam Ahmad and is quoted by Ibn al-Qayyim, who lists the many forms those mentions take (Ibn al-Qayyim, Where patience is mentioned in the Qur'an).
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Key terms
Test (ibtila') · Patience (sabr) · Expectations · Resilience.