|
Muslim Reward and Punishment
Muslim Reward and Punishment Does your diety punish and reward in this life? ABDUL RASHID is a member of the Ottawa Muslim community, the Christian-Muslim Dialogue and the Capital Region Interfaith Council. When a Muslim begins a task, spiritual or mundane, he or she always says: “With the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Beneficent.” When the task is finished, it is usual to say: “Praise be to God, the Lord of the Worlds.” When a believer becomes conscious of a moral error, he or she would say: “O God! You are Ever Forgiving; forgive me.” When we seek His bounty, we say: “O Lord! You are the Provider; bless me.”
It is not possible to visualize this Merciful, Generous and Forgiving God to be a “punishing deity.” This does not mean that we are not accountable for our actions. However, this judgment by God has been deferred to the Hereafter. There, on the Day of Judgment, our good and bad deeds will be placed in a balance and God Almighty will dispense reward or punishment according to the result. God Almighty has also blessed humanity with an instinctive sense of right and wrong.
He then supplemented this faculty with moral guidance through His prophets and scriptures. He warned that, when human beings violate this moral framework, they expose themselves to serious consequences. The Holy Qur’an warns that continued oppression and injustice undertaken collectively by a people ultimately leads to ruin which is all-pervasive (8:25). In either case — in this world or in the Hereafter — human beings are themselves responsible, individual and collectively, for their deeds and the consequences (2:57). Our Merciful Creator declares in the Holy Qur’an: “Never do I do the least wrong to My creatures” (50:290).
|
