ভূমিকা

“If We make man taste mercy from Ourselves, (and) then take it off from him, verily he is despairing ungrateful.” Allah’s blessings do not always reflect His compassion; nor does usually the withdrawal of His blessings signify His punishment and anger. Many a time, they could mean that He might be putting someone through a special test.

The verse says: “If We make man taste mercy from Ourselves, (and) then take it off from him, verily he is despairing ungrateful.” As man does not understand the Divine wisdom and his own good, he tends to jump to conclusions, feels desperate and becomes ungrateful. However faith in Him is not based upon what we perceive to be our happiness in life. Allah’s blessings are the consequences of His judgment and His grace, not the results of our merit.

Verily he is joyous, boastful.” All the blessings which are handed down to man after hardships and sufferings must serve as a source of thanksgiving and remembering Allah (s.w.t.) and not as a means of arrogance, boasting and self satisfaction. There are two risks to one’s joy, one is making a wrong analysis of events, and the other is that this joy would result in a person’s arrogance.

Worldly affairs do not always take the same path, on the contrary, as some Islamic traditions testify to, they have two sides to them; sometimes they run in your favor, at other times, they run against you. Once they are in your favor, you must not become arrogant, and once they are otherwise, you must keep your patience because, at any rate, you are the focus of the Divine attention, and you are in the course of Allah’s trial.

The verse says: “And if We make him taste (Our) favors after adversity has afflicted him, he will say, ‘The evils have departed from me’.