Surah Al – Baqarah...

Surah Al – Baqarah, 2:155 وَلَنَبْلُوَنَّكُمْ بِشَيْءٍ مِّنَ الْخَوفْ وَالْجُوعِ وَنَقْصٍ مِّنَ الأَمَوَالِ وَالأنفُسِ وَالثَّمَرَاتِ وَبَشِّرِ الصَّابِرِينَ Wa lanablu-wan-nakum-bi-shay-’im-minal-’amwaali wal-’anfusi was-samaraat: wa bashshiris-Saabiriin. 155. And most certainly shall We try you by means of danger, hunger, and loss of worldly goods, of lives and of (labour’s) fruits. But give glad tidings unto those who are patient in adversity.

The emphasis laid upon is basically on any kind of fear of loss of sustenance, children and suffering. The more an individual rises in his faith in God, his personal virtues and the quality of patience, more he is beset with trials through calamities to prove his personal excellence, and as he passes through his trials successfully, he is raised into higher and higher elevations of the excellence of divinity and promoted to be nearer to God.

Those who do not suffer these calamities at all in this life are not much to be congratulated for it might be that these souls are not considered fit to be tried. It was only once in the history of the creation of the earth that all the kinds of trials mentioned in the verse were enacted all together to the maximum degree conceivable, with the Holy Imam Hussein and the small band of his faithful comrades in the plain of Kerbala.

This verse had its fullest realization only in the suffering and the martyrdom of Hussein and his faithful comrades and the suffering of the other Imams at different times under the Omayyids and Abbaside Caliphs. Previous…

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