format_quote Originally Posted by
Alhamduillah
"Allaah will judge between His creation, jinn, humans and animals. On that Day the score will be settled between the hornless and the horned, until there are no outstanding issues left, then Allaah will say, ‘Be dust!' At the point the kaafir will say, ‘Would that I were dust!’”"
So when a human being gets cancer and is in severe pain he is told to Be patient and trust in Allah and Paradise will be the reward, but when an animal goes through severe painful cancer or disease, in the afterlife he is simply turned to dust and then nothing?
It is understood from sound narrations that the spirits of animals will live eternally, and that certain individual animals, like the Hudhud of Solomon (PUH) and his ants, Salih’s (PUH) she-camel, and the dog of the Companions of the Cave, will go to the eternal realm with both their spirits and their bodies,(1) and that each species will have a single body that may be utilized from time to time. This is also demanded by wisdom and reality, and mercy and dominicality.
Dipnot-1 Bursawi, Ruh al-Bayan, v, 226; Tafsir al-Qurtubi, i, 372.
format_quote Originally Posted by
Alhamduillah
But if suffering, pain, and hardship is for the attainment of Paradise through patience, and prayer, and human beings are different than animals, then ultimately why do animals suffer from diseases, hardships etc.???????
Let me rephrase your question again as Bediuzzaman Said Nursi puts it:
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
God does what He wishes, and decrees what He wills.
Q u e s t i o n : How can the solicitous nurturing, the purposeful and beneficial planning, the loving kindness of the names of All-Compassionate, All-Wise, and Loving, which are among the greatest of the divine names, be reconciled with death and non-existence, decline and separation, and disaster and hardship, which are awesome and terrible? Very well, man goes to eternal happiness so we can tolerate his passing down the road of death, but how about the delicate species of trees and plants, and the lovely flowers, which are all living creatures, and the animal species, which are worthy of existence, lovers of life, and desire permanent life? What compassion and kindness are there in their continuously without exception being annihilated, in their being swiftly dispatched to non-existence without being allowed to so much as open their eyes, in their being made to toil without so much as taking a breath, in their being changed by calamities with not one of them being left in peace, in their being killed without exception, in their dying with not one of them remaining, in their departing with none of them being gratified – what wisdom and purpose, what favor and mercy, are there in this?
T h e A n s w e r : Through five ‘Signs,’ which show the necessitating cause and reason, and five ‘Indications,’ which point out the aims and benefits, we shall try to look from afar at the mighty truth that solves this question, and is extremely broad, profound, and elevated.
FIRST SIGN
When making a precious garment, ornamented with jewels and embroidery, a skillful craftsman employs a poor man in return for a commensurate wage. In order to display his skill and art, he dresses the man in the garment, then measures and cuts it, and lengthens and shortens it; making the man sit down and stand up, he gives it various forms. Does the wretched man have the right to say to the craftsman: “Why are you meddling with this garment which makes me beautiful, altering and changing it? Why are you making me stand up and sit down, disturbing me and causing me trouble?”
In exactly the same way, in order to display the perfections of His art through the embroideries of His names, the All-Glorious Maker takes the essential nature of beings as a model, then He clothes them all and especially living creatures in the garment of a body bejeweled with senses, and inscribes it with the pen of divine decree and determining, thus displaying the manifestation of His names. In addition, He gives to each one of them a perfection, a pleasure, an effulgence, in a way suitable to it and as a wage.
Does anything have the right, then, to say to the All-Glorious Maker, who exemplifies the meaning of, “the Lord of All Dominion has free disposal over His realms as He wishes:” “You are giving me trouble and disturbing me.”? God forbid! Beings have no rights before the Necessarily Existent One, nor can they claim them. What falls to them is, by offering thanks and praise, to carry out what is required by the degree of existence He has given them. (...)
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