:bism: (In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)
Let's understand "misery loves company" has a whole new exaggerated meaning when exercised out into the real world by people who are suicidal or homicidal.
I'm not unsympathetic to those who feel shafted for whatever reason because I've myself experienced serious disappointments at various points in my own life, yet killing a lot of people for whatever issues an individual has is never the answer. This answer, however, makes sense to a lot of people because I think somewhere today we're all fundamentally disconnected with one another due to the ubiquity of technology and we're more alone than together even when we're together. I think that's a great contributory factor to why we're seeing the rise in killings/attempted killings of one another because there's no sense of contentedness of a sense of familiarity that would see the "you" in "me" or "me" in "you." We're as human beings more alike than we're different even when we all take into account factors like gender, religion, race, socioeconomic class, education, sexual orientation, and other factors, but people are less and less oriented in this truth and see more the differences.
Fitnah can be described as confusion, trial, strife, etc. Prophet :saws:
(peace and blessings be upon him) said of our times, "Very soon trials and tribulations will appear which will be like dark nights." In other words, just as a man is not able to find his way in dark nights, in the same way during these blinding trials, people will not know what to do and where to go. These trials will encompass entire societies leaving no place of shelter for the people. This time has come to pass.
Prophet :saws:
(peace and blessings be upon him) also taught the people a supplication to find refuge with Allah from these trials: "O Allah, we seek refuge with You from these apparent or hidden trials."
We're today like headless chickens - no one knows what to do about people killing one another for no good reason, whether that person is a Muslim or non-Muslim. For example, yesterday in Florida a person committed a mass shooting which led to deaths of two people and injury of dozens at a party.
Prophet :saws:
(peace and blessings be upon him) also said, "A time will come upon the people in which the killer will not know why he killed the victim nor will the victim killed know why he was killed." This time describes our time; I very much doubt the Japanese person who went on a killing spree knew his victims or his victims knew him before him committing this heinous act.
How does what's happening in the world relate to the concept of Islamic
fitrah?
Fitrah is the concept of each soul having been born on innocence and in submission to the divine because they're spiritually said to recognize God even if we cannot see them recognizing God; this is why in Islam there is no sin written for babies or children because they're considered innocent. If you want more information, a good Islamic article detailing this concept is: "
Fitrah: The Primordial Nature of Man."
Also,
fitrah has to do with how hatred is learned behavior. If hatred was not something within our control to modulate, Prophet :saws:
(peace and blessings be upon him) would not have said as part of a larger
hadith (prophetic tradition), "Do not hate one another."
That said, I did once read a
hadith (prophetic tradition) in which it said that because of people not beginning the act of physical intimacy with God's name, there are some exceptional persons who will be born in later times without empathy. I think that
hadith was specifically describing modern-day serial killers, yet I have not been able to find that
hadith again.
format_quote Originally Posted by
czgibson
Greetings,
You are right - there certainly have been a large number of attacks like this in recent times. It's very sad.
These criminals don't seem to know that killing innocent civilian people is never a good idea.
How does this relate to the Islamic idea of fitnah? What has gone wrong with these people's fitnah?
Peace