Selam aleykum true muslim
Browsing teh thread I found some of your other questions,
Why do you peopel think its better to have "free will", that way you have a chance to sin, and get punished, than to be like angels and not possible for us to sin or get punished??
Well it's a double cutting sword, on one hand it is true that the risk of punishment looks like a negative charesteristic of free will, but remember that those who will be punished will deserve it, and also that they are not done wrong but instead wronged them selves. The other side of the double edged sword however is that good actions are much more valuable. those that do good, not because they are designed to do so, but rather because they want to. Wheter or not it is better or worse, is a bit hard to say. Depends on your defenition of better, by what criteria you are looking. If you measure better/worse by how hard or risky it is, then free will would be worse. If however you measure by possible payoff, then free will is actually better.
If allah already knows whats gonna happen, and controls what happens, and its all written, then why do we have to go through this life to SEE who will follow him and who will follow shaitan? Aren't the results already there? And wouldn't it be...oh i cant believe im saying this ... buut.... wouldnt it be because allah that we are being "misguided " ? I mean...since he can "control" everything that happens.
I partially answered this in my previous post I think, but still would like to add. allah subhana wa ta'ala does control everything, but he choice to give us free will and choice. And with that comes responsibility for our choices. So just because he's still in control, doesn't mean that he's responsible. I once heard this story. I'm not usually fond of such comparisons, but in this case it paints a pretty good picture:
Imagine that an engeneer builds a town; builds an electrical plant, drawsthe blueprints, constructs it and so on, then conencts the plant to all the houses and and streetlights, and makes switches to turn everthing on and off. Imagen thatthe engineer then hires someone to operate a main switch. If the operator operates the switch, who would you say is responsible for bringing light to the town? The engeneer or the operator? the operator plays a part in it, but it's the engeneer that should take most credit for brining light. However in the opposite situation, say that the operator forgot to turn the switch, who's responsible for the town being in darkness? Well obviously it's the operator's fault, and not teh engeneer's.
So that means he controlled iblis to do what he did. He controls us to obey shaitan. He controls shaitan to tempt us. He controls the non muslims not to turn to islam. He controls us to doubt islam. And He is controlling me to say things i never thought i'd say right now.
No, not exactly. The way you say it,
"he controlled us" sounds as if we had no choice in the first place. It'd be more precise to say: he allowed us to choose.
wow so 99 names, can control natural disasters, can control the earth to blow up whenever he feels like it, can control when judgement day come, but cant control what we do???? Cmon !
He can control our decisions, but he
chooses not to, and give us free will instead. It's not a matter of being incapable of controling us, it's a result of Allah subhana wa ta'ala his decisions.
but what i meant is why we gotta go thru this? Its liek when u see a movie, and you seein it again to see ONE certain thing that happened in it, why would you rewatch the entire movie just for one thing, when you KNOW whats gonna happen? Like say allah right now couldve made us fastfoward life for say ten years, and he made it seem as if we had a past, but we didnt get to see that past, but it seems like it did, we would have no idea what just happened, so why cant he just fastfoward it to when we come back to him??
Time is very relative. Allah subhana wa ta'al is timeless, so for him it's not an issue. For us it seems to be an issue though. And we are impatient to go trough the whole thing. But that in fact is part of the test. One of my favorite surahs is al-asr, not because it's so short, but because it's so meaningfull. Time is part of the test, it's easy to have faith for 5 minutes, the real test is having it for 50-70-90-?? years.
Just end all this since it all written, all ready, all judged, everything is set so why rewatch it? See for a MOVIE its for entertainment, but its only with COOL movies like hancock, but life, it aint no entertainment, and im pretty sure watching ur slaves in jannah is much more entertaining.
Well it's not re-happing. Just because it's written doesn't mean it already happened. there's a difference between teh two, I already made some suggestions to wh one could perhaps be better then the other in teh previous post, but in teh end that's of course speculation. In teh end I have to admit our knowledge is simply to limited to know these things. All you can do is have faith... ^_^
another thing... Why does allah want us to worship him? What is the purpose? I know the usual replies are "Its not that he created us to worship him, its that he deserves to be worshipped" Ok i know that, but if he deserves to be worshipped then why would he create us to worship him? Does that make sense? Like em...wouldn't that mean he really did create us to worship him? So we are in this world to worship him. I get that. But WHY? Don't say because he is worthy enough for it or whatever. That answer gets old when u think alot. But WHY would allah create us to worship him ?
That is one of the hardest philosophical questions I ever met within Islam, I admit. It has crossed my mind before, and again, we can only speculate. Nobody can read allah subhana wa ta'ala his intentions, unless he reveals them to us. What we do know, is as you pointed out that he is worthy, and also that he does not need our worship. That is to say that he doesn't depend on it, nor does he becomes better by it (as he's already the highest degree of perfection). In fact this ties in with a more primal question, why are we created in the first place? The answer to that question is to worship him. So until we know why Allah subhana wa ta'ala wants us to worship him, we don't really know why we are created in the first place. Maybe there's a different level to understanding "because he deserves it". Maybe what is meant by that, is not simply
"he is worth of this worship". Maybe it also means "worth" in the sense of: he is entitled to it, it is due to him, he has it coming. And I know not and Allah subhana wa ta'ala knows best. As for the more primal question, why are we created, some sufist have suggested that he did so for a similar reason that a painter paints or a singer sings, in other words simply because he can. However there's something wrong with that comparison. A human artist creates art to fulfill a need or desire. These could be social or psychological, like seeking acceptance and praise, or it could be a form of comping with events. Either way, there is at some level a need, whereas we know that Allah subhana wa ta'ala does not need our worship. Another suggestion would be that he created us simply for proving his characteristics. the argument goes that names like "the most mercyfull" are meaningless when there is nobody to compare to, or nobody to be mercyfull over in the first place (astagfirAllah). However again there's a problem with this argument, because again this suggest that Allah subhana wa ta'ala needed us in order to be who he is. I would think that his characteristics are intrinsic. The problem of comparison lies not with the charesteristics of Allah subhana wa ta'ala, but rather with the language used to define those charesteristics. So the argument is a folow up of a semantical issue rather then a contradictory problem with Allah subhana wa ta'al his characteristics. In fact considering this, we need to ask wheter it is not the question itself which is wrong. See the question naturally assumes that Allah subhana wa ta'ala needs a reason in order to do something. so the question itself compares Allah subhana wa ta'ala to humans (who have needs and most of the time act due to these needs). I don't know and Allah subhana wa ta'ala knows best. Either way, I don't think any of this philosophical thinking will actually bring us closer to the genuine motive. And as I have showed it's dangerous because it can lead to misconceptions about the nature of Allah subhana wa ta'ala which in turn could lead to disbelief. In the end we'll have to accept that if Allah subhana wa ta'ala had a motive he wished to keep his motives hidden from us until the afterlife. And I do believe with just reason.
(Sorry for the double post, I just thought that if I edited so many new comments in in the previous post afterwards, they might have been overlooked if truemuslim read my previous post already.)
