So today, I withdrew my pay from the bank, and went shopping with my mom. On my way, I realized that I had forgotten the money I withdrew at home, and had only about 1 thousand rupees (not a huge amount). So I asked my mom if she had any money with her. She said yes, but also added a very philosophically complicated statement that “Since God didn’t want me to spend that money, therefore you don’t have that with you right now!”
Now these kind of statements in which we conclude retrospectively about something which didn’t happen because God didn’t want them have been used extensively in the Pakistani society. Every now and then we’ll be hearing about these. Mostly used by religious people, they are for the justification of events. For instance, people declared that the 2005 earthquake came because the God was unhappy with us, or the 2010 flood came for the same reason. Now, before I do my own analysis, let me tell you, I am kinda of a pseudo-religious and pseudo-atheistic kinda person. And my take on certain things is sometimes islamic and vice versa for others. But these kind of statements don’t make any sense at all. In fact, these statements leads to several disturbing conclusion, if we considers purely Islamic events.
Considering my mom’s statement, it is pretty much evident that we are conjecturing about something that the God wants. Now also putting aside the debate of God’s existence, and working in the Islamic system of thought, this leads to the conclusion that whatever I do will be done due to the discretion of God, in other words essentially everything is pre-destined. hmmmm…. now this takes me back to the Adam-Satan Incident. Those of you who are familiar with it know that Satan refused to obey the God’s command. Anyways, it turns out, he can now justify his disobedience by proclaiming that it actually happened because God wanted it the way it happened. So effectively, everything good or bad, happens due to God’s discretion. So whats the purpose of life, whats the purpose of the Judgement Day???
Well, I am not going to declare anything about the Islamic thought on predestination or free will. But I positively assert that we shouldn’t be giving off statements which justify a event as per God’s discretion. That kind of retrospective predestination leads to seriously troublesome conclusions and things don’t just fit together. Surely there is problem somewhere.