Page 37 - The Secret Behind Our Trials

The Muslim of Difficult Times
thinking and those who sit and do nothing, and those who follow
their lower selves and those who listen to the voice of their con-
science.
There is very good reason why good and evil are so closely con-
nected with each other. One reason is that the value of good and evil
may be understood only within this contradiction. If evil, depriva-
tion, or disaster did not exist, people could not understand the value
of good. For example, when you place a diamond among ordinary
stones, its beauty and allure becomes more evident.
Another reason is found in the secret of this transitory world's
trials. Here, people are tested with good and evil. In the testing, the
difference in degree between the two will become evident, and the
good will be separated to one side, and the evil to the other. While
the Angel of Death will take the souls of evil people with great
harshness, good people will be invited to enter the beauty and
pleasure of Paradise. The Qur'an says that these trials are the way by
which believers are distinguished from those with a disease in their
hearts:
What assailed you on the day the two armies met was by
Allah's permission, so that He would know the believers
and the hypocrites. They were told: "Come and fight in the
Way of Allah, or at least help defend us." They said: "If we
knew how to fight, we would certainly follow you." They
were closer to unbelief that day than to faith, saying with
their mouths that which was not in their hearts. And Allah
knows best what they are hiding. (Surah Al `Imran, 166-67)
As these verses say, the behavior shown by the Prophet's (saas)
contemporaries in the face of difficulty was the way by which de-
vout believers were distinguished from hypocrites.
Bediuzzaman discusses in depth how difficulties and disasters

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