Page 61 - The Secret Behind Our Trials

How Unbelievers Act when Faced with Difficulty
them a happiness and a sense of well-being, while those who are at-
tached to this world live in great frustration, pain, and moral degen-
eration. While Muslims enjoy the fruits of their patience, those who
are attached to what they believe is a world in which they will live
forever are unaware that they are being tested and thus experience
the frustration and pain of impatience, distrust, selfishness, mean-
ness, and worldly ambition. This pain shows itself in every moment
of their lives. For example, there is a barrenness and joylessness in
everything they do, as well as an inability to recognize what is good
and to know the joy that a fine moral character brings.
They have neither honor nor moral character, and their lives are
ruled by hypocrisy. Their greatest fault is that they think about
themselves all the time. As a result, they think that being mean and
selfish will benefit them and cannot see the harm that will result
from such behavior. In fact, those who think in this way lose a great
deal in both worlds, but are unaware of this fact. Unbelievers have
lost the endless blessings of Paradise; but most importantly, they
have lost Allah's good pleasure and mercy. As the Qur'an states, this
is truly a great loss:
It is He Who made you successors on Earth. So whoever does
not believe, his unbelief is against himself. In Allah's sight,
the unbelief of the unbelievers only increases their loath-
someness; the unbelief of the unbelievers only increases
their loss. (Surah Fatir, 39)
This state is very instructive for Muslims observing the unbe-
lievers objectively from outside. For example, the spiritual corrup-
tion of a person who robs an orphan or seizes a poor person's
possessions and uses then this forbidden money to buy clothes does
not go unnoticed. In the Qur'an, Allah describes the state of such
people as: "... That is how Allah defiles those who have no faith"

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