It is a daunting subject that we have undertaken to discuss. Most writers today would consider it an irrelevant topic. But it is a fact that mankind has asked this question of the meaning of life since the beginning of his historical existence on earth. The existence of religions, arts and philosophies testify to man’s quest for meaning. Yet are we any nearer to solving the mystery than our first theologians, artists and philosophers in the Middle East, Greece, India, Persia or China? It does not seem so. On the contrary, going by the present state of chaos in the world, we are as far away from getting an answer to life’s mystery as we can be. We, therefore, have to try and try again until we come nearer to its understanding.

What is life, then? What is the purpose of our being here? Denying the spirit, the materialist does not believe in any purpose. One modern materialist philosopher, Bertrand Russell, describes this meaninglessness poignantly and almost poetically:

On the other hand, Islam teaches the purposefulness of life. In one of its clearest statements, the Quran declares:

It is often complained by non-believers and skeptics that a suffering human being or child did not ask to be born: why then did God create him and put him into this suffering? To answer this question, one has first to define the concept of suffering. Two types of suffering have first to be identified, that is physical and spiritual suffering. Being materially poor, one may suffer from material deprivation like hunger or lack of other material goods. Yet spiritual deprivation, a feeling of loneliness, aimlessness, hopelessness and despair is surely more painful. A spiritually strong person not only will not suffer spiritually; he also may not suffer materially, because being spiritually strong, he is resourceful enough to earn his living. A spiritually strong society will also be able to look after its deficient children, like the poor and the physically-handicapped. So the question of suffering really does not arise.

As to man’s consent to come into this world, no man refuses to benefit from the joys of this world, like wealth, position, power, love, friendship, reading, food, conversation, music, literature, family life and so on. Although some extremely spiritual men, like Buddha and Jesus Christ, may forgo some of these pleasures, most of them do not; neither is it normal for human beings to do so. Therefore, we can conclude that symbolically man agrees to be born into this world and is pleased to be in it, although under certain conditions some of his kind would commit suicide.

This brings us face to face with the question of man’s mortality or immortality. If a man’s life ends with his death, then life is meaningless. On the one hand, man propagates himself physically, intellectually, morally and spiritually. His children and grand-children not only continue his physical life but also intellectual, moral and spiritual live. There is continuity throughout. On the other hand, death only takes away the physical man; his spirit does not die with him, because spirits belong to the realm of the divine. ¹¹ According to the Quran, this spirit will get resurrected in another world on the Day of Judgement. This spirit will get a new body and continue the man’s journey of life. ¹² This will continue until God’s plan of separating the truth from falsehood and making the truth prevail is fully realized.

Since man dies on this earth and will be resurrected on this earth ¹³ and since Heaven is as wide as the universe ¹⁴, it can be postulated that in the coming decades, three more decades at most, man will live on other planets and in outer space. As changes on earth was made with man’s participation, so we can expect that future changes, including the Final Judgement, will be made with man’s participation. ¹⁵

Thus, it seems clear that we cannot take life to mean our brief earthly life. This earthly life, important as it is, is simply a stage in a man’s long journey to ascend to odd, his Maker, and to share in His perfection and freedom. The earthly life is an important preparatory period for the coming stages of his almost immortal life. ¹⁶

At this point, it is pertinent to raise the question of time and space. Civilization, as far as we know, is about five thousand years old, and man about a million years. Is this flow of time fixed? Could it have happened faster? If it could, what are the determining factors? Since Einstein and Heisenberg, physics has answered for us that both time and space are not fixed or static; they are relative and elastic. ¹⁷ The Quran has also revealed to us this fact a long time ago. ¹⁸ So, mankind could have progressed in an all-round way in a much shorter time and with much less pain and suffering than it has taken. The conditions are that man must exert himself , first morally and spiritually and, of course, also mentally and physically to make the world save and better for himself. The whole universe has been created for him. ¹⁹ The earth and the whole universe is both a test of his fidelity to God as well a battle-ground for the realization of his fullest potential as God’s vicegerent. ²⁰

From the earliest times, man has puzzled over the question of freedom and determination. How free and determined are we in our actions? Coupled with this question is the question of Evil. If God is all-powerful, why does evil exist? How can an all-compassionate God allow the genocide in Bosnia, for example? Of course, we cannot entertain the wrong thought of atheists and disbeliveers who think that that is a conclusive argument for the non-existence of God. But we certainly have to give some satisfactory explanations for these puzzles.

That man, to some extent, has freedom of action is proved by his ability to act freely in certain circumstances. For instance, he can choose his place of residence, his work or profession, his food and clothes, his life-partner and many other things. But to a great extent, a man, especially an ordinary man, without influence and power, cannot prevent wars and diseases and cannot determine the type of government or politico-economic system that he wants for his country, however important these matters are to him personally. However, these thoughts suggest to us two creative forces that are available to him to render him free to decide these things. They are the combined power of men acting together and the power of science and technology.

This does not mean that there is no determination. Freedom and determination must not be conceived as opposites. All created things exist in pairs, as the Quran tells us. ²² For man you have woman; for matter you have spirit; for good you have evil; for tall you have short; for white you have black. This law applies to all things. The same goes for freedom and determination. God created the world according to law; therefore, He knows everything, including the falling of a leaf. ²³ Yet, this law includes everything, including a man’s free action. Take the case of one’s action tomorrow. We cannot have exact knowledge of what we shall do tomorrow, however much we plan, for we may decide on doing them as we go to sleep, or early in the morning as we get up, or even cancel or modify some of them in the early part of the day, depending on circumstances. But God knows exactly what we are going to do. Therefore, looking from God’s point of view, everything has been decided for us (His decision includes allowing us to do certain things we want to do and not allowing us to do certain other things, all in His infinite wisdom); but looking from our point of view, some of our daily actions are completely free.

Such understanding of this question would exclude and reject fatalism, a bane, it is to be noted, among Muslims after the collapse the rationalist philosophy of Mu’tazilism in the third Muslim century ²⁴ and the emergence of a compromised freedom-and-unfreedom doctrine of the Asha`arites. Again this freedom must not be conceived as chaos. It is lawful freedom, or freedom within the divine laws of justice, truth and mercy. ²⁵

That evil, with a small `e’, exists is only obvious. But to believe in Evil (with a capital `E’) as an equal power rivaling God, as the Manichans have believed, is an error. God tells us in the Quran that He did not create men and jins, except to worship Him. ²⁶ Thus the devil, standing for evil in the world, is to serve the purposes of God., however paradoxical this may sound. It should be remembered that we said in the beginning that the divine purpose of the whole creation is to expose falsehood and establish the truth. How is man to know the truth and the good unless there exist falsehood and evil to oppose the truth and the good? Thus are evil and falsehood exposed and defeated.

In the beginning, the whole universe submitted to God, its Creator and Ruler, but among God’s creations, out of the moral freedom granted to man, a principle of rebellion arose. Rebellion against God means evil, symbolized in the person of the rebel or the devil. This is the source of evil. By negative example, the devil, by his opposition to the moral man, exposes the immoral man and thus renders the immoral man impotent. This is the meaning of the Quranic statement that even the jins serve God.

Therefore, God is not to blame for the existence, at times even widespread, of evil in the world. Man is to blame. Wanting freedom of action, he yet does not use his freedom to fight against evil, even as he complains when evil touches him. The widespread evil that we are seeing too obviously in the post-Cold War world (the horrendous Anglo-American-led aggression against Iraq and its consequent murderous U.N. embargo against that country, the British-sponsored Serbian genocide against Bosnia, to mention just two) is due to man’s current state of spiritual blindness and moral apathy. Even then, in the face of such extremes of cruelty, the moral man can be said to have stood up and defeated the foe, both in Iraq and Bosnia. This is proof of ever-recurrent divine protection for the moral law with which He has constructed the universe. ²⁷ This gives us the optimism to look ahead and to work towards the future good of mankind. If we remember well, we should know that God has given us this assurance when He related us the story of creation.²⁸

Although we said at the beginning that Izetbegovic’s book is profound, it is also frightening in several parts. One concerns the question of modern pessimism. The author, in spite of being a committed Muslim, seems a hopeless pessimist (which, however, is not borne by his courageous and unflinching struggle for Bosnia). At the end of the book, one finds this astonishing passage:

Ironically, the author seems to equate civilization with man’s increasing feeling of hopelessness. He states:

This is surely a wrong reading of civilization. The great studies of human societies and civilizations by Ibn Khaldun and A.J. Toynbee and others following in their footsteps refer to historical cycles of birth, development and decay. The birth and development is due to a great explosion of creativity on the part of the society or civilization and the decay due to that creativity’s death. Is there continuity and development? Recent studies, especially by the American historical philosopher Sorokin, point to what he calls multi-linear, not uni-linear, development.³¹ That means that human society and civilization develop, but not along a straight line; it develops along a line of concentric circles. History repeats itself, but with a difference -- with a movement upwards.

That is the right way of looking at society and civilization. All societies and civilizations contain both good and bad ideas and practices. When the good predominate over the bad, that society and civilization grow. Once the bad predominate, and no action is taken by its members to reverse the trend, that society and civilization is destroyed, and new societies and civilizations are born to take over from where the old left off. ³² Thus, we see the old civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt giving birth to Greek, then to Roman; then the Arabs under Islamic inspiration took over, inheriting from all the then civilizations, including those of Persia, India and China. Then modern Europe took over from the Arabs around the 15th century and carried forward the flag of civilization to all parts of the world through trade and colonization. In the 20th century that civilization is facing doom again for having regressed morally and spiritually, with two world wars already past, and a new world war looming.

Will the world be destroyed, along with what we call modern civilization, as Bertrand Russell, has forecast? ³³ Under the present conditions of widespread pessimism and despair, it is easy to agree with Russell. The good Alija Izetbegovic had come under the spell of that post-war pessimism before he fought the good fight for Bosnia-Herzergovina and, let it be said, for all humanity, as the brave Iraqis and others who have stood up against the technological might of the modern-day Goliath. No! Morality and right reason cannot agree to this forecast of despair. History is our evidence. If mankind had no other destiny but to be destroyed, then it should have been destroyed a long time ago. ³⁴ How many times in history has the fate of man hung in the balance between continuity and total destruction? The fact that man has survived the many occurances of major floods and earthquakes, big storms and fires, widespread epidemics and diseases in antiquity and medieval times, when modern science and technology was not yet at his disposal is evidence enough of the existence of a grand divine scheme in which his great destiny is placed. Now that man has greater grasp of natural and historical laws than ever before, it is less likely that he is targeted for total annihilation.

For that matter, life on earth itself is a miracle, as science has shown. The possibility of its occurance is so minimal that explanation of its non-existence is easier than that of its emergence. ³⁵ Therefore, it is inevitable for us to conclude that mankind has a destiny beyond and far greater than any human being or even any human generation can know. It is thus important that man should understand this and put himself at the service of this destiny, in other words, at the service of God. ³⁶

Actually, we must understand that there exists two plans for the world: God’s Grand Design and the devil’s evil design. God’s design is to put man in His Paradise, whereas the devil’s design is to put him in Hell. These plans weave and intertwine the historical fabric of man’s life in this world. In so far as he puts himself in the service of God and carrying out God’s design, he succeeds; in so far as he fails and puts himself at the service of the devil, he suffers. Man’s successes accumulate; his sufferings are temporary, although often repetitive. Ultimately, God’s Grand Design will prevail, since the moral nature of the universe and of man is the fundamental basis of existence, as we have seen. The role of man, using his freedom, is to realize God’s Grand Design with as little pain and suffering and in as little time as possible. In a morally-bound universe, God gives man moral freedom and lets him decide his own fate.

This fundamental truth is graphically illustrated in the story of Joseph and his brothers, where his brothers planned some evil for Joseph, while God had planned good for him. The first part of the story finds Joseph thrown into dire circumstances, culminating in his being accused of molesting the beautiful wife of the Egyptian governor, in whose house he was a trusted servant, and being wrongfully imprisoned for it. The latter part of the story finds Joseph freed from imprisonment and honored in Egypt and reunited with his old father, Jacob, and his erstwhile jealous but now-repentant brothers. ³⁷

Here we naturally come to the question of the occurance of miracles and of divine revelation. How do we scientifically explain miracles, miracles being defined as `supernatural’ events? How do we explain the Quran and other divine books? Is the Quran Muhammad’s composition, as some Westsern orientalists assert? If not, was Muhammad simply a passive recipient of the message? Does God intervene in natural processes? If He does, does this not make a mockery of His own law? What is law? And, finally, what is God?

All the above questions are no doubt related. We cannot try to answer some, while ignoring others that seem to us intractable. But we cannot assert the principles of rationality and science unless we try to answer them. It seems to us that we must attempt to answer them to the best of our ability. Let us take the questions of miracles and divine revelation first.

What we call `natural’ as opposed to `supernatural’ is simply what our cognizance (both sensory and rational) tell us is the order of things, or what we call the natural order. But our natural order belongs to a specific category of created beings, i.e. this material world, with its spatio-temporal dimension. Time and space exist for us, but it does not exist for God. Even for us, during sleep or during loss of consciousness, we are not aware of time and space. Time and space, therefore, are not absolute realities. They only exist under certain circumstances but do not under certain other circumstances. Once we grasp this truth, we remove the iron-clad separation between the two categories of the `natural’ and the `supernatural’. Thus, when Moses’s stick turned into a serpent, it was a case of the encapsulation of time: the matter, stick (standing for the vegetable world), turned into the matter, serpent (standing for the animal world which comes into being immediately after that), without the normal intervening time.

Now, if a stick can turn into a serpent, what is there to stop just anything from happening? Can your enemy destroy you by just wishing evil for you? Can you obtain good by just wishing? In other words, is the world capricious, or is it lawful? This is a basic question. Man has had to answer this question right from the start. For to live, and go on living, the first human beings, as do all human beings, must believe that living is worthwhile. This belief, in a way, is not based on reason. It is based on an instinctive feeling, the feeling that the world is good, and behind the good world is a good and loving Creator. This basic feeling in a human being is natural to him. ³⁸ This is the basis of the right religion of man, as this verse states:

Thus, although there is no absolute barrier between the natural and the supernatural, the universe is not capricious, but lawful, created and ruled by a lawful, rational, good and compassionate God. Therefore, the existence of evil in the world is both contingent and temporary. It is contingent upon man’s rebellion against God, and temporary upon man’s struggle against evil. Once man stops rebelling against God and fights against evil, man’s victory over evil is assured and complete. When this condition is achieved, the Hereafter comes into being with its Paradise (God’s Kingdom) and its Hell (the state of exile from God’s Kingdom).

The phenomena of revelation cannot be explained except in the context of a rational and moral universe. Neither can the prophet-messengers, among whom number the great among them -- Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad -- be conceived as passive recipients of the revelations. Because God is Compassionate, He continuously sends messages to human communities from the earliest times to guide them. ⁴⁰ Obviously, He must choose His message-bearers from among the morally-committed individuals of each community. Muhammad, whose life-history we know, is a good example of a morally-committed individual chosen to carry His final message to mankind. Thus, Muhammad’s moral and intellectual qualities rendered him suitable to receive the great message.

That does not mean, however, that with Muhammad, God stopped communicating with human beings. Such a belief would severely restrict God’s overwhelming attribute of mercy. ⁴¹ The Quran tells us in no uncertain terms that Muhammad was the last propohet. ⁴² That simply means that the era of prophethood, beginning with Adam, representing the earliest human communities, came to an end with Muhammad, as mankind enters the international stage and the true Age of Science, when prophets are no longer required. ⁴³ This does not mean that at that point God stops communicating with man. ⁴⁴ We are told that God is ever active and all the time intervening in the affairs of the world. ⁴⁵ Only now man, having reached the stage of spiritual adulthood, has to rely more on his mind and science to continue his journey. However, he has God’s final scripture, the Grand Quran, with him to guide him on his onward journey. ⁴⁶

There has been a notion that man, using his mind alone, can arrive at a correct understanding of universal laws, implying that God’s guidance is not necessary. ⁴⁷ The facts, however, have not borne this out. It is now generally agreed that the 18th century so-called Age of Reason has been a failure. It had not realized the high hopes that it engendered. Rather it culminated in colonialism, wars of colonialism and peaked in the 20th century’s two terrible world wars of imperialism. The closing decades of the 20th century, in fact, witnessed a renewed interest in religion, precisely because of the spiritual and moral failures of modern Western civilization.

Reason is actually a double-edged weapon. Is it the reason of the mind, or the reason of the body? The philosophers of the so-called European Enlightenment, notably Adam Smith, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Thomas Malthus understood and analyzed it as the reason of the body. Others, like Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel concieved it as the reason of the mind. However, the former interpretation carried the day and landed Europe, and the world with it, in the clutches of its own evil works.

At this juncture, we should perhaps examine the phenomenon of what is called divine punishment. Punishment must, of course, be paired with reward. One cannot exist without the other. Since this world is part of a rational, lawful and moral universe, we can be certain that good works will be rewarded and evil works punished fully in this life as well as in the Hereafter (which stand for our infinite future life). We know that human laws are not always just and that criminals are not always apprehended and adequately punished in this world. Conversely, in this world, good works are not always, nor adequately, rewarded. Therefore, it only stands to reason to expect that both the rewards and punishments will be fully executed in the Hereafter. ⁴⁸

This far is clear. But what about the so-called "natural disasters", like earthquakes, storms, floods, fires, epidemics and diseases, which, in total, have claimed many thousands, even millions, of human lives, including those of the innocent? What about the wars, especially the two world wars? Even as we pose the question, the answer seems to emerge. The answer is: human failure to act morally and to act in obedience to God. ⁴⁹

Take the case of the recent Gulf War, with its attendant results of starvation for the whole Iraqi population. Is Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government alone to blame for the so-called aggression against Kuwait, when we now know that the war could have been avoided had the Anglo-American neo-imperialists not had their way? Why did the United Nations Security Council go along with these two powerful members? Why was the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) unable to play its proper role to find a peaceful solution acceptable to both sides? Why did Russia and China, both veto-bearing members of the Security Council, not stop the war when they actually had the power to? Why did Saudi Arabia lend its territory for the conduct of Anglo-American aggression against Iraq? Why did Iran, Egypt, Syria and Turkey, important regional powers, not acted together to stop the war? These questions suggest the answer: current international community’s failure to act morally on the basis of principles.

Similarly, we must understand the so-called natural disasters. God relates to us in the Quran the stories of disbelieving peoples of iniquity, the people of Noah, the people of Hud , the people of Pharaoh’s Egypt among them, who were destroyed by these "natural disasters". They were no more or no less natural than God’s punishments to them for their transgressions against His commands. If, as we are told in the Quran, that everything in heaven and earth submits to God, sings His praises and obeys His commands, ⁵⁰ we must inevitably conclude that these destructive natural forces are behaving exactly as God wills them to do, when they occur. In short, they are punishments from God for our errant ways to make us remember Him and return to obeying Him. ⁵¹

The question that arises is why the victims should include the innocent, especially children and old people. To answer this puzzle, one must consider several matters. Firstly, although a person’s life is declared sacred by God, that life is to be served and sacrificed for the purposes of establishing truth and justice. Thus, truth and justice are higher than individual lives so that the principle of sacrificing lives for these noble ends is right and of paramount importance. In fact, it is this sacrifice that will guarantee the continuance of life. ⁵² It is also this that gives rise to the concept of martyrdom. Secondly, both good and evil are divine instruments to test man’s fidelity to God. Thus, they are to be seen in this relative, and not absolute, context. Thirdly, man is not only an individual; he is also a collective. While he must bear the responsibility of his own actions, he is also responsible for the actions of the collective. For instance, a good socio-economic order will benefit his children and descendents, just as a bad one will harm them. In this perspective, several human generations are, in terms of responsibility, linked together. What the older generation does or fails to do will be reaped by the younger generation.

Looked at from this perspective, the human family is one. They must either do good together, or they will suffer together. No individual is free from the collective and no individual is completely blameless. This would explain the necessary sacrifice that the relatively innocent members of the human family must make for the sins of the other members in the process of attaining felicity for itself. This understanding would encourage man to realize the extreme importance of his fidelity to God and of leading a moral existence.

Man must, thus, first commit himself to the belief that the universe is lawful before his mind can be harnessed to explain that conception. In other words, man must have faith in God and this faith is concurrent with his higher reason. It is for this reason that religion, a supra-rational conception, has existed from the beginning of time. This is because every society consists of individuals. The collective, at one end, and the individual, at the other, exist side by side, each working on and influencing the other.

In order to create the good society, the individuals must first be good. As God is the source of of all good, the individual must imbue himself with the attributes of goodness. This is the true aim and function of the Muslim rituals of prayer, fasting, obligatory charity and the pilgrimage to Mecca: to cleanse oneself of impurities and to be close to God. ⁵³ As individuals can become corrupt through imbibing corrupt attributes, so can society. Corrupt societies must therefore be reformed or changed by reformed or changed individuals. This is a truth that we sometimes forget, thinking that in order to change society, we must change the system, forgetting that the system itself came into being through our own creative actions.⁵⁴ Thus, the sovereign individual creative activity is of signal importance in changing society.

You can pray alone in the privacy of your house, or you can join the congregation in a nearby mosque, with the exception of the weekly Friday Prayer. This prayer which is a congregational prayer is performed on Fridays at the time of , and replacing, the noon prayer. It is not only a prayer; it is a prayer combined with a social gathering, with the sermon taking the place of a discussion and a debate on social issues. Thus, the Muslim prayers afford the people not only access to their Lord and Creator, but also to themselves. Thus, the personal and the social elements are nicely combined.

As in prayers, so in the other religious devotions of fasting, charity and the pilgrimage. The aim is both personal cleansing and social intercourse necessary for the fostering of the good society. For example, today the Muslim pilgrimage to the House of God in Mecca, rebuild by Abraham and Ismail, in commemoration of Abraham’s and Ismail’s sacrifice, attracts a yearly attendance of around two million people from all over the world. It is a vast concourse of human beings and affords a golden opportunity for developing, spreading and deepening the spirit of internationalism, humanism and cooperation among nations.

Unfortunately, it must seriously be recorded here, that the beautiful teachings of monotheism of the great teachers of the true religion -- Moses, Jesus and Muhammad among them -- have been invariably distorted by their later followers. The Jews rejected the prophethood of Jesus and Muhammad and considered themselves exclusively as the Chosen People of God, and thereby opted for the world-view of racism. The Christians rejected the prophethood of Muhammad and deified Jesus, resulting in the same exclusive world-view. Following closely in their footsteps, the Muslims idolized Muhammad, turning him into the favorite of God and greatest prophet and putting him next to God, ⁵⁶ ending with the same resultant world-view of exclusivism. Thus, one originally monotheistic universalist teaching ⁵⁷ became three, each claiming to possess the truth to the exclusion of the others, and all antagonistic towards one another.

For more than forty years the world has witnessed a deviating Western Christian community allying itself with a deviating Jewish community in a colonial-settler state of Israel, set up by the United Nations, to suppress a deviating Muslim Arab community. What a triangle of entanglements! All originating from the same teaching of monotheism! Surely, such chaos cannot be the finishing point of history, as the ideologue of capitalist liberalism, Francis Fukuyama, would have us believe.

Our essay which postulates the meaningfulness of life cannot conclude at the point of perhaps the greatest chaos in human history, the post-Cold War period. As man gropes for light during the waning years of the Twentieth Century, he cannot but expect to be severely punished for yet another transgression after his severe beating in the past two world wars. Can man doubt that his savior is God, the Most Merciful? This third beating will definitely bring him back to God and to a more just and peaceful world, seeing that he has thoroughly experimented with the world-views of materialism and asceticism and failed. The way is now open for the world-view of Islam, not the Islam of the theologians, but the Islam of the prophets ⁵⁸, whose teachings are completed and perfected in the Grand Quran. How much pain and suffering man would have saved himself from had he heeded the call of God to follow the Quran earlier on his journey through the world!