Special Rabi ul Awwal Series (Part 2 of 4)

FREE WILL

For human beings to access, to progress to His nearness, they have to have free will. They have to be doing things willingly. For love, you need free will. Now, but your free will will affect the free will of the others. So whatever you do is affecting the whole universe. So Allah has to monitor that too. And when you ask of Allah something, He has to take all these things and still choose what is best for you and give you that, according to the rules and regulations and free will. They say, “How come Allah did not stop Hitler?” Well there is a free will that is going, there are rules and regulations, etc. If Allah stopped everybody doing bad or good or whatever they are doing from doing, there will be no free will. There will be no tests. This game cannot be played.

So a lot of things that we blame on Allah is actually of our own doing to each other. Allah does not want us to fight with each other. Allah does not want us to kill each other, steal from each other. He says ten commandments. We do it to each other and then blame it on Allah, “How come Allah let it happen?” We are responsible to Allah, one-to-One, family to Allah, group to Allah, tariqa [path] to Allah, as a group, nation to Allah and human race to Allah. We are responsible. Certain things that you do are in the personal level. Certain things you do are in the social level, national level, racial level, etc. So Allah says in Qur’ani Karim,

“And also protect yourselves with taqwa [self-vigilance] against adversity as a result of fitna [dissension], which will fall not only on those who are zalimun [wrongdoers], but also on some among you (believers). And know that Allah is severe in retribution.” (Qur’an 8:25, translation by the author)

So why is the good also being punished? Because they did not want to stop the bad. They were part of a group and they did not do their job, etc. So when Allah is destroying, if Allah wants to destroy the world, all of them are not going to be sinners. There will be also non-sinners, but they will also be destroyed because the decree is total destruction of the being.

If you can, you have to correct the wrong three ways. If you can, do it with your hand personally, if you have the authority. If you don’t, raise your voice, with your talking, saying. If you cannot do any of that, then try to change the wrong with your heart by praying.

As Sufis, we do not judge people; we help them. When we see something wrong, some mistake, we try to correct it with our mouths by praying and with our hearts by zikr [repeated remembrance with contemplation]. We only give our opinion when asked. If it is within our power to correct the wrong physically, we do not do this on our own; we do it with Allah.