بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the name of Allah, the All-Compassionate, the All-Merciful. All praise and thanks is due to Him in every situation and blessings be upon all of the messengers sent by God to guide humanity to the ways of peace.
فوسوس إليه الشيطان قال يا ادم هل أدلك على شجرة الخلد و ملك لا يبلى
ٍSo Shaitan whispered to him, “Oh Adam, shall I show you the tree of eternity and of a kingdom that will never end? (9:120)
When Adam was in the garden of Eden, Adam’s position in the Garden was blessed. He was never thirsty or hot, nor hungry or naked. He was not suffering, and he was even warned by God not to listen to Shaitan. Yet still Shaitan tempted him with promises of eternal life and endless power.
This promise of Shaitan to the first man is repeated to all of us through the ages in different forms and guises. What does it mean? It is the illusion that the recipient can overcome his limitations and his dependence on God, his creator who has power over his life and death. It is the idea that the human can leave behind his vulnerability and his dependence, and achieve huge power and glory – wealth, status and respect.
The promises of Shaitan are illusions because they trick us into doing something which causes huge problems. With the illusion always comes at some huge cost, like when Faust sold his soul, or with unanticipated drawbacks – as exemplified by the story of King Midas. Every time we listen to them, we are forgetting what my father says: there is no such thing as a free lunch!
These stories hold a deep truth: life is not designed to get us exactly what we want with no consequences. The Qur’an tells us that life is a test and a struggle, and we will be accountable for our actions -either in this life, or at the end of our life when we return to our Creator and he looks at the bill for our lunch. It is not possible to go after our desires and avoid tests and struggles.
“Competition for worldly increase diverts you, until you visit the graveyards. Nay, you will know. Then, no – you will know. Then you will know with the knowledge of certainty, that you will see the hellfire. Then you will surely see it with the eye of certainty. Then, you shall certainly be asked on that day about the pleasures.” (Surah 102)
Yet a free lunch is surely what technology promises us today and why it is an illusion. It is the idea that if we can just get enough knowledge, that we can come up with a technological solution to every problem in our lives and even more than that, fulfil our deepest desires and create a paradise on earth, by our own devices. That we can forget about God and leave religion in the past with superstitious people ignorant of science who did not understand how the world worked.
There are scientific laws which govern our universe. But in addition to these there are laws which govern our destiny which are the real rules of the game we are playing here. If we do good, then we will have a good end, and this is the case even for societies which are not believing, but which are acting for the benefit of mankind and the world. If we do bad, we will regret it and be destroyed. In Arabic, these rules are called Sunnat-Ullah, (33:38 33:62 48:23) and there is no changing them.
People who want to ignore religion are like characters in a video game, who are just walking around exploring the scenery and having fun; however, they have no purpose or role. They don’t bother reading the rules for playing the game because they think they have figured out a way of having more fun in the game than going on the missions or thinking about the designer who encoded them. They tell each other that the game evolved by itself with no need for a designer and therefore the rules were just made up by previous players trying to make sense of bugs in the code. They don’t know what happens to people who disappear from the level that they are on, but as they leave a trace behind on that level, they disbelieve the claim that there are other levels that the person will be reincarnated within, or that the next level will be something called heaven or hell. As they only have access to the coding at this level, so they will work on the presumption that there is only this level. The more scientifically-minded believe that if they work hard enough to figure out all the coding, then they can get rid of the problems, avoid elimination, and write rules of their own that will make the game even better and more awesome. Will such people succeed, or lose? Are they safe in the assumptions they make? Are they in control of the technology?
In fact, it is not only moderns that can think that God can treated as something which can be explained away and ignored. Pharaoh, thousands of years ago, also had this mentality despite the fact he did not have anything like our modern knowledge. He too thought that scientific knowledge could prove or disprove God. We can see this as he tried to build a tall tower to look for the God of Moses in the sky (40:36-37). He told his people that he was their greatest Lord, (79:24) forgetting that he was mortal. He believed in the power of his magicians. He thought that his way of life was exemplary (Surah 20:63).
“His self-existence Pharaoh kept in mind
And to His workshop therefore he stayed blind;
That’s why he felt he could change destiny,
To make fate turn back from his door and flee”
Rumi, the Masnawi, book 2, lines 69-72, translated by Jawid Mojaddedi, Oxford World Classics, 2007.
To the Muslim, our improved scientific knowledge only gives us a better understanding of the power and greatness of our Creator and of our dependence upon Him. We now know that the universe is far bigger and older than we thought in the past. In fact, this has been intended by God, who tells us that he will show us his signs on the horizons and in our own selves until we are certain of the truth.
There is a lot more to be said about this topic, starting with the way in which our relationship with technology can be positive or negative, which insha’allah will be continued in the future.
