Perseverance — Page 84
84 – the story of al-haj Rashid ahmad american Qur’ ā n, darkness is necessary to gain power and fitness for life. These three stages of darkness are necessary for the completion of the child’s development. Similarly, the darkness of death is necessary to properly allow the complete development of the faculties necessary for the second life. Even Hell, like darkness, is a preparatory period for rebirth. The period of death is a period of darkness. All of these three periods of darkness serve some good purpose preceding the death period, or the good to prepare the body to see the new life. They are good and necessary. The period spent in Hell is not necessary in the same meaning but it has been made so by the action of some men themselves. It is good for those people who are sent to Hell. Sin and disease of body both are absence of light and nothing more. This absence of light is not created by God but by man himself, shutting his spiritual door or putting obstacles in his health, makes his body change. So if darkness is something positive when it is not, even then the creation of darkness is the work of man, not of God. So it is wrong to say that God has created death in the meaning in which the word is usually used. We can say metaphorically as it is said in the Holy Qur’ ā n that God created disease, but not in the true sense of the word. So it can be said that the God of good is not the God of evil. As in many cases, the so-called evil is not evil, but good. We read in the Holy Qur’ ā n (89:17) “But when He tries him and straitens for him his means of subsistence, he says ‘My Lord has disgraced me. ’” Favors are bestowed upon man to test his mettle, and at other times to reward his good actions. Sometimes he is involved in