– Was there a time when you would ask yourself,
why me or why did this happen to me?
– I do remember there was times
I would spend time in the library
and I would cry to myself,
I would cry to myself, I remember I had a notebook
and I would just write stuff and I would think, I would just sit there and I would just quietly cry to myself
and then of course switch back and go back to class.
And thinking back at it you know, in the early 2010s, in that era this is a big push of new atheism,
Dawkins, Hitchens and Sam Harris, this is their prime,
they're giving lectures at Oxford uni, their Youtube is blowing up, books are going out,
they're making it mainstream.
And you know, I encountered an explanation from that side
and you know, the explanation more or less
is that if this God is supposedly All-Powerful, All-Knowing,
He's all able to do things,
why bone cancer in little children?
– I'd say bone cancer in children, what's that about?
– It's wrapped with emotion
and it's difficult to answer the question when it's wrapped with emotion,
but when you sort of take the emotion out and you think about it rationally and logically,
I found that the Islamic tradition has got a really deeply layered answer to this
in ways that other traditions don't.
And I say this is because often when atheists engage with this question
and they caricature it, often they're responding to a Christian God
and a Christian understanding of God
and the Christian understanding of God fits that caricature
that they're responding to and it's a total strawman to the Islamic tradition, right?
So it's a total misrepresentation.
Why? Because in the Christian God He's all good,
it's only all good but in Islamic tradition Allah Subhana Wa Ta'la has revealed himself in
we have the 99 names like it's clear and explicit.
So for example Allah Subhana Wa Ta'la is the All Wise,
well if He's All Wise, then there's wisdom
and if there's wisdom, there's a reason.
So the question here is, what is that reason?
And I think what happens is when we go through challenges and difficulties,
we put ourselves at the center of the universe,
we put ourselves in the middle you know,
in the way and we say that,
"If I was God, why did I let this happen?", kind of thing,
which is what is termed amprophomorphizing God, right?
So and that's of course a bad thing to do in our tradition, right?
We don't do that.
So the point here is that there's different ways of looking at things
and different ways of understanding things, so in the moment I could not comprehend
because I'm going through that experience, there's so much happening on a mental, social, physical,
biological thing, it's confusing.
But when the dust settled,
I could have this intellectual engagement with this topic better
and in doing that I was able to appreciate the answer,
and so the question was, what was that wisdom?
If you talk to me 12 years after, the fact which is today 12 years,
I could appreciate the wisdom in so many ways, right?
In fact I would appreciate the wisdom so much so,
that if I ever had to rewrite my life, if God gave you the a book in the beginning
and He said, "You're going to be born and just choose how you want to live your life,
write down what you want and I'll do it for you".
And I say this really, I say this genuinely and sincerely, I wouldn't have it any other way
because what this has opened up to me is opportunities,
relationships, realizations that could not have happened
if I didn't go through those experiences.
I could imagine that if this didn't happen,
what kind of person I would have been?
– I guess you come to appreciate the wisdom of Allah Subhana Wa Ta'la.
I heard one sheikh he said it once, it goes,
"You see the pixel, Allah sees the whole picture".
You know, without limited understanding as human beings we need to acknowledge
and understand that we do have a limited intellect,
we do have a limited understanding of the world and how it operates.
So when we see the pixel,
we are oblivious that Allah Subhana Wa Ta'la has got this whole picture going on
beyond our eyesight and we only it only takes
the entire experience for us to appreciate that.