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The Trial of Faith: Doubt and Trust
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The whole Abrahamic experience unveils the essential \r\n dimension of faith in the One. Abraham, who is already very old \r\n and has only recently been blessed with a child, must undergo the \r\n trial of separation and abandonment, which will take Hagar and their \r\n child, Ishmael, very close to death. His faith is trust in God: \r\n he hears God's command - as does Hagar - and he answers it despite \r\n his suffering, never ceasing to invoke God and rely on Him. Hagar \r\n questioned Abraham about the reasons for such behaviour; finding \r\n it was God's command, she willingly submitted to it. She asked, \r\n then trusted, then accepted, and by doing so she traced the steps \r\n of the profound \"active acceptance\" \r\n of God's will: to question with one's mind, to understand with one's \r\n intelligence, and to submit with one's heart. In \r\n the course of those trials, beyond his human grief and in fact through \r\n the very nature of that grief, Abraham develops a relationship with \r\n God based on faithfulness, reconciliation, peace, and trust. God \r\n tries him but is always speaking to him, inspiring him and strewing \r\n his path with signs that calm and reassure him.
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Indeed, trials of faith are never tragic in Islamic \r\n tradition. All the messengers, like Abraham, experienced the trial \r\n of faith and all have been, in the same manner, protected from themselves \r\n and their own doubts by God, His signs, and His word. Their suffering \r\n does not mean they made mistakes, nor does it reveal any tragic \r\n dimension of existence: it is, more simply, an \r\n initiation into humility, understood as a necessary stage in the \r\n experience of faith.
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