Owning Calamity
\r\n Al-Shura (The Consultation) Chapter 42: Verse 30
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"And whatever misfortune befalls you, it is because of what your hands have earned. And He pardons much."
It is against the scientific way of thinking to oversimplify complicated issues, underrate serious issues, view difficult problems with an alarming superficiality or deal with major issues with the mentality of the uneducated and the practices of the dervishes.
\r\nIt is detrimental to our thinking that we should see behind anything that we do not like those invisible hands and evil foreign powers that had masterminded our plight wickedly and waited patiently until we stepped into the trap of our own accord. This may be true in some cases, but it is wrong to generalize it. Explaining events in our history to be the results of schemes and conspiracies, regardless of whether the events in our countries are political, economic, social or cultural, only bears two bad fruits:
\r\nFirstly, if such a feeling escalates, it breeds a sense of fatalism that there is nothing we can do about these satanic schemes because of the gigantic financial and intellectual capabilities of the forces of them and because of our own weaknesses and shortcomings. This way, we become \"chessmen on a chessboard\" and such a feeling would breed only despair and a destructive sense of defeat.
\r\nSecondly, this attitude prevents us from self-criticism and precludes any sincere attempt to understand our deficiencies, remedy our ailments or examine our failures and sins. It impedes any effort to look for the causes of our diseases so that we may find a cure for them. This situation will remain as long as any deficiency, neglect, corruption or ruin is seen as the result of a devious foreign scheme, not as the consequence of our own behaviour.
\r\nWe had often adopted this attitude despite the fact that the Quran teaches us to blame only ourselves whenever we are met by a misfortune or are the target of a calamity or a defeat, as Allah the Almighty mentions in the above verse.
\r\nCompiled From:
\r\n \"Priorities of The Islamic Movement in The Coming Phase\" - Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, pp. 115,116