How can one explain that a Merciful God gives death, illnesses, troubles and suffering to the mankind and animals?

Looking at ourselves and around us, we realise that there are deaths, sufferings, illnesses inflicted on both humankind and animals.

There are people who are confined to bed or who do not have a normal life where they can enjoy like others. And all die (animals and men) without exception sooner or later.

So, why an All-Merciful God inflict all these troubles, isn't this contradictory to His love and mercy? 

To understand the wisdom, let's hear an illustration:

"...when making a precious garment, ornamented with jewels and embroidery, a skillful craftsman employs a poor man in return for a commensurate  wage.  In order  to display his skill and art, he dresses the man in the garment, then measures and cuts it, and lengthens and shortens it;  making  the  man  sit  down  and  stand  up,  he  gives  it  various  forms.  Does  the wretched man have the right to say to the craftsman: “Why are you meddling with this garment which makes me beautiful, altering and changing it? Why are you making me stand up and sit down, disturbing me and causing me trouble?

In exactly the same way, in order to display the perfections of His art through the embroideries  of  His  names,  the  All-Glorious  Maker  takes  the  essential  nature of beings as a model, then He clothes them all and especially living creatures  in the garment of a body bejewelled  with senses, and inscribes  it with the pen of divine decree and determining, thus displaying the manifestation of His names. In addition, He gives to each one of them a perfection, a pleasure, an effulgence, in a way suitable to it and as a wage.

Does anything have the right, then, to say to the All-Glorious Maker, who exemplifies the meaning of, “the Lord of All Dominion has free disposal over His realms as He wishes:” “You are giving me trouble and disturbing me.”? God forbid! Beings have no rights before the Necessarily Existent One, nor can they claim them. What is expected from  them is, by offering thanks and praise, to carry out what is required by the degree of existence He has given them."

As illustrated in the example, when things have no existence, God created them and gave them a form of life. When being nothing they came into life. The did not own anything, so there is no room for complaining about their current status. The owner, just like the tailor in the example put the garment of body on souls of animals and mankind. He is the owner of the garment, he can give illness, He can make blind, He can make crippled or He can make handsome. He can show all kinds of His arts on this body garment He gave us in return for nothing.

Moreover, mankind has the highest form of life. The excerpt describes this well in the following way:

"O querulous  man! You  did  not remain  non-existent;  you  were clothed  in the bounty of existence. You tasted life; you neither remained inanimate, nor were made an animal. You received the bounty of Islam; you did not remain in misguidance. You have experienced the bounties of good health and well-being!

O ungrateful one! Where did you win the right not to offer thanks in return for the degrees of existence Almighty God has given you as a pure bounty? How is it that because exalted bounties that are contingencies and non-existent and that you do not deserve   have   not  been   given   you,   you   complain   about   Almighty  God   with meaningless greed, and are ungrateful for the bounties you have received? If a man rises to an elevated position, such as climbing to the top of a minaret, and finds a high station, and on every step receives a large bounty, then does not thank the one who gave him the bounties and complainingly asks why he did not rise even higher, how wrong  he  would  be!  What  an  ungrateful  denial  of  the  bounties,  what  a  great foolishness it would be, as even a lunatic would understand! "

As the quotation explains, we have already been given the most precious thing viz "life". But not a mere life, not a mineral, not a plant and not an animal. Unlike plants and inanimate beings, we have a soul which lives forever and will have eternal joy (with body) if it is guided.

 

 

 

{Photos respectively taken from: "http://gardenofeaden.blogspot.com, topphoto.org, http://cat.bloctum.com/acollida/}

Even a man confined to bed from his birth has been given a great gift as he is not "nothing" but something existing, he won't go extinct but live forever in heaven with a fully-functioning body. Is suffering for a minute and then having an eternal joy something to be complained of? Indeed, the life of this world is like a minute when compared eternity, so why should it be against mercy to suffer for a minute to have an eternal joy?

Likewise, the suffering inflicted on animals can be interpreted similarly. They have souls which will go to eternity. They came into life from being non-existent. Is not that a great gift? Moreover, unlike mankind animals don't remember the past as we do, and they are not aware of what will happen them next which is a great mercy from their Lord.

I used to graze cows and bulls in my childhood, sometimes we would slaughter one, and when we would take a bull for slaughtering, it would not show any reaction as it did not know what will happen. We would take it to the place and tie legs and lay it down, but it did not still know that it would be slaughtered. When we put the knife, it understood that we were slaughtering it but it could not really feel it as it only takes a few minutes for its consciousness to die. So, such a mercy is given to animals in the form of not knowing what will happen to them.

Why God always replaces the face of earth with new living beings? Why some animals only live for a term like two days and then die? What is the purpose behind this?

To see answers for such questions, read here more:

http://www.nur.gen.tr/en.html#leftmenu=Risale&maincontent=Risale&islem=read&BolumId=8787&KitapId=499&KitapAd=Letters+%28+revised+%29