and sometimes life seems to come crashing down on us; with all the people we have given shelter to in our hearts, with all the foundations we have laid down beneath our feet for us to be able to walk with confidence on what we have built with our own hands; with the millions of footsteps across the ground we have marked our territory on; then from the most unexpected of places; from up above in the ceiling; it comes crashing…
and perhaps Allāh عز و جل takes something from us that He gave us in the first place; whether it is a life we never created with our hands; or wealth we never deserved; or a loved one who we held with a grip tighter than the roller coaster ride that we lived through; or a limb; or something that someone once gifted us; and now took away; and suddenly, the questions begin to flow through…
“why me? why me? why am i being punished for this? why me? why did i have to go through this? why me?”
and suddenly we delve into philosophy asking questions that have no answers; we become geographers walking into unexplored regions in the crevices of our minds, into foreign lands we never knew existed; and we become historians and begin to look at our past and where perhaps we went wrong; and we become poets, trying to connect two distinct concepts and events in our lives like metaphors to make sense of why things happened the way it happened; and we become mathematicians majoring in geometry, trying to calculate how we became so distant from our Lord, trying to draw parallels, and the points which shaped what our lives have turned into; slowly, but surely we become visual artists drawing ourselves closer and closer to depression;
and the same question remains: “why me?”
until we really begin to put this question into perspective; yes…why you?
in a world full of homelessness, and poverty, and famine, and cannibalistic stomachs that begin to eat itself from the inside out of hunger, why do you get to not suffer from absence of food in your fully stocked fridge? why you? in a world where people had to make shelter out of cardboard boxes in the intersection of two dumpsters, why do you get to live in a home surrounded by walls and heating in the cold winters? why you? why do you get to live in a house or an apartment and not them? what favour have you done for your Lord, that He did not test you by taking your home away? why you? in an earth where innocent children can only clothe themselves with paper to cover their privates, where eight-year old girls have to go to the darkest parts of the streets to let monsters tear their private parts open just to be able to eat something with the money they made, why did you get to enjoy a healthy and secure childhood? why you? what have you done to deserve it? why you? in a planet full of bloodshed; where safety is about as foreign as hope, where people live somewhere, in nowhere, where even vultures do not feel safe to fly into the smoke to benefit off the dead flesh, because bombs and missiles are the dominant birds of prey in the top of the food chain; where just one explosion turns homes into ashes; turns communities into corpses; turns families into orphans; turns lovers into single mothers; why do you, in your comfortable life get to sit there and ask, “why me?” why you? why you? what have you done to deserve to be where you are and not be alongside those who have to witness the likes of the dogs of the Khawārij of ISIS rape their innocent children in front of their very eyes that drip of the water their throats never got to taste? why you?
in a world full of hiv and aids, and every permutation of diseases full of people with no legs and no arms; or with legs and arms but that are numb and in paralysis; full of people lying like a vegetable on a mattress and the only thing they can move is their eyes; one blink for yes, two blinks for no; under a sky full of people who only experience darkness, who never will understand what the colour ‘blue’ looks like, because their whole lives they never had eyesight; above a ground full of children who would pass for just another child, until you speak to them; full of schizophrenic, full of mentally challenged, full of individuals who have been just been told, “you have two days to live”; full of people who once had feet but lost them; full of lovers who lost their loved ones; full of queens that once had physical beauty but had acid thrown on their face and never looked the same; full of the hopeful who once could see, but lost their eyesight; who once could walk but lost their feet; who once could crawl but lost their arms; who once wanted a family but were told they cannot have children; how dare you, in all of this, look at yourself and think “why me?” yes, why you? why do you get to have your health and yet be ungrateful? why you? why could you not have lost your eyesight instead of them? why you? why did you not deserve to lie on a bed for the rest of your life never being able to do anything but blink? why you?
under clouds full of children who had their childhood scarred; who had parents and uncles who took their virginity; who will never be able to save themselves for the love of their life due to what some demon wearing human skin desired for a few minutes; who were raised in houses that were not homes but prisons; who were raised under two parents who were never there except to neglect them; who were raised to witness the one who gave birth to them bleeding because of the one that is supposed to love them? then why you? why did you not deserve that childhood? why did you deserve to be raised with two parents who were there for you, but you still never call anymore? why did you deserve to have parents who gave you a place to live, and arms to find comfort, and food to keep you full yet the only thing they got from you was your oppression; why you? why you? why do you deserve to ask, “why me?”
مَنْ يُرِدِ اللَّهُ بِهِ خَيْرًا يُفَقِّهْهُ فِي الدِّينِ
The Prophet ﷺ said: “If Allah wants to do good for somebody, he makes him comprehend the Religion (i.e. Islam).” [Bukhari #3116]
so why you? why did Allāh let you read His Book and granted you understanding? why you? why not the Christian who lives two doors from you and reads that same Book but believes it to be written by someone foolish? so why you? why did Allāh not make you that Christian, and not make that Christian you? why did Allāh give you understanding? what did you do to deserve it? what did you do before you were born that made you deserving of this gift? why you? why you? why you, when you are so ungrateful? why do you get to read a verse from the Qur’an, and not twist it like ISIS does? why did Allāh want good for you and not the one beside you? the one to your left who reads that same hadīth and could not understand it, yet you are able to apply it correctly in your life? why you? why did Allāh not make you one of those who have been lead astray by the deviant sects, the Sufis, and the Jahmiyyah, and Shia Rāfidah, and the Qadariyyah, and the Ash’aris, and the Khawārij, and the Maturīdis, and the Ikhwān al-Muflisīn, and the Tablīghis, and the hundreds of permutations that they have? why did He give you, someone who never did anything to deserve it, the correct understanding of your religion, the same way the Companions of the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ understood it? why you? why did He not lead you astray? why you? why do you deserve that light when you are still questioning, “why me?”
إذا أحب الله قوما ابتلاهم
The Prophet ﷺ said: “If Allaah loves a people, He tests them.” [Saheeh al-Jaami #285]
so why you? why does Allāh love you when you do not even appreciate it? why did He not test them? why did the person you are looking at, and envious of, and wondering “why me, and why not them?” why did He not test them? why did Allah love you that He tested you with what He tested you with, and yet the one you are looking at did not receive that love because they did not receive that test? why you? why you? how dare you ask, “why me?” why not you?
why not you? Allāh gave you a healthy body, Allāh protected you from being abused as a child sexually, Allāh protected you from the fear of not waking up to the sounds of bombs in your neighbourhood, Allāh protected you from hunger, and from prostitution, from abusive parents, from paralysis, from blindness, from having no ‘aql, from being barren, from having your future destroyed because all it took was one moment to spill acid on your face; Allāh protected you from having homes built with pieces of the same cardboard people move homes with; Allāh protected you from orphanage, from disbelief and kufr by giving you Tawhīd; and with all this protection, Allāh blessed you with wealth that you are blind to see, hundreds of dollars on your smartphone, a laptop, a house full of heat that can outlast the winter and rain, full of lights that can substitute for a sun that disappears every night; Allāh gave you a fridge full of food, with designer clothing to decorate your flesh, He gave you ‘aql, He gave you a body free of disease, He gave you beauty in your inside and outside your flesh; He gave you loved ones who love you and ones you love; He gave you fahm (understanding) of the religion, when the majority of people misunderstand the same verse you just read; and He gave you trials because He loves you; so why not you? when after all this, you can only ask, “why me?” and be so ungrateful? when Allāh could have made you an atheist or a hypocrite, and yet out of His Mercy He gave you Islām; so why not you, when you were blessed with so much and never thanked Him for what you still have, despite the little bit He took back? why not you? why you? do you really deserve it? what have you done to really deserve it?
وَإِن تَعُدُّوا نِعْمَةَ اللَّهِ لَا تُحْصُوهَا ۗ إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَغَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ - 16:18
And if you would count the graces of Allah, never could you be able to count them. Truly! Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful. [An-Nahl: 18]