Is The Reward of Goodness Anything But Goodness? (Quran 55:60)
Published in January 3, 2017
Translated by Ahmed Fathy
Firstly: Is the reward of goodness anything but goodness?
1- We have arrived to the USA, running away before the police would arrest us, on the 16th of October, 2001. At the time, we have been invited to attend a conference held in New York, about peace, and the invitation was sent to us via our friend Dr. Khaled Duran. Within this conference, we have made acquaintance with Dr. Abdelghani Bouchouar, and a new phase has begun in our intellectual peaceful jihad for Islam. In later conferences and speeches delivered by us inside the USA, we have been expressing our gratitude to the USA that sheltered us and provided a dignified safe life for us, rights of which we have been deprived in Egypt, our former homeland. When we have pronounced the oath of allegiance and have become an American citizen, tears flowed from our eyes with gratitude to our new homeland, to whom we take pride in belonging, because we have received dignity and safety. This American homeland has done goodness to us, and the reward of goodness is nothing but goodness, as per the divine law within God's sharia in the Quran.
2- At this conference of New York attended by us in 2001, a white quinquagenarian caught our attention; he was defending the USA angrily while engaging in a hot debate with someone else, and we thought he was an American of European origin, but when we got acquainted and got to talk, we were surprised to know he is of Lebanese origin who graduated from the AUC in Egypt, with good memories of Cairo/Egypt and Lebanon. We kept in touch via phones and emails. He immigrated to the USA later on, and with the passage of years, he has become a senator and later on the American ambassador in Bahrain. He told us once that he met with the late Saudi king Fahd, who was surprised to meet an American ambassador of Arab origin. Inside the KSA, one might be born and live there without getting the Saudi nationality; a youth we know, who prays Friday congregational prayers now with us, has told us that he was born there in the KSA to non-Saudi parents, and he was deprived of belonging there despite spending nearly half of his life there, and he suffered discrimination. This American youth loves his homeland, the USA, just like the American ambassador of Lebanese origin. Both the man and the youth apply 55:60.
3- A dear Quranist friend of mine suffered trials and tribulations of living in Syria under Al-Assad regime, before coming to the USA. He was imprisoned for years as a youth, and was released after he reached the age of thirty! Days ago, he visited us with his nice family. He told us about being daily tortured in Al-Assad prison, despite the court rule of releasing him because of his young age, and how many of the tortured ones died as a result, or put to death when they dared to look their torturers in the face, a 'crime' against rules in Al-Assad prisons. He told us Syria has 17 central intelligence apparatuses that imprison, torture, and massacre anyone at will for no apparent reason, and how the terrorist MB prisoners shunned him in the prison cell when he has converted to Quranism, and they blew the whistle on him whenever possible, to the wardens of the prison. After the Syrian civil war broke out, he left to Turkey, then to Egypt, then to the USA as a refugee along with his wife and children. He told us, but we do not remember, how many years he has been imprisoned, but amidst bad memories he recounted, he expressed gratitude to the USA. When accused via Facebook account that he has betrayed Syria by leaving it, he mocked his detractors by asserting to them that he would betray a homeland owned by a tyrant. Thus, he reminds us of one of our articles that conveys the same meaning:
http://www.ahl-alquran.com/English/show_article.php?main_id=15284
4- Our youngest son but one was born in 1986, the year when we were being interrogated in inquisition-like Al-Azhar interrogation for months because of our writings, and we have been suspended from work and deprived of receiving our salary. He is our fifth son, and he has lived within our family at the times when we suffered poverty and constant fear and fright within several years, as he has been listening to our criticism of the tyrant Mubarak and his tyrannical regime, growing up within the turmoil of ordeals and tribulations suffered by the whole family. He, along with our sixth son, and our wife have joined us in the USA in 2003, and he has been growing up into adulthood comparing between the USA and Egypt. He has become so fanatic in his love and passion for the USA, while hating the Egyptian tyrant; when his elder brothers would sometimes criticize American foreign policies in the Middle East, he would disagree totally while reminding them of how the Mubarak regime persecuted and incarcerated their Dad. If our fifth son is too much biased within his love of the USA, he is excused: he applies 55:60.
5- The ones never excused are those who have come to the USA pursuing the American dream and a dignified life, but after getting all what they want, they express hatred and animosity toward the USA, while defending the military tyrants of their original homelands. This entails the pivotal question posed by us to them: why have come to live in the USA in the first place, and leaving your original country then?! We have met many of such type and many of them are now American citizens and use the unlimited freedom of speech and expression to curse, vilify, and verbally abuse Americans and the USA, the country that hospitably provides them with every good thing. This type of people never know the meaning of charity and goodness expressed in the Quran, especially in 55:60.
6- Those who deserve to be cursed indeed are all these Sunnite Wahabis who immigrated to the USA to flee the persecution of Arab tyrants, and after they have been protected, helped, and sheltered by the USA, instead of feeling grateful, they have either committed terrorist actions or crimes of swindling and fraud in American soil or delivered speeches, sermons, and discourses that incited terrorism and massacring Americans who helped them in charity and goodness. Wahabi Sunnite sheikhs in most American and European mosques who deliver hate sermons and speeches inciting animosity toward the West are the sworn foes and arch-enemies of Islam, and they tarnish its name by misusing and distorting its sharia and disregarding its Quranic high values and principles. They know nothing about goodness and charity as the supreme Quranic values. We wonder at their demonstrations in the EU countries, with their ISIS-like appearance and ugly beards, cursing the countries that shelter and help them, forgetting the tyrants that persecuted them in their original homelands. They are disgracing humanity before they are disgracing Islam by ascribing themselves to it, but Islam/the Quran is innocent of them and their deeds. They never know anything about 55:60 in the Quran, nor do they care to read, ponder, and apply the Quran at all.
Lastly: degrees of goodness and charity in Islam:
1- It is not part of charity and goodness when a wronged party who suffer injustice declare their grievances, but it is part of justice to declare and complain of injustice, and the wronged party is excused: "God does not like the public uttering of bad language, unless someone was wronged. God is Hearing and Knowing." (4:148). This means that as for charity and goodness, they are applied in that case when a wronged party forgive the unjust, aggressive party, but if the wronged party cannot, it is excusable to be outspoken and vociferous in cursing the aggressive unjust party: and this we do a lot in our writings here.
2- Wahabi aggressive and unjust terrorists, whose sharia laws incite terrorism, massacring of innocent ones, indiscriminate killings, and indiscriminate sex/rape jihad, never heard of this Quranic verse because they are disbelievers in the Quran: "God commands justice, and goodness, and generosity towards relatives. And He forbids immorality, and injustice, and oppression. He advises you, so that you may take heed." (16:90). The word ''relatives'' here refers also to all those peaceful people near one, not just one's family members.
3- Charity and goodness leading to forgiveness are above the value of justice, as we infer from the following verse: "The repayment of a bad action is one equivalent to it. But whoever pardons and makes reconciliation, his reward lies with God. He does not love the unjust." (42:40). This applies within individual relations and dealings with people as well as when a Muslim/Quranist country of justice and human rights deals with an aggressive country that launches military war against it; a Muslim, just country can engage into self-defensive war, as we deduce from the following verses: "And fight in the cause of God those who fight you, but do not commit aggression; God does not love the aggressors." (2:190); "…Whoever commits aggression against you, retaliate against him in the same measure as he has committed against you. And be conscious of God, and know that God is with the righteous." (2:194). Hence, it is a charity deed to forgive and pardon those who have committed aggressions against us, as God will love and reward us, as charitable righteous ones, if we do so, and He hates the unjust, the transgressors, and the aggressors.
4- This type of charity and goodness leading to forgiveness is higher than justice/retribution, and it has two degrees. The lower degree of charitable forgiveness is to pardon the aggressor or the unjust party, just to forgive and forget, as in 42:40. The higher degree of charitable forgiveness is to perform actions signifying this pardon by being charitable indeed with the unjust/aggressive party: "Repel evil deeds by doing good deeds …" (23:96). This higher degree is reached by few lucky ones applying it, who are indeed pious and love God Who will reward them generously in Heaven: "Good deeds and evil deeds are not equal; repel evil ones with good ones, and the person who was your enemy becomes like an intimate friend. But none will attain it except those who persevere, and none will attain it except the very fortunate." (41:34-35). This means that by doing good deeds to one's enemy, this foe/enemy will feel mightily ashamed of himself/herself and will become a good friend to us, because we addressed the goodness side of this enemy. This charity/goodness leading to forgiveness is an essential part of Quranic sharia of Islam. It is very insulting to the name of Islam and to the Quran to call Wahabis by the media appellation 'Islamists'; this is very wrong indeed.
5- Within a live TV show aired on an American TV channel, we have watched a serial killer who murdered tens of young women being led to the execution room to be put to death, and as per traditions, family members of the victims came to address the criminal who was about to meet his death. It is normal, typical, and usual that each family member would deliver a short speech that mourns the victim and curses the criminal who was to blame for murdering the victim. The serial killer looked at each of them in total indifference as if he were proud of his heinous crimes. Until a sexagenarian father of a victim delivered his short speech of how he misses his murdered daughter, and he addressed the criminal by saying: "I forgive you, sir." The serial killer burst out crying and weeping; this means that the charity words of this sexagenarian aroused the seed of goodness inside this criminal.