It’s God who cherishes us

Citizens get embarrassed when they’re asked about well-being of their family and children. One says his post-graduate son is looking for a suitable job while the other says “my daughter is suffering from cough and fever and I can’t afford syrup and tablets prescribed by the town doctor and dental surgeon is fleecing me”. Yet another says he’ is worried about future of his boy because education cost has risen beyond his monthly income.
“You need not worry, God will help us,” heartens a neighbour. But a city old, who saw first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan being shot dead in Rawalpindi, asserts: God is angry; think why God is angry with us.”
The city old says Almighty God can create life out of nothing: God has but to say, “Be”, and it is. He can bring life from non-life and annihilate life. According to the Quran, it’s Allah who causes the seed grain and the date (‘khajur’) stone to split and sprout. It’s Allah who sends down rain from the skies, and with this is produced vegetation of all kinds: From some we produce green crops, out of which we get grain heaped up at harvest; and then there are gardens of grapes and olives, and pomegranates. In these things, and many others, are signs for the people who understand.
There’s no denying the fact that water comes from the clouds in plentiful abundance; the earth is ploughed, and the soil is broken up in fragments, and yields an abundant harvest of cereals (corn), and vegetable food as well as fruits that can be kept for long periods for many uses, like olives and dates. Besides field crops, we’ve more highly cultivated garden crops, both in the way of lofty trees and in the form of carefully tended fruits like the fig; and then we’ve grass and all kinds of fodder for cattle.
That’s how Almighty God cherishes us, but we’re very thankless: We forget and don’t practice the teachings of Islam; we’ve set aside the object for which we struggled to achieve Pakistan; we produce fake degrees for selfish motives; we prefer class system instead of social and economic justice; hence there seems no rule of law — but food price hike, unrest, load-shedding, unemployment, poverty and thefts.
“We don’t fear Almighty God, nor do we obey Him, we prostrate before the International Monetary Fund for loans; that’s why God is angry,” say every four out of five in Rawalpindi-Islamabad. “Why don’t we remember it’s God who cherishes all of us?”
zasarwar@hotmail.com