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li-kay-lā taʾsaw ʿalā mā fātakum wa-lā tafraḥū bi-mā ʾātākum wa-llāhu lā yuḥibbu kulla mukhtālin fakhūrin-i
so that you may not grieve for what escapes you, nor boast for what comes your way, and Allah does not like any swaggering braggart.
— Ali Quli Qarai
Surah al-Hadid - Verse 23
23. In order that you may not grieve at the things that you fail to achieve, nor rejoice at what has been given to you. And Allah likes not prideful boasters.
Now let us turn to the philosophy of preordination of such afflictions in the Preserved Tablet as reflected in the Holy Qur’an:
"[You are afflicted with such calamities such that] you may not regret the things that you fail to achieve, nor rejoice at what has been granted to you."
The twain brief clauses actually present a solution to one of the sophisticated issues of the philosophy of creation. Man faces unpleasant entanglements and problems in the world of existence and many a time raises the question as per which what are the reasons lying behind such excruciating calamities when God Almighty is Most Gracious, Most Merciful, and Most Compassionate? Such calamities aims at warning man that he should not be attached to mundane possessions and glories, since the world is but a passageway or a bridge by which you are not supposed to be allured.
You are not supposed to regard it to be everlasting, since such attachment is the bitterest foe to your happiness as it makes you forget God Almighty and impedes your path toward development. Such afflictions serve as sirens alerting the neglectful and whips struck upon dormant souls. They symbolize intransience of the world. The point is that worldly possessions allure men and make them forget God Almighty. They wake up when the caravan has departed for long and they are abandoned in the desert.
Thus, God Almighty preordained afflictions and vicissitudes such that human soul may ascend to such elevated states that he may not be affected by pleasant and unpleasant occurrences. After the occurrences in Karbala’, Zaynab (as) said:
"I did not notice but pleasant occurrences preordained by God Almighty." 12
It is narrated that in his last moments in the battlefield, Imam Husayn (as) said:
"O Lord! I am satisfied with Your Satisfaction and I am patient in Your afflictions." 13
Imam ‘Ali (as) likened his eagerness to martyrdom to that of the infant to its mother's breast.14 If man becomes aware the reasons lying behind afflictions, he will not be envious, avaricious, wrathful, and hateful, since he knows that all afflictions have been wisely preordained. If we know that Divine Bounties entail obligations, we will not rejoice at them and if we know that we have to compensate for them on the Day of Resurrection, we will not regret at losing them. The blessed Verse ends by saying that God Almighty does not favor the vain. The Arabic words mukhtal and fakhur denote arrogant and boastful respectively.
Footnotes