Question that bothers many in today’s world, some genuinely others raise it just for the sake of objecting religions, is that if God is all Benevolent then why is the suffering in this world.

Some of the people who raise this question are Atheists. Irony is that they don’t accept existence of God, but still dishonestly blame the non-existent (in their perception) for the sufferings of the world. If they are cornered on this point, then they take a stance that since religious people believe in an all benevolent God, we are showing them the flaw in their belief.

Dishonest or not, this question is a dilemma that religious people face every other time they face a so called philosopher.

Here I would also like to state that the true religion, valid in this age, should be able to satisfactorily answer not only this question but also any other question raised by the naturalists or philosophers.

Religions other than Islam, attribute sufferings as punishment of sin. When asked what is sin of a new born child, who suffers with birth defect or disease or suffers just because where she is born, like poor family in a poor country, they say that either it is sin of their parents as far back as Adam or their own sin in last incarnation. I would say, if anyone wants to accept this notion, he can but it doesn’t resonate with me. Mainly because it is just an assertion, there is no evidence or reason to accept it. Anyways, individuals with backgrounds of such religions tend to brush Islam with same brush, which isn’t right of course.

I am an Ahmadi Muslim, so I shall urge reader to open their mind to Islamic Philosophy and try to understand beyond their paradigms as much as they can while reading.

First thing is to see how Quran addresses this question. Quran 67:2-3
Blessed is He in Whose hand is the kingdom, and He has power over all things;
Who has created death and life that He might try you — which of you is best in deeds; and He is the Mighty, the Most Forgiving.

Death is the ultimate suffering and then there are countless shades to the life. But what is death? Isn’t it just the absence of life? Would death exist if there is no life? A person who never had a life can’t die. Now expand this understanding to all shades and you will understand that Suffering is just absence of comfort.

Here I want to mention a rare disease, known as congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis, or CIPA, in which people loose or don’t have sense of pain. Now expand this loss of sense for all kinds of sufferings including hunger, thirst, danger, hot, cold so on. It will be extremely unlikely for such senseless person to survive. Hence we establish that we want to have sense of suffering, so that we know when we are suffering and remove that suffering.

As suffering is absence of comfort, sense of suffering is in fact sense of comfort. Rather it is the sense through which we know our comfort or suffering.

Coming back to the Verse of Quran, God created death first, an empty space or filled space without life. At this stage there is no life. God created an Intelligent beings, who are in the state bliss, have knowledge of God, worship and praise only Him, the Angles. When it was time to create life God created it from inorganic materials of earth and the lowest living organisms were given the sense of comfort and suffering. Based on this sense God evolved it step by step to humans. This process is studied as evolution in science.

At any point in evolution chain if you introduce “no suffering” rule, evolution process will halt. Give it some time to think.

To be continued…..