What is the Meaning of Life According to Muslims?
The ultimate bond between two things is love. And Allah willed for there to be that love between Him and His creation.
But forced love isn’t love at all, so there had to be free will.
Now, after seeing Paradise, no one would choose anything else, and so a neutral site was created — this world, the dunya.
And making people choose in front of you wouldn’t bring out their true choice, so Allah veiled Himself and sent messengers instead.
Having only one option to choose from wouldn’t reflect love either. So Allah elevated a disbeliever, Shaitan, and let him reside and learn the ways of Heaven for some time, so that he could pave an opposing path — a path of evil.
Evil, by nature, is ugly to us, and goodness, by nature, is beautiful, we call this the Fitrah(the natural state one is born in).
So to extract even more sincerity from us, Allah allowed Shaitan(satan) to adorn sins with tempting images and make good deeds look bland and require a lot of effort.
The soul is pure by nature, so Allah created the ego (the nafs), which pulls you down and loves temptations.
Then, to extract even more sincerity, He allowed disbelievers to defeat believers from time to time, and for believers to be in the minority in some places as well.
In summary, the purpose of life for us is to bring out genuine and sincere love for Allah.
In the hadith, Allah says, "He continues drawing near to Me until I love him." That is the ultimate purpose of existence.
True love is something that needs free will, distance, options, choices, challenges, tensions, and difficulties. It is a quest for knowledge of what is true and what is false, followed by the journey of acting upon it.
This was written by @DrShadeeElmasry, may Allah bless him, and I've been using this for over 7 years to explain what Muslims beleive to my non-muslim friends
For many, work replaced religion as a major source of meaning, and soon AI will displace much of that work -- leading us back to the most important question, once again.
Imam Al-Shafi’i was asked: “What is it to think ill of Allah?”
He replied: “Intrusive whispers of doubt, constant fear of a calamity befalling you, and always anticipating that blessings will be taken away all of these are forms of thinking ill of Ar-Rahman.”
- Hilya Al-Awliya
If you continue to waste your days now, you have no reason to worry about maintaining yourself for the future. You do nothing with your intelligence, nothing with your beauty, nothing with your time.
If you don't make use of your gifts now, what are you even preserving them for?
To continue doing nothing in the future?
This is the miserable irony of the hoarder.
Always collecting; concerned about loss; anxious over expiration.
In the end, they realise they held it all.
But because they never used it – it was as good as nothing.
Williamsburg Brooklyn NY.
It appears 6 or 7 more individuals was spotted coming out of a different manhole . It appears the men all had tools on them as well .
We have a real problem on our hands.
Unbelievable that Mamdani has gotten flak for skipping a parade that Smotrich—who is proudly overseeing the West Bank’s ethnic cleansing and annexation—and Eliyahu—who suggested nuking Gaza and bombing humanitarian aid—are marching in.
This is so true. Practically all the assholes I know support Israel. And all the compassionate, justice minded people I know have empathy for the Palestinians and are bothered by their suffering.
>70% of people are in permanent slight suffering because they are allergic to making ANY mentally tough decision when there is also an option to do nothing. rant:
No Bernie,
Hamas did not kill 1,200 “innocent” Israelis on October 7th.
Out of 1,200, hundreds were active duty occupation soldiers complicit in apartheid and the siege of Gaza.
There are many videos literally showing these IDF soldiers being captured or killed from their military bases all along the concentration camp walls surrounding Gaza.
These soldiers were legitimate targets. They are not innocent.
Several hundred more were massacred by the Israelis themselves who unloaded thousands of grenades, shells, high caliber rounds and other projectiles from Merkava tanks and Apache helicopters directly into cars and homes.
Israelis are not used to taking accountability but sorry no they don’t get to fire artillery shells into homes and then ask why so many Israelis were killed on October 7th.
There are too many reports, mainly from Israeli media, detailing how the IDF responded aggressively and sloppily to Oct 7th and carried out the Hannibal directive.
They couldn’t gain control of the situation so they decided to kill everyone.
Hamas did shoot and kill unarmed people in several video clips and in some cases we saw random Palestinians from Gaza (not Hamas) brutalize and kill people but outside of this we have not seen any footage, despite Israel claiming that Hamas “filmed their own crimes”, suggesting that they mass murdered hundreds of people on October 7th.
The loss of life is regrettable but it doesn’t change the fact that October 7th was justified both morally and according to international law.
Israel is the aggressor and the occupier, using violence to steal land and ethnically cleans the population.
Resolution after resolution has been passed condemning Israel and urging it to abide by international law.
Palestinians, including Hamas, agreed to the 1967 borders and acknowledging Israel’s existence.
Israel still refuses to honor Palestinian rights.
In response, Palestinian civil society called upon the world to boycott divest and sanction Israel. This was a peaceful nonviolent method to do what international law could not.
But many people, including Bernie Sanders, refused to make space for this movement and condemned it as antisemitism.
In the words of Yahya Sinwar, were Palestinians expected to just sit and wait and die like well behaved victims?
Bernie Sanders was complicit in the conditions that made October 7th inevitable and he is complicit in the rhetoric that supports the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza now.
He has been 100% wrong about Palestine from the very beginning, regardless of his performative empathy which has contributed virtually nothing to the movement.
He has actually stood in the way by not endorsing the bds movement for his millions of left leaning supporters to engage in.
Honestly, Mamdani and his PR team are incredibly savvy. They're doing exactly what they promised: rebuilding the people’s trust in government, but through perception first.
Take the Israeli parade. First, he announces he'll be skipping it. That dominates headlines and reinforces the image of a mayor willing to take a bold stand, even at political risk. People who were skeptical start questioning their skepticism because the move feels authentic and principled.
Then, after that positive perception takes hold, you get something like the video below. He still announces that he won't attend the parade himself, so he keeps the positive publicity. But at the same time, he says he'll send a member of his administration instead: Jessica Tisch, whom he chose to retain despite her family's well-known ties to Netanyahu.
Most people won't notice the distinction. A small number like myself will criticize it, but by then the mass deception has already been established. The public focus shifts from scrutinizing the contradiction to defending the image of a "principled mayor." The net result is growing support, deeper belief in the system, and no political cost for it.
This is the same pattern I saw with his pro-Palestinian messaging. "Free Palestine" goes viral, his supporters rally behind him, and his popularity grows. Then later, he starts saying in interviews that “Israel has a right to exist.”
When I called it out and challenged him directly, the base had already been manipulated into a loyal following built around a radical image of him. Only months later did my criticism start to go mainstream, but by then the cycle had already reset and repeated itself.
That's what makes the strategy so effective. The headline-grabbing position comes first. The nuance comes later. By the time people notice the difference, the public perception has already been set and he’s onto the next thing.
Every person in Epstein's operation was Jewish yet they want you to think he was CIA. Every major financer of Epstein was also Jewish and his lawyers were Jewish. Maxwell and Brunel also Jewish and of course so was Epstein himself.
Gee I wonder which intelligence agency was he working for, China?