@coldjoint,
coldjoint wrote:
Quote:(universal love and compassion) to its rightful place as the primary message of Islam.
He is lying here. Some things never change.
Don't interpret "universal love and compassion" too narrowly. At the level of human-attachment, it is difficult to understand many of the Bible stories that are so often regarded by secular critics of religion as acts of a cruel and inhumane God.
At another level, the same ostensibly cruel events can be interpreted in terms of universal love and compassion. Ultimately, we are brought into submission to God's will when terrible events beyond are control finally morph into blessings of deliverance, mercy, and redemption from sin and its wages.
In short, every cloud has its silver lining and the night is darkest before the dawn; yet we can't experience the ultimate love and compassion of God until the first light of sunrise peaks over the horizon. Before that moment, the temptation is to give up on God's love and compassion, just as Job was tempted by Satan to curse God for all his misery.
My understanding of Islam is limited, but I think it is explicit about God's will being ultimately incomprehensible. We can receive amazing amounts of insight and revelation, enough even to tempt us to hubris, while still ultimately being in the dark as to the greater totality of what there is to know.
So while universal love and compassion may be inherent in God's will, that doesn't mean that we have the capacity to understand everything that's going on well enough to define what is outside of the larger will of God. After all, if God could even allow His son to be crucified for the salvation of sinners, what else could we misunderstand at a human level as a failure of universal love and compassion?
Universal love and compassion is always the bigger picture, as in the poem, Footprints:
Quote:
One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with my Lord.
Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,
One belonging to me and one to my Lord.
After the last scene of my life flashed before me,
I looked back at the footprints in the sand.
I noticed that at many times along the path of my life,
especially at the very lowest and saddest times,
there was only one set of footprints.
This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it.
"Lord, you said once I decided to follow you,
You'd walk with me all the way.
But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life,
there was only one set of footprints.
I don't understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me."
He whispered, "My precious child, I love you and will never leave you
Never, ever, during your trials and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints,
It was then that I carried you."
https://www.onlythebible.com/Poems/Footprints-in-the-Sand-Poem.html
