Q331 :May I take issue with you regarding an answer
you had given concerning observation that life expectancy is much
higher in Europe than it is in Muslim countries. In your answer you
said that lifestyle is responsible for such differences. This is not
true because it is reported in a Hadith that sometime after conception
an angel is sent to the fetus to write down its provision, life span,
actions and whether he or she will be happy or miserable. Hence, the
duration of every-one’s life is determined by what has been written at
that time. Therefore, nothing that he does or omits to do will affect
that. A person may smoke, eat fatty food, be lazy or do the opposite
things, and his span of life will not be affected. Your answer was not
based on any Islamic information, but on the so-called modern science.
You would have done better to confine yourself to answers that are
based on Islamic teachings.
A331 : No sir, my answer has taken Islamic
teachings into account, because God has instructed us to look around us
and learn from the lessons that life events may place before our eyes.
He says in the Qur’an: “Say: Reflect on what there is in the heaven and
on earth. But of what benefit can signs and warnings be to the
netmunity that would not believe.” The Qur’anic verses and the Hadiths
that call on us to study, reflect, take heed and learn are numerous
indeed. Besides, we have learned from Islam as well as from what we
see around us that there is a law of cause and effect which operates by
God’s will. For example, fire burns. Therefore, when you put something
close to a fire, it is burned. If you light up a match and put your
finger on top of its flame, you will immediately feel a burning
sensation. If you do not, no such feeling will be experienced by you.
This is an example of the working of the law of cause and effect. You
do not place your finger close to the flame of a match and say that
God’s will may prevent the fire from burning it. It is certainly true
that God may stop the action of the fire, but it is His will that fire
should burn. Therefore, when we place things in a fire they are burned.
This applies to everything and all conditions and situations in life. A
person who smokes has a much higher risk of suffering one of the
serious diseases that smoking causes, such as a wide variety of cancer,
cardiovascular diseases, chronic bronchitis, etc. Most of these are
fatal. Therefore, the effect of being a heavy smoker is likely to be
the suffering of one or more of these diseases, any of which can cause
death. That same person would most probably not suffer from the disease
which kills him if he does not smoke. If we were to say that he would
still have suffered the same disease, which is caused by nicotine or
carbon monoxide, when he did not have either of them through smoking,
then we are saying that an object could be burned without a fire, or
drowned without neting near water. Perhaps you would say that he might
not have suffered that disease, but he would still die at the same
moment, by some other reason. I would say that we do not know that, but
most probably he would have lived longer, because he would be enjoying
better health over a longer period of his life. Here we nete to the
Hadith which you have mentioned, and which is at the center of this
argument. There is no doubt that the Hadith is authentic. Let us not
speak about the details of the writing and why it should be written, or
where it is written, etc. We know than an angel writes down four
things, including the duration of the life of the yet unborn baby. Now,
the angel does not determine that duration. It is God who determines
it, according to His knowledge which is perfect, absolute, unlimited by
the confines of time or place. I have explained on several occasions
that God’s knowledge is perfect and netplete. Nothing is added to it as
a result of any event, because time does not apply to God in the same
way as it applies to us. When God instructs the angel to write these
four things, He is fully aware what the person concerned will be doing
in his life and what harm he will cause to himself and what damage to
his health he may perpetrate. He takes into account the effect of all
these on his health and knows whether he will have lung cancer as a
result of smoking or coronary heart disease as a result of drinking, or
he would be obese as a result of overeating and lack of exercise. So He
gives him forty or fifty or sixty years of life in accordance with the
effect of so many factors on his health and on his life as a whole. God
will certainly give a longer life duration to a person whom He knows
will be following a healthy lifestyle. Now the choice of lifestyle is
a personal choice, which we do by our own free will. Had our actions
been imposed on us by God’s will, then God would not have held us to
account for what we do in this life. It is because He has given us free
will that He subjects us to His judgment on the day of resurrection. He
knows that what we do is our own personal choice. Therefore, we cannot
escape the consequences. Moreover, there are authentic Hadiths which
speak of prolonging life. In one of these, the Prophet is quoted as
saying: “He who likes to be given an increase of provisions and a
longer duration of life should be dutiful to his parents.” Another
Hadith which uses the same wording in its first part mentions that the
results of increased provisions and longer life depend on being kind to
one’s close relatives. Again, dutifulness to parents and kindness to
relatives are things that we do by our own free will. They are not
imposed on us. But we should reflect that both the things that depend
on them – increased provisions and longer life – are written down by
the angel when everyone of us is still a fetus. Scholars have explained
this and given two points by way of explanation. The first is that
they point out a fact to which reference is made in Verse 39 of Surah
13 which includes this statement: “God may erase or confirm whatever He
pleases.” This is in direct reference to what is written concerning the
future. So, what has been written may be changed as a result of what we
do. The other explanation is that when the angel is given his
instructions to write down four things, he is told to write: “This
person shall live for sixty years if he is not dutiful to his parents,
but will continue to live until he is seventy if he is dutiful to
them.” Now, God knows in advance that the person concerned will be
dutiful or not dutiful and at what moment exactly he will die. The
angel does not know. Therefore, the extension in the person’s age as a
result of his actions is true in relation to all creatures, including
human beings, angels and all living things on earth and in the wide
universe. To God the extension is known in advance. Could we not say
that the same thing applies in relation to the lifestyle that we
follow. To my understanding, the way God has created us and the world
around us makes it clear that it is His will that we will be affected
by a wide variety of causes. Therefore, if we lead a healthy lifestyle
we are likely to live longer than if we are heedless of all the lessons
that life brings to us.
Our Dialogue ( Source : Arab News – Jeddah )