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By Mohd Abbas Abdul Razak, Ph.D
It seems that even the sky is not a limit for man. His insatiable hunger, his thirst for power and wealth, drives him to madness. Among all of God’s creations, man alone has never learned to say “enough.” Blinded by obsession, by the glitter of power and riches, he has committed the most heinous crimes and atrocities.
Avaricious and restless, he often wages war against others and seizes what God has allotted to them. Instead of using modern and sophisticated technology for the betterment of life on this planet, he employs it to create the deadliest war machines, tools meant to kill his own kind and pollute the very air he breathes.
Killing others is not what he was created for, yet he kills and kills as though it were not a sin. Beyond robbing others of their land and wealth, his craze for riches drives him to harm the environment. God-given resources meant to sustain many generations to come are consumed by man as if they must be exhausted in a single lifetime.
His obsession with power and wealth, manifested through the exploitation of natural resources, leads him to pollute the land, the oceans, the forests, and even outer space. When nature takes revenge against man’s wrongdoings in the form of flash floods, mudslides, or landslides, he cries out, calling them natural calamities; yet, in truth, they are caused by his own destructive hands (Surah Al-Rum 30:41).
Such a man realizes only at the end of his life that he was never meant merely to consume wealth and power, but to fulfill a higher purpose. This realization comes too late, for he must leave behind all that he has spent a lifetime accumulating. The millions he has obtained through wrongdoing will never follow him to the grave, nor save him from what awaits him in the next dimension of life.
In the end, a good life is balanced and moderate. One that cares for man, for the flora and fauna, and for all fellow human beings.
(The views expressed in this piece of philosophical writing are solely those of Dr. Mohd Abbas Abdul Razak, Department of Fundamental and Interdisciplinary Studies, AHAS KIRKHS, IIUM, and do not necessarily represent the views of Potret Online.)
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