Shirk al-Asbab - Tim Winter (Eski)

The process of degeneration which seems to be predicted by all world religions is marked both by realities that anger us, and by the systematic abuse of anger as an emotion.1 When Babylon the Great appears, mother of harlots and abominations of the earth, how should the righteous fail to be wrathful with her? Surely the end times will necessarily be times of righteous anger? True religion must always, not least at that extreme point of history, allow anger at the defiance of Heaven and the rule of hubris, which will both intensify as the age wears on. Yet it must also be vigilant against the anger that is born of the desperation and sense of siege which are so common in extreme social and political conditions, and which is often a disguised anger against Allah and His arrangement of history. Success in ‘times of abandonment’ comes from endurance and self-discipline, driven by the certain knowledge that ‘verily with hardship comes ease’ (94:6), and that after the Day of Anger itself, all wrongs will be entirely healed. To achieve this balance the alienation from the times must not be divorced from the alienation from worldliness; on the contrary, it must be its urgentlyneeded support, lest we become merely another sign of the times.