FAITH or iman in Islam is premised on three basic beliefs: tauhid, or the oneness of God, risalat or prophethood, and qayamah, or the Day of Judgement.

Each is inexorably associated with the other: weak belief in one is liable to lead to faltering in the others.

However, the journey takes a different path towards belief in each, and once reached, the three converge on a single point: submission to God.

While the reasoning behind tauhid and risalat follow from reflecting on the systems of the universe, the latter’s ability to operate with unimaginable precision, and the necessity thereby of a Creator who must communicate with man through divine revelation through His designated individuals, we must ponder too over the existence of a day of reckoning that, in its microcosmic form, we face each day of our lives.

The Day of Judgement has vanished from our conscience.

Even the most hardened criminal must be naturally aware of what is right and what is wrong, by virtue of the inherent sense of khair (goodness) and shar (evil) that God has bestowed on mankind. We may repeatedly shake our conscience, drug it with vain excuses, or batter it into submission; but ultimately we face an internal court that calls us to justify our acts on a daily basis. In his excellent treatise on Islam, Al-Meezan, Javed Ahmed Ghamidi calls this a ‘qayamat-i-sughra’, which occurs in our daily lives, and brings each of us to a reckoning of our deeds.

When this happens to us regularly, and we find ourselves accountable for what we do, how is it possible that we shall not be held accountable for our lives as a whole and our just deserts be awarded to us one day?

The human spirit has been eternally dissatisfied, and in a state of constant search. We spend our entire lives looking for the elusive something that could quench this thirst within us; we seek knowledge; travel to the peaks of mountains and the depths of oceans; wallow in worldly wealth and fame, but are unable to find peace of mind and soul.

Surely, then, there has to be a place, somewhere, sometime, when we will obtain an answer to our constant restlessness, the sense that we ought to be somewhere else.

This world and its life are immensely unfair and unjust. People are oppressed, and those who commit wrong deeds seem to get away with it all the time. They prosper, with wealth and fame, and are even rewarded with worldly goods again and again.

Criminals and offenders come into power and run the affairs of countries, with control over vast resources. Disasters affect those who are ill-equipped to deal with them, and the ones who were responsible go scot-free, riding on empty slogans.

Wars are waged on innocent civilians in the name of national and global security and religion, and countless individuals are killed, maimed and tortured. It is rare to find criminals brought to justice. Surely, there must be a place and time when all who have done wrong could be questioned by all who have been wronged, and where, finally, everyone shall be equal.

During one of his nightly visits to see how people were faring under his rule, Hazrat Umar came across a woman and her small children living in hunger.

Reproaching himself severely, he returned, carrying a sack of flour on his back, refusing to allow a younger companion to carry it for him, saying: “Would you carry my sin for me on the Day of Judgement?”

When a great famine struck Madina, the caliph refused to eat either meat or consume milk, and took the minimum of sustenance, living with the famine-struck for months on end.

Today, rulers demonstrate a totally opposite behaviour. The ruled either submit in silence, or are complicit. The Day of Reckoning seems to have vanished from our individual and collective conscience. We have corrupted our souls with self-praise and slogans of how good we are to our fellow beings, spending our short time in this world in activities that serve the interests of families and friends.

We usurp the rights of others, commit fraud, make corruption an essential ingredient of our daily lives and are richer at the cost of others.

We lie and cheat easily, frame others in false cases, extort money and are accomplices even in murder and torture. We live as if we will never be brought to book for our (mis)deeds.

To each of us, God extends a lifeline of reflection and repentance, provided that innate good nature is kept alive within us. If, however, we insist on rejecting it, and kill our conscience deliberately, He may decide that we have chosen the path of evil of our own free will. We should all be aware of such an eventual possibility.

The writer is a freelance contributor with an interest in religion.

Published in Dawn, July 4th, 2014