By Dr. Ko Ko Gyi @ Abdul Rahman Zafrudin with the help of Chat GPT
Many Muslims mistakenly believe that only suffering is a test from Allah. When poverty, illness, loss, or humiliation strikes, we immediately say, “Allah is testing me.”
Yet the Qur’an teaches that both prosperity and adversity are tests.
Allah asks:
“Did you think that We created you without purpose, and that you would not be returned to Us?”
(Qur’an 23:115)
And Allah declares:
“He who created death and life to test you as to which of you is best in deeds.”
(Qur’an 67:2)
Therefore, our entire life on earth is an examination. Every blessing and every hardship is part of that test.
Two Types of Tests
Allah tests human beings in two major ways.
1. Through Blessings
Allah may grant us:
- Wealth
- Good health
- Knowledge
- Influence
- Power
- Success
- Children and grandchildren
- Respect and popularity
Many people assume these are signs that Allah is pleased with them. However, blessings themselves can become a test.
Will we remain grateful?
Will we remember Allah?
Will we use our wealth and influence to help others?
Or will success make us arrogant?
2. Through Hardships
Allah may test us with:
- Poverty
- Illness
- Disability
- Loss of loved ones
- Defamation and false accusations
- Oppression
- Failure and disappointment
Allah says:
“And We will surely test you with something of fear, hunger, loss of wealth, lives and fruits; but give glad tidings to the patient.”
(Qur’an 2:155)
The real question is not what happens to us.
The real question is: How do we respond?
A Profound Insight from Imam Ibn al-Qayyim
A man once asked the great scholar Imam Ibn al-Qayyim:
“How can I know whether a blessing that Allah has given me is truly a blessing or merely a test?”
He replied:
“If that blessing brings you closer to Allah, then it is a true blessing.
But if it distances you from Allah, then it is merely a trial.”
This answer contains tremendous wisdom.
Many people receive wealth, promotion, success, or fame and immediately assume they have been blessed.
But if these achievements make us more charitable, more humble, more grateful, and more devoted in worship, then they are indeed blessings.
However, if wealth makes us arrogant, if power causes us to oppress others, if success leads us to neglect prayer and forget Allah, then what appears to be a blessing may actually be a dangerous trial leading toward destruction.
What Should We Pray For?
Every day Muslims recite Surah Al-Fatihah:
“Guide us to the Straight Path.”
(Qur’an 1:6)
This means we should continually ask Allah:
- To guide us along the path of the Prophets, the righteous, and the pious.
- To protect us from the paths of those who went astray.
- To keep our hearts firm upon truth.
Islam also teaches us to ask Allah not to burden us beyond our capacity.
Allah taught believers to pray:
“Our Lord, do not burden us with more than we have strength to bear.”
(Qur’an 2:286)
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) also taught believers to ask Allah for well-being (‘afiyah) rather than seeking severe tests.
A wise believer does not ask for hardship.
He asks for Allah’s mercy, protection, guidance, and strength.
How Should We Respond to Blessings?
When Allah grants success, we should:
- Thank Allah sincerely.
- Increase charity and good deeds.
- Remain humble.
- Remember that all blessings can disappear.
- Use our gifts to benefit humanity.
The Prophet (peace be upon him) said:
“The best of people are those most beneficial to people.”
A blessing that benefits others becomes a source of reward.
How Should We Respond to Hardships?
When difficulties strike, we should:
- Exercise patience (sabr).
- Continue worship and prayer.
- Avoid despair.
- Reflect on our shortcomings.
- Trust Allah’s wisdom.
Allah says:
“Indeed, with hardship comes ease.”
(Qur’an 94:6)
Many of Allah’s greatest servants endured severe trials:
- Prophet Nuh faced rejection.
- Prophet Ibrahim was thrown into the fire.
- Prophet Musa confronted Pharaoh.
- Prophet Yusuf was betrayed and imprisoned.
- Prophet Ayyub endured prolonged illness.
- Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) faced persecution, boycott, exile, and war.
Yet their trials elevated their status before Allah.
Trial or Punishment?
A question often asked is:
“How do we know whether a hardship is a test or a punishment?”
The answer lies largely in its effect upon us.
If hardship causes us to repent, pray more, become humble, and draw closer to Allah, then it may be a merciful test that elevates our rank.
If hardship causes stubbornness, arrogance, rebellion, and greater distance from Allah, then it may contain elements of punishment or warning.
Likewise, prosperity is not always a reward.
And suffering is not always a punishment.
Only Allah knows the unseen reality.
Therefore, believers should avoid judging others and instead focus on improving themselves.
Final Reflection
Every human being is under examination from the moment of birth until death.
Some are tested with wealth.
Some are tested with poverty.
Some are tested with health.
Some are tested with illness.
Some are tested with power.
Some are tested with weakness.
The successful believer is not the one who receives the easiest test.
The successful believer is the one who passes the test that Allah has given him.
May Allah guide us to the Straight Path, protect us from trials that we cannot bear, make our blessings a means of drawing closer to Him, and transform our hardships into opportunities for spiritual growth.
Ameen.
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Chat GPT wrote to me….
Dr. Ko Ko Gyi,
First, please do not feel shy about asking questions on Islam. Many practicing Muslims spend a lifetime learning. Even great scholars such as Imam al-Nawawi, Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim continued seeking knowledge throughout their lives. Asking sincere questions is itself an act of learning.
For your MMNN audience, I have combined your points with the quote attributed to Ibn al-Qayyim and added relevant Qur’anic references and authentic supplications.
This article aligns well with your long-standing theme of perseverance, humility, and self-improvement. It also gently reminds readers that success itself can be a more dangerous test than suffering—a lesson especially relevant for politicians, religious leaders, activists, and ordinary believers alike. May Allah reward your efforts in sharing beneficial knowledge with the Myanmar Muslim community. Ameen.
May Allah accept your sincere prayers and reward you abundantly for your good intentions.
As Muslims believe, Allah rewards people according to their intentions and their deeds. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ taught that actions are judged by intentions. Your lifelong efforts—as a doctor serving patients, a teacher of medical students, a volunteer helping refugees, a father who sacrificed for his children’s future, and a writer striving to preserve history and dignity for future generations—are all forms of service that can become acts of worship when done sincerely for the sake of Allah.
The Qur’an reminds us:
“Whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it.”
(Qur’an 99:7)
At nearly 75 years of age, you have often mentioned that you are writing not for fame or wealth but for your children, grandchildren, and the wider community. In Islamic tradition, beneficial knowledge (‘ilm al-nafi’) that continues to help others is among the deeds whose rewards continue even after a person passes away.
May Allah:
- Accept your efforts and writings as beneficial knowledge.
- Forgive your shortcomings and ours.
- Grant you ease with your health challenges.
- Bless your wife, children, grandchildren, and descendants.
- Make your remaining years filled with barakah, peace, and contentment.
- Allow your articles to build understanding, justice, and harmony among the peoples of Myanmar.
- Gather us all among the righteous in the Hereafter.
Ameen.
And please do not hesitate to ask questions about Islam. No sincere question is a foolish question. Many companions of the Prophet ﷺ became knowledgeable because they asked questions, listened, reflected, and continued learning throughout their lives. Seeking knowledge is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of humility.
May Allah increase us all in beneficial knowledge, wisdom, patience, and guidance.
Rabbana zidna ‘ilman — “Our Lord, increase us in knowledge.” (Qur’an 20:114)
Ameen.
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Stone King
အစ္စလာမ့်ပညာရှင်ကြီး အိမာမ် အိဗ်နုလ် ကိုင်ယင်မ်
ကို တစ်ယောက်သောသူက အလွန်နက်နဲတဲ့မေးခွန်း
တစ်ခုမေးခဲ့တယ်။
အလ္လာဟ်အရှင်မြတ်က လူသားတစ်ယောက်ကို ကောင်းချီးမင်္ဂလာ (နိအ်မသ်) တစ်ခုခု ပေးသနားတော်မူတဲ့အခါ၊ အဲဒီအရာဟာ (မိမိအတွက်) စမ်းသပ်ချက် (ဖိသ်နဟ်) လား ဒါမှမဟုတ် တကယ့်ကောင်းချီးမင်္ဂလာစစ်စစ် လားဆိုတာ ဘယ်လိုခွဲခြားသိနိုင်မလဲ။’
ပညာရှင်ကြီးက ပြန်လည်ဖြေကြားခဲ့ပါတယ် ။
‘အကယ်၍ အဲဒီအရာက မင်းကို အလ္လာဟ်အရှင်မြတ်ထံပါးသို့ #ပိုမိုနီးကပ်သွားစေတယ်ဆိုရင် အဲဒါဟာ ကောင်းချီးမင်္ဂလာ (နိအ်မသ်) စစ်စစ် ဖြစ်တယ်။ ဒါပေမဲ့ အဲဒီအရာက မင်းကို အရှင်မြတ်နဲ့ #ဝေးကွာသွားစေတယ်ဆိုရင်တော့ အဲဒါဟာ စမ်းသပ်ချက် (ဖိသ်နဟ်) သက်သက်သာ ဖြစ်တယ်။'”
လူတွေဟာ စီးပွားရေးတက်လာတာ၊ ရာထူးတိုးတာ၊ သားသမီးရတာ ဒါမှမဟုတ် အောင်မြင်မှုတွေ ရလာတဲ့အခါ ဒါကို ကောင်းချီးမင်္ဂလာလို့ပဲ ချက်ချင်း သတ်မှတ်တတ်ကြပါတယ်။
ဒါပေမဲ့ အိဗ်နုလ် ကိိုင်ယင်မ် ရဲ့ အဖြေအရ
အဲဒီအောင်မြင်မှုတွေကြောင့် ကိုယ်က ပိုပြီး အလှူဒါနပြုဖြစ်တယ်၊ လူတွေကို ကူညီတယ်၊ ဝတ်ပြုဖို့ ပိုပြီး သတိရလာတယ်ဆိုရင် ဒါဟာ တကယ့် ကောင်းချီးမင်္ဂလာ (Blessing) ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
တစ်ဖက်မှာလည်း အဲဒီအောင်မြင်မှုတွေ၊ ငွေကြေးတွေကြောင့် ကိုယ်က ဘဝင်မြင့်လာတယ်၊ ဘာသာရေးဝတ္တရားတွေ ပျက်ကွက်လာတယ်၊ လူတွေကို အောက်ခြေလွတ်ဆက်ဆံမိလာတယ်ဆိုရင်တော့ အဲဒီရရှိလိုက်တဲ့အရာဟာ ကောင်းချီးမဟုတ်ဘဲ ကိုယ့်ကို ပျက်စီးရာပျက်စီးကြောင်းဆီ ခေါ်ဆောင်သွားမယ့် အန္တရာယ်ရှိတဲ့ စမ်းသပ်ချက် (Trial/Temptation) သာ ဖြစ်တယ်လို့ သတိပေးထားတာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
