Where Is Allah

The State of Atheists in Adversity

When a catastrophe befalls people, whether believers, disbelievers,
priests, profligates, they become unable to stand or bear it and they do
not seek protection or refuge from any of these creatures. Rather, they
resort to Unseen Power beyond these creatures. They do not see such power,
but feel it through their souls and hearts. Each nerve of theirs realizes
the existence of this Power, Mighty and Glory, even if they do not openly
or frankly express this. This particularly happens to the patients when
their pains intensify and medicine becomes of no avail. They all return
to their Lord and hasten to His worship. Did you ask yourself, why such
cases and others similar to it happen? Why do we find everyone who is overcome
by adversities, trials or catastrophes return to Allah? We may remember the
days of the World War II and World War I also, why did people return to religeon
and resort to Allah, even presidents and leaders led the prayer in the temples
and called the soldiers to pray and stirred up the incentives of faith and
belief into the souls.

I have read an article in (Al-Mukhtar, Reader’s Digest) concerning the
story of a soldier who was a member of the paratroopers unit during World
War II. At this time, parachutes were something new and very strange. This
soldier narrated his story saying, “He was brought up in a house in which
there was no one who prayed or remembered Allah. He studied in secularist
schools and led a life like that of the animals, i.e., he lived to satisfy
his lusts. But when he descended down for the first time and saw himself
swinging in the space and before the parachute was open, he found himself
saying, O Allah, O Lord and he earnestly invoked his Lord and wondered from
where this belief descended upon him. “Moreover, newspapers reported that,
the daughter of Joseph Stalin recently published their notes and in them
she mentioned how she returned to religeon after she was brought up under
the umbrella of atheism. She herself wondered how this happened? In fact,
there is no wonder in this, because belief is something rested in every soul.
It is an instinctive desire which is implanted in the depths of the pure
human-soul such as the instinct hunger, thirst and sex. The human being is
a religious animal who cannot escape the inclinations of this instincts which
is continuously seeking faith.⁴

This pure instinct may be covered by the lusts, fog of desires, demands
and materialistic requirements. But when fears, adversities and dangers shake
the soul, this instinct, throws off whatever is covering it and will appear
in its pristine form. For this reason, “the disbeliever” was called “coverer”
as we previously mentioned. In the Dictionary of Lisan Al-Arab (The Arabic
Language), the word “disbeliever” means “the one who covers something with
another”. It is odd to find support for this meaning in two statements which
are distant in time, place, circumstance and aim, but they are very close
in meaning. The first is for a well known virtuous worshiper Rabi’ah Al-Adawiyyah,
and the second is for a well known atheist French writer Anatoul France.
In displaying his atheism and disbelief, he says, “The man believes when
he discovers that, through chemical analysis of his urine, he suffers from
the disease of diabetes in the time where anthouline was not known. “Once
Rabi’ah Al-Adawiyyah said, “Such person bring a thousand proofs about the
existence of Allah. She laughed and said, “One proof is enough” she was asked,
what is it? She replied, “If you were walking in the desert alone and your
foot tripped and you fell in a well from which you are not able to get out.
What would you then do? He replied, “I would call, O Allah?” She replied,
“This is the Proof”. Moreover, it was Stalin who said “There is no god and
life is material and the religion is a fly which sucks the blood of the peoples”.
When the became weak before the horrors and blazing fire of World War II,
he ordered the priests to be released from the prisons to supplicate Allah
for him to achieve victory. The same thing was done by him due to the serious
pains of the disease and the trials of the death.⁵