ARE YOU REALLY NOT ALONE?
The Delusion of Support
WHEN the Prime Minister of India, Mrs Indira Gandhi, was assassinated in the early hours of Wednesday, October 31, 1984, the culprits were the two members of her own bodyguard who fired the lethal shots. Sub-inspector Beant Singh, the elder of the two assassins, was a trusted member of her bodyguard for eight years. Mrs Gandhi had trusted him so much that when—a few months before the murder—a foreign reporter asked her whether she felt safe with Sikhs guarding her, she pointed to the young officer and said: “How could I not trust a man like this?” (The Muslim Daily, Islamabad, November 2, 1984). According to Newsweek magazine “Beant Singh was so trusted that he regularly was selected to drive Mrs Gandhi’s grandchildren to school.” (November 12, 1984)
When such betrayal occurs in the world, everyone stands up in protest and abhorrence. Yet they would be even more shocked were they to realize that every relationship, every attachment, every dependence of one human being upon another, is doomed to end in much the same way. When a crisis occurs affecting one party in the relationship personally then he will forsake the other. If it is a crisis for which he holds the other responsible, he will become the enemy of the other, who till then was his trusted, and trusting, friend.
On the Day of Judgement, all humankind will have to answer for their actions before the Lord of the universe. It will be such a catastrophe that will affect the whole of the human race. Relationships upon which one depended will evaporate. Everyone will be concerned with their own fate.
In the words of the Quran:
“When that Day comes, every suckling mother shall forsake her infant and every pregnant woman shall cast her burden and everyone will appear intoxicated, although they are not: the punishment of God will be severe indeed.” (22: 2)
“On that Day a man shall flee from his own brother, his mother, his father, his wife and his sons: on that Day every man among them will have enough concern of his own.” (80: 34-37)
The only relationship to survive the calamity of that day will be one that was based on shared submission to God. Only those who had a mutual concern to please God, and earn redemption in the next world by spending their lives in service of Him, will remain friends on that day:
“On that Day, friends will become each other’s enemies, except the righteous.” (43: 67)
