Tom Facchine – An Exploration into the Depths of Islam’s Guidance

			Allah says in the Quran that he wants ease for us. And this is something that's really essential and
central to who Allah is that he has goodwill to us. He wants us to succeed. But some people might be
confused. And they might think, Well, okay, if Allah wants ease for us, then why doesn't he just let
us do whatever we want, right? There's all these rules I have to follow. I can't do this, I can't do
that. I have to do pray five times a day and dress a certain way and all these limits. So how do we
square those two things? How do we say that Allah subhanaw taala wants ease for us? And yet he
doesn't let us do whatever we want? Well, that's because the ease that Allah wants for us is in
		

			Islam, right? Islam actually, is the ease. Now that might seem counterintuitive at first, because we
have this idea of negative freedom, this idea that the good life is just doing whatever we want, not
realizing that if we were truly allowed to do whatever we want, or to do whatever we wanted, then we
would actually have a very miserable life. Imagine children, right? If you let them choose what they
ate for dinner, right? Anything in the house, you could eat, they'd eat ice cream, right, or candy
or whatever, and they just, that's all they would eat. And maybe for one night, it would be fun or
two nights, but then three, four, or five nights go by and they're gonna get sick, you know, their
		

			teeth are gonna start rotting after months, and they're gonna eventually have hardship, actually,
because of this type of ease. That's not the kind of ease that Allah wants for us, right? Allah
wants for us a more sustainable and fundamental and permanent ease, which is, first of all, an
internal ease that we get, it's not tied to our external circumstances, because you know, who can
control that we can't, you know, you're going to have loss, you're going to have hardship, you're
going to have heartbreak, okay? So when Allah says that he wants ease for us, he's not just
promising us an easy life. He's not saying that you're going to live without hardship. No, but if we
		

			submit, if we trust Him, if we obey, then we're going to be able to find the internal resources and
resilience to deal with whatever happens. And we'll find an ease in that right. If you believe in a
lot, if you trust a lot, if you love a lot, then no matter what happens, you're going to find a
certain amount of ease, even if the world is falling down around you. And then the second dimension
in which that is true, and the ultimate dimension in which that is true is that ease in paradise
right ease after this whole thing is over. Because we're not just made for this world, we're made
for the afterlife. Our lives are tiny in this world, and they really begin once we're dead and
		

			resurrected. And so the ultimate ease the eternal ease. The lasting ease that Allah wants for us
isn't just some sort of shallow, superficial doing what we want here. It's the eternal, never ending
bliss and internal EASE OF PARADISE.