partytilfajr:

I think when you guys see “kill” you guys lose your minds and miss the point of stories like these.

First of all, the point to the story is that Musa (Moses) is told by Al-Khidr that he [Musa] won’t understand what he does. Musa says that he will, but as he follows Al-Khidr, Musa (like you just did) freaked out over what Al-Khdir did.

Why did he freak out? Because he didn’t know what was happening, he didn’t know the rationale. It’s a lack of information.

Al-Khidr knew (as ordained by God) that the child would grow up to be a major sinner, so it wasn’t that Al-Khidr did what he did because of fleeting emotion. It was because God wanted to save the boy from his own destruction.

The story is also to show you that you are limited in your knowledge. That God knows what you do not, and even more importantly, that other people know more than you do. Musa is one of the greatest Prophets of God, and here he is learning from Al-Khidr, an unassuming fellow. The story of Al-Khidr is centered on the simple fact that you and I are limited, no matter how elevated we get, or how much praise we receive, there is always someone better than us, and even above them, there is God.

The story isn’t about someone being killed, or whatever, it’s about how you handle something that goes beyond your understanding, based on what limited information you have.

So when a calamity befalls you, even something as immense as death, you and I ask God: “but why?!” But we never realize that there is something greater that we are being protected from. If we die young, it is God protecting us from ruining our souls, but we focus on death, thinking that death is the ultimate punishment.

However, again, we don’t look at Islam in totality, and we look at death in The Qur’an as something that shouldn’t happen or whatever, but you’re missing the point of the story.

For instance: the takeaway from the story of Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son, has nothing to do with sacrificing a son, the question is: if God told you to do something, would you do it?

God doesn’t ask us to kill anyone, we can’t harm anyone, because while we try and obsess over the idea of the sacrifice, we miss the point, again, will you do what God says?

God says to be kind when you don’t want to be kind, to be patient when you don’t want to be patient, to be forgiving to those you don’t want to forgive, to help those no one wants to help, to stand up for justice for those who are being oppressed, to be kind to your mother when you’re frustrated, to help your sister when you are lazy, to give to charity instead of buying yourself something useless.

These are God’s commands, and yet here we are, wasting our time, missing the entire point of the story, and by extension, Islam.