A Hadith reported by Zaid ibn Khalid Al-Juhani mentions: “God’s messenger led the congregational dawn prayer one day at Al-Hudaibiyah after it had been raining at night. When he finished his prayers, he turned to people and said: ‘Do you know what your Lord has said?’ They replied: ‘God and His messenger know best.’ He said: ‘God says: Some of My servants are good believers this morning and some are unbelievers. A person who says, ‘We have been sent rain by God’s grace and mercy,’ believes in Me and disbelieves in the planet. On the other hand, the one who says, ‘We have had rain because this planet is on the ascendance,’ disbelieves in Me and believes in the planet’.” (Related by Al-Bukhari and Muslim, as well as others)
This Hadith refers to 28 planets which are paired in the sense that when one of them goes down in the West, the other rises in the East. They are well-known and complete their turn of rising and descent once a year. People often associate rain with the going down of the wintry ones. This is the custom to which the Prophet refers in this Hadith in which he quotes God’s word. When the text of a Hadith attributes a statement to God, it becomes a sacred, or Qudsi Hadith.
When we look at the text of the Hadith, we realize that the way people look at things and how they happen makes a fundamental difference to their status as believers or unbelievers. Here the Prophet refers to a particular habit, in which people attribute a rainfall to the rise or descent of a certain planet. Thus they make the movement of the planet, or the planet itself, the cause of the rainfall. If so, then the planet has a will of its own which determines the movement of clouds and the fall of rain. Since a believer attributes all that happens in the universe to God alone, attributing something like a rainfall to a planet, or to any cause, is an act of associating partners with God.
We have to make a fine distinction here. The Hadith speaks of a person saying the rain took place “because this planet is on the ascendance.” If a person says instead, “we had a rainfall when this planet was on the ascendance,” there is nothing wrong with that. He is simply referring to the time of the rainfall, not attributing its cause to the planet and its movement.
What all this means is to stress the Islamic principle of attributing every thing that takes place in the universe to God and His will. When we have a rainfall, we say that it takes place by God’s will and grace. When rain is scarce, we pray to God to send us rain. We do not look to any cause or factor, because we know that they all operate by God’s will.
When we speak of God’s will, we should always remember that it is free, unrestricted by anything. God may will whatever He determines at any time, and He brings it about as He wishes. The laws of nature are all subject to His will. He operates them as He pleases and He suspends or replaces them as He wishes. Nothing influences His decision. He has power over all things, and He always accomplishes His purpose as He pleases.
This means that we must never take anything for granted. We do not say that since this or that has taken place, then we expect the following consequences. Although such a statement may rely on what we have experienced of cause and effect, we must not attribute any result or event to any factor other than God’s will. This was how the Prophet looked at all events.
Aishah, the Prophet’s wife, says: “When the Prophet saw a cloud that looked like bringing rain, he would be uneasy, going in and out, walking to and fro, and his face would change color. When rain begins to fall, he would be relaxed.” Aishah pointed this out to him once and asked him what troubled him. He said: “How would I know that it does not bring something different, like that described by God: ‘When they beheld it as a dense cloud approaching their valleys.’ (46: 25)” (Related by Al-Bukhari, Al-Tirmidhi and Al-Nassaie).
Here the Prophet is referring to the punishment God inflicted on the people of Aad, an early community to whom Prophet Hood was sent but they rejected his message, despite the clear evidence that God gave them to prove that he preached the message of truth. Thus, they earned their punishment, which began by sending clouds that they mistook for an indication of rain. The verse which the Prophet quotes runs as follows: “When they beheld it as a dense cloud approaching their valleys, they exclaimed, ‘This is but a heavy cloud which will bring us rain!’ Nay, but it is the very thing which you sought to hasten: a wind bearing grievous suffering, bound to destroy everything by its Lord’s command! Then they were so utterly wiped out that nothing could be seen except their dwellings. Thus do we requite people lost in sin.” (46: 25-26)
The fact that the Prophet looked uneasy, or troubled when he saw clouds and his explanation that he could not tell whether the clouds brought in the prospect of rain or something totally different confirms his firm belief that God’s will is free. No one could tell for certain what may come in the wake of any event, not even a natural phenomenon which we see every day.
Therefore, we must always be on our guard, lest we incur God’s displeasure and deserve His punishment. We must always pray to Him to forgive us our sins, and not to hold our shortcomings against us. If the Prophet worried at a natural development, because he could not tell what it heralded, then we have much less reason to be confident that it would bring only what is good and beneficial. We should trust to God’s grace and mercy, but we should try to earn that by being always mindful of our duties and keen to do what God has ordered.
