Does anyone feel like all this (Religion, fate) is based on luck/chance?

Salam, this is going to be long and I urge everyone to read it in its entirety.

I've had many doubts about Islam in my life, Alhamdulillah most of them have been cleared up but there's one thing still, it's not a doubt per se more like a disturbing observation that has been bugging me for a while.

Sometimes when I contemplate things and see how good it is to be a Muslim and live a lifestyle based on the Quran/hadith I can't help but feel thank God for the gift of Islam but then I ask myself, am I just lucky to be a Muslim since i was born in an Islamic place to Muslim parents? Is that why I'm a Muslim? What if I had been born in a place with no Muslims?

It seems to me that the vast majority of Muslims are those who were born into Islam, the ones who convert are actually not that significant numbers-wise, the vast majority of Christians are Christians because they were born to Christian parents, something like 70% of the world's population are non-Muslim and we all know the effect that can have on someone's fate in the afterlife.

Let's look at it this way, the Sahaba - companions of the Prophet pbuh - the greatest Muslims who ever lived and the ones who sacrificed the most for Islam, if the Prophet had been born 50 years later than he was it's likely that most of them would've lived their lives and died in Kufr and as non-Muslims, indeed there's a verse that alludes to something similar (if I'm reading it correctly)

And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided. And remember the favor of Allah upon you - when you were enemies and He brought your hearts together and you became, by His favor, brothers. And you were on the edge of a pit of the Fire, and He saved you from it. Thus does Allah make clear to you His verses that you may be guided. 3:103

I think in this verse Allah is saying to the Muslims at the time, that they were on the brink of entering the (hell) fire until Allah's favor came to them, (through Islam and the emergence of the Prophet).

So were the Sahaba just lucky that they lived in thesame time frame as the Prophet pbuh? Will their destination in the afterlife have been different if the Prophet had not lived amongst them? What about the other unlucky 98% of the world outside Arabia at the time? You can see where I'm going.

Let's give a final example, a baby born today in Saudi Arabia has about a 90% chance of living and dying as a Muslim and a baby born in Iceland has about a 90% chance of living and dying as a non-Muslim through the accident of birth. (this is just a rough statistic for illusionary purpose, don't quote me on it)

Now it doesn't mean that a non-Muslim from Iceland who lived and died as such will automatically go to hell, however from an Islamic perspective its generally assumed that someone who died as a practicing Muslim has a much higher chance of entering paradise compared to someone who died as a non-Muslim.

In summary It seems like the afterlife fate of most people and whether a person fulfills the duty for which he/she was created is heavily determined by chance/luck/accident and its is very likely that many of us here would've been non-Muslims had the circumstances of our birth been different. Are we just lucky?

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from Islam https://ift.tt/3fose2p