Why Does God Do Bad Things To Good People?

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate
Assalaamu alaykum

Dear Friends

I pray that you are well.

Why does God do bad things to good people? The real question is not why does God do this and why does God do that. The real question is why aren't you accepting what Allah is sending your way. He is God, you are the servant. He is powerful, you are nothing. He is significant, you are insignificant. Pure monotheism (tauhid), where the Omnipotence of Allah is realized, this is a non question and doesn't deserve an answer.

لَا يُسْأَلُ عَمَّا يَفْعَلُ وَهُمْ يُسْأَلُونَ ﴿٢٣

He is not questioned about what He does, but they will be questioned. [Qur'an Al-Anbiya' 21:23]

Who am I to ask these questions? Someone who has a strong spiritual relationship with Allah, they realized the meaning of laa illaha illallah (None has the right to be worshiped but Allah) and laa yus alu 'amma yaf'alu wa hum yus alun لَا يُسْأَلُ عَمَّا يَفْعَلُ وَهُمْ يُسْأَلُونَ , and so when something happens to them or when it happens to anybody else, they are not going to say "Why did God do that to me?" because this attitude comes from being inwardly big. When someone who is inwardly small and humble, they don't think to ask these questions.

A Perspective

Illness usually bring people to religion through the front door; mine brought me thorugh the back. I did not need to know if I was being punished or tested. Neither my health nor my illness was about me. The force that played havoc with the cortisol in my blood was the same force that helped my body recover; if I felt better one day and worse the next, it was unchanged. It chose no side. It gave the girl in the hospital next to me pneumonia; it also gave her white blood cells that would resist the infection. And the atoms in those cells, and the nuclei in those atoms, the same bits of carbon that were being spun into new planets in some corner of space with a name. My insignificance had become unspeakably beautiful to me. The unified force was a God too massive, too inhuman, to resist with the atheism in which I had been brought up. I became a zealot without a religion. It was unclear to me whether there was a philosophy big enough for monotheism so adamant. It had to be a faith that didn't need to struggle to explain why bad things happen to good people, a faith in which it was understood that destruction in creation.

-- G. Willow Wilson, The Butterfly Mosque

May Allah bring us closer to Him and guide the Ummah. Ameen. Please don't forget us in your night prayers. Jazakallahu khairan.

And Allah knows best.
Wassalaam