God is the Ultimate Judge

No soul bears the sins of any other soul. Ultimately, to your Lord is your return,
then He will inform you of everything you had done.
He is fully aware of the innermost thoughts.
(39:7)

Judging is something we do every day. It is a topic that I feel applies to everyone of us and should be taken into consideration in our everyday interactions with one another. I am not talking about judging in general, because we make judgments based on lack of information to save time. We make judgments about our surroundings and our spatial orientation constantly. That is why we are easily fooled by optical illusions because our brain sees some cues that are similar to something it has seen in the past and it judges the object based on past experiences.

My concern, however is the judging of other individuals in our community, as well as in other communities. This form of judgment is uncalled for because human beings, as we all know, are not static objects but are constantly changing

their identity and their views.

I will make an example about our own community so that we may all relate. God willing we are all submitters to God and we are trying to follow His commandments. But even so, we all have different religious viewpoints. Although we are from the same community, we don’t all agree on all minor aspects of Islam. This of course makes our interaction with one another exciting and gives us an opportunity to look at things from another viewpoint.

Just as our viewpoints differ, so do our levels of righteousness. It would be ideal to think that everyone who reads the Quran and believes it is the word of God would immediately follow a righteous life and never sin. Of course we know that this is not the case. We are all

at different levels of our belief and, with God’s help, we are trying to improve.

It is because we are at different levels that it is easy to judge and condemn others who have different beliefs or hold different levels of righteousness. This practice, however, should be avoided because as we see in the Quran, it is not our role to judge or condemn people for their actions. Verse 7:2 states, “This scripture has been revealed to you—you shall not harbor doubt about it in your heart—that you may warn with it, and to provide a reminder for the believers.” God sent us this scripture so that we may follow it and remind and warn people with it. It does not say that we are to judge and condemn people by it. It is my opinion that it is our own egos and insecurity that makes us want everyone to do and believe as we do.

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