As I am writing, a major snowfall is blanketing the DC area and parts of the USA including the middle of the country, from Missouri to Virginia. For those who do not live in the snow belt of the USA, it is hard to imagine the serene beauty of white snow and the glistering ice crystals on trees. Daring to navigate the icy and slippery roads and using driving skills that require finesses and nerves of steel is something that takes time to build and develop. This skill is tested a couple of times in a year or over many decades depending on how much snow you get where you live.
The year 2025 will start with the unexpected; the return of a President who will be sworn in on January 20th. With this will be the ushering in of a new cabinet and new unofficial advisors. The incoming President’s men and women are a coterie of the most morally bankrupt, greedy and corrupt people. This promises to restrain federal policies, test our judiciary system and create a level of anxiety in the federal workforce such as we have never seen.
Challenges due to climate change continue to grow. It is generally agreed that the developed world, the US included, caused climate change. However, is now unwilling to take ownership or help reverse this trend. The injustice is that people in less developed nations must live with the consequences of this devastation. A similar sense of injustice permeates the economic front in the US and across the world where the gap between the rich and the poor, the income inequality among the citizens and the economic power of Wall Street over Main Street has become staggeringly immoral and unsustainable.
The collective love of wealth, obsession with power, addiction to corruption, widespread materialism and lack of a sense of accountability to God has caused a severe hemorrhage in our collective consciousness, resulting in distorted social, ethical and economic norms which has shaken the very foundation of faith and goodness. I am reminded of a verse from the Qur’an (revealed in around 617 AD) which reads as follows: “Corruption has spread across land and sea, because of what humankind has done with its own hands and God will make them suffer the consequences of what they have done – perhaps they will amend their conducts!” (Chapter 30, The Byzantine. Verse 41)
Not to be all gloom and doom, this is not the time to despair or give up. Even though evil and corruption of faith may seem to be winning in the short run, we can double down on our core beliefs that faith and goodness will prevail. We can renew our commitment to do good, fight evil, and reexamine our faith, and remove any taints of injustice in our lives. The reality is that we will eventually return to God for accounting of our deeds, therefore, it behooves us to have some level of self-reflection, and acceptance of our condition as encouraged in the Qur’an: “Why is it that they do not reflect inwardly? God did not create the heavens, the earth and all that is in them without a purpose – all has an appointed time, yet most of humankind denies that they will meet God!” (30:8)
Let this retrospection begin in 2025 and let us engage in conversation to find solutions that we can act on. We really do not have any other options or time to squander.
