Bilal Quintyne of Smyrna, Georgia, was headed out for a morning jog with a friend. He came upon a woman in an electric wheelchair stranded on the side of the road. Her chair’s engine had died, leaving one wheel on the busy street and the other on the sidewalk.
Quintyne took off his shirt in deference to the heat and pushed the woman for thirty minutes until they arrived at her home. His friend shot a video of the incident. As of this morning, it has been viewed more than three million times.
Why does this story resonate with so many people? I think its hero explained it best: “There’s so much hatred in the world and it costs nothing to love someone.”
How Muslims earn joy
The Muslim observance of Ramadan began this year on May 16. Since that time, observant Muslims around the world have abstained from eating, drinking, and sexual relations from sunup to sundown.
Ramadan ended yesterday with the celebration of Eid al-Fitr (“feast of breaking the fast”) that began at sundown and continues until this evening. Different countries and sects observe the holiday in different ways. Most include family and social gatherings, traditional sweet dishes, feasting, wearing new clothes, shopping, and gift-giving.
As a result, today is one of the most celebratory days of the Islamic year. But there’s more to the story.
I could find the word joy only five times in the Qur’an. The first citation states, “Those who believe and do right: joy is for them, and bliss (their) journey’s end” (13:29). Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s commentary on this verse explains that this joy “reflects itself in the life of the good man, through good and ill fortune, through good report and evil.”
Such joy is Allah’s future reward for present obedience: “No soul knoweth what is kept hid for them of joy, as a reward for what they used to do” (32:17). It comes only to the “righteous” (76:5), for whom “Allah hath warded off from them the evil of that day, and…
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