How I understand God

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   I think one of the points brother Aatif was trying to make is that some of your beliefs about what is good and what is bad has been influenced by the society around you. If you grew up in a society where it was the norm for a husband to offer his wife to a guest for the night, you might believe that one who did not do this was selfish and that doing this is a good and selfless deed if you had never experienced cultures where this would be frowned upon. This is where looking to Allah to tell us what is wrong and what right comes in.

Regarding the importance of the afterlife, if there truly was no afterlife in life as we live it today, then it would be good to be good but then questions would arise as to: What is the meaning of this life? Or why are we even in this world? Why should I be good just for the sake of being good when my worldly life might be better if I was not good? Again, what is good and what is not? Should I defend what I presume to be good even at the risk of losing that single life that I have? And so on...

Now people do good deeds for various reasons: in order to get something back, so that they can be seen as doing good, showing off, conscience, atonement for previously doing something bad... Muslims do good deeds as prescribed to them by Allah. We are encouraged to do these good deeds first and foremost because we love Allah and would like to please Him (and what better way than being good to His other creations and obeying His laws), then we do them because we fear Allah`s wrath and punishment for doing bad deeds, then we do them because we want to enter paradise, then we do them in order not to enter Hell... Infact we are encouraged to have any of these in mind as our intention for doing a good deed because it could be a sin to have a different intention for carrying out a good deed such as pride or showing off or wanting something bad back, such as the case of a man that helps out a woman in need hoping that she will sleep with him. The intention for one`s actions is very important in Islam.

It is almost impossible to carry out an action just for the sake of that action without having any intent or reason for doing that action. Which is why, a person giving money to a beggar `just for the sake of giving or being good` would definitely not be happy and would be regretful to learn that the beggar used that money on drugs or bought a gun and shot someone. As someone that supposedly does good for the sake of good, that person would probably not give the next beggar he or she meets any money because of this previous incident even though the second beggar may be in great need. This is because the person gave the previous beggar so that he or she could feel good about themselves, but because that act resulted in something bad, they now feel bad about themselves because they blame themselves for what happened and hence refuse to give the second beggar any money. This is also in a way selfish. Because a muslim would (or should) have the intention of giving only for the sake of pleasing Allah, his creator, he or she would not use the first incident as a reason for not giving the second beggar money in my example above. I hope that this makes some sense...