Allah(swt) and His Trials

Allah (SWT) and His Trials
By: Zoyeb Ehsan

Why do both evil and good people have to suffer? We can understand immoral people being faced with challenges, but why virtuous people? 
One answer could be that blessings provide opportunities for the evil to reconsider themselves. If a wrongdoer was only met with chastisement, perhaps that would further harden their heart. Whereas if they were occasionally shone on by the sun, they might start to appreciate its light and get out of the cave they were putting themselves in. 
Okay, but why do the good have to undergo trials on this Earth? Well, consider this: If evil actions were always met with some suffering in this life and good actions were always met with rewards, then would we truly have good people on this Earth? 
If everything was as binary as this, everyone would choose to be good, wouldn’t they? If evil actions were so obviously unsuccessful, everyone would pick the good actions. But, as a result, we would cease to have people who chose good for good’s sake. Maybe we would have a few, but the majority would likely be choosing the good acts for their own sake. If one day, the evil actions proved more profitable, they’d switch. Because their allegiance was never with what was virtuous or right, but with their success. 
This is why both good and evil have to undergo trials on this Earth - to test the good people. Real goodness is difficult, which is why it’s so valuable. 
This leads to another point. Do good people sometimes take the easy path? Do good people always stand up for what’s right and admonish any evil they see? Or do they sometimes just let it slide by? Why might good people have this fear to speak against wrongdoings?
It’s not that they aren’t good people - it could be the case that they’re giving undue importance to their own sake and fear getting reprimanded or hurt. Remember what we said about truly good people. They do it for good’s sake, not for their own sake. So when a good person asks why good people have to suffer, we could respond, “Are good people truly fighting the evil around them, or are they only keeping goodness in their hearts?” If not, then how could we say that good people are blameless?
Consider the following hadith in Sahih Muslim from Prophet Muhammad (may peace be upon him): 
“Whosoever of you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then [let him change it] with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart — and that is the weakest of faith.”
Trials are a given when living on this Earth. But not everything that undergoes a trial has the same outcome. Someone can be going to university and go through all its trials, and come out the other end in an awesome fashion, or a “not-so-awesome” fashion.
Someone can come out of a trial more disheartened and start to lose hope and faith in Allah(swt). Their hearts could be made more blackened as a result of the grit and roughness of the test. They might even feel antagonized toward Allah(swt). Or someone can come out of a difficult trial invigorated, with their faith made even stronger. Their hearts could be cleansed, by them using that same grit and roughness to scrape off any of the dirt from their hearts, instead of allowing it to latch on. 
The same trial. Two different responses and outcomes.