In the hardest times, every religious person asks "Where is the most merciful?" and questions why mercy does not reach the innocent who are trapped under the rubble and asks for an answer, and the perplexity deep within just gets deeper.

We try to find a way out from this narrow, rough and heartbreaking situation only to find out that there is none. We cannot and never will find an answer to that question because there is no right answer to the question of why mercy does not reach the people who were crushed under the debris of their own homes.

Especially when we limit our understanding of mercy to its daily meaning, which is the compassion of a mother toward her child, we cannot find an answer to this puzzle. It looks like the only way to make sense of it is to understand that mercy is all about existence and it is more than emotions like compassion or pity.

However hard it is to accept or however troublesome and hurtful it is to overcome prejudice, the point when faith is tested and rebuilt is the time when we have to get out of our daily language and habits.

In this perspective, metaphysicians look for a more authentic language than other religious authorities and they can offer genuine guidance to break prejudices. They suggest that mercy, meaning that God is the most merciful, al-Rahman, basically means "give existence" or "create." This may contradict its daily meaning of compassion or pity, but it is never synonymous with these words. There is no greater and more valuable blessing than existence.

The monotony of life and natural habits make us forget it is a blessing to exist in this world and this oblivion makes existence ordinary, life less profound and reality more precarious, leading people to be blind to the real blessing. This is where divine mercy loses its meaning and where we forget to exist.

We are expected to say basmala before starting any deed and it aims to remind us of the creation that we forget in our daily life and push us to contemplate upon the fact that we are created with an unconditional existence.

To think about al-Rahman in basmala is to think about the blessing of being existent in every single moment. When something happens, it occurs to us we were nonexistent and we could have been in this nothingness; it was such a blessing to be created, to come into existence that we called our creator the most merciful.

The religion names God as al-Rahman to remind us of this reality and names him as al-Rahim (Giver of Mercy) to remind us of our ongoing relationship with him on daily life. When a person is in distress, he may say "wish I was nonexistent"; and even this saying expresses our great love of existence and our strong connection to it.

Our connection with al-Rahman is our deep and unbreakable bond with existence. The scope of the blessing of existence may be comprehended partially when faced with the possibility of nonexistence – that is, death – but still it cannot be fully understood. A real pious person can see their journey from nonexistence to existence as a grace. (While Prophet Abraham says "I direct my whole existence to the One who has created me," the first verse of the Quran says, "Read, in the name of your Lord who created." (Surah al-Alaq: 1).

In this respect, al-Rahman is the greatest name of God, it can replace any of his other names, it can be interpreted through each name and it is the manifestation of all the names. To claim that the greatest name of God is al-Rahman is to think about the relationship between God and men through creation and disposition (fitrah). This is the real meaning of mercy, which we happen to forget in the ordinariness of life and the daily usage of language.

'Guardian like a mother'

While thinking about religion, one must ask why we think about divine mercy as compassion and have given it the meaning of pity. Why do we imagine God as a mother or father? We have given this meaning to divine mercy because God acts as a principal or savior in our imagination when we are faced with the challenges of life. We solve our unsolvable problems with God and get rid of the distress of daily life through him. When we want him to be an answer to our problems, we give al-Rahim the meaning of "guardian like a mother."

That is why the modern world criticizes religion or rather it presumes that religious people see God as an escape and that they act like that because of their religion and assume that all religious people have the same motive. It is true that for most devoted followers, God is the way through which all the distress and challenges of daily life can be overcome. However, this is not and cannot be true for all religious people. God is a cure in religiousness at the start but in its progressive aspect, God becomes the absolute reality, and we understand him as long as we understand his existence and we get closer to him as we experience different states of life.

Religiousness is built upon development and change. The change aims to change the notion of the "God of our beliefs" (al-ilah al-mu’taqad) which is a conceptualization of insightful Sufis. People relate to God through the beliefs that they have built and nourished in their minds. The God of our belief comes from our nature and state of mind and is shaped by our disposition and nourished by our experiences.

Here God is an object of faith that we have found, called, shaped, and the concepts of whom we have formed. Religion permits this at the beginning but on the condition that it will change later. However, as long as religiousness is a matter of development, change and transformation, people tend to experience tension.

This tension between the one of belief and the truth, the one shaped by human psychology and the reality of religion is broken sometimes and a person may find himself detached from the religion and question his or her earlier belief and reach the conclusion that "he or she used to believe in his own assumption." Therefore, change and development are not about God himself but show themselves in the spiritual depth and discernment of a human. This development is similar to the process of breaking a walnut, passing through its layers and reaching its kernel.

'Compassion of a mother'

Thinking of divine mercy as the compassion of a mother originated in our self-interest, idleness and lack of effort; and the religious figures abused this mental idleness and continued this discourse by explaining God’s mercy through motherhood. We figured this "effortlessness" out through life, glorified it and made it a way of escaping from reality and based religiousness on it. It is common decency not to talk about this, but it is true that Allah sheds the blood of the humans he has created, kills them, spreads corruption on earth, and destroys it and that is why he is called al-Mumit (the taker of life). Al-Mumit is one of the meanings of al-Rahman.

Thinking about al-Rahman and trying to understand him is possible by approaching the biggest paradox of existence. The religion did not talk about al-Rahman to give us a safe place where we can fix the conflicts, hardships and dilemmas of life.

Religiousness is to stand on the ground patiently and accept that God is known in dilemmas. God, who is the most merciful, can punish his vassals in the hereafter, destroy what he has built and he can ruin and then rebuild everything. While all these things happen, the real and the original meaning of mercy remains the same: He has preferred our existence over nonexistence, creates us from nothingness and maintains our existence even after death.

Believing in al-Rahman means believing that we have come to existence from nonexistence and God maintains this existence even after death and throughout eternal life. The secondary meanings of mercy are like illusions produced by human sentimentality and psychology. Great tragedies shatter these secondary meanings, cut off our emotional bond with God and break the shell: What happens next? We cannot know exactly but we can say this: God is the most generous, and vassals depend on his grace!