CRAVEN AGE
Two decorated American theologians were discussing the topic of conflict and how people fled it like the plague.
‘We got to choose our battles,’ argued the Shaykh. ‘No! You must fear God,’ countered the Christian Theologian.
Today, the notion of fearing God is frowned upon. This scowling results in us fearing everything but the One worthy of being feared, to the extent that the fear of men far supersedes the fear of God, dooming chivalry to languish in the annals of the brave and courageous of yesteryear.
But those rare women and men unafraid of fearing God grow valiantly in the face of men. They purchase their gallantry with the strongest currency, God-consciousness: ‘A sacred month for a sacred month: violation of sanctity [calls for] fair retribution. So if anyone commits aggression against you, attack him as he attacked you, but be mindful of God, and know that He is with those who are mindful of Him’ [2:194].
THE UNFRENETIC LIFE
The pace of modern living is frenetic, blurring the world and her wonders. It disembodies and veils us from the Divine as we hurriedly attend to life’s perceived exigencies.
We foolishly shun patience and have relegated stoicism to a relic status. Forbearance, hilm, in Arabic, is in an epic struggle to remain functional in a dysfunctional world.
As freneticism tightens its grip on our lives, we will continue to blunder wildly into a synthetic world of our making. To the natural world, this approach is meaningless. The unhurried rhythm of nature is the fount of its success. With gradualness, its intricate processes unfold breathtaking beauty and magnificence. In contrast, impatience within contorts our countenance and only begets ugliness, sickness and mediocrity.
But for the Prophet (s), patience, perseverance, and forbearance were highly operative virtues in his (s) world, and so too for his progenitor Ibrahim (as), whose earnest prayer took a 2500-year journey to fruition, culminating with Muhammad’s ministry: ‘Our Lord! Send amongst them a Messenger of their own, who shall rehearse Thy Signs to them and instruct them in scripture and wisdom, and sanctify them: For Thou art the Exalted in Might, the Wise’ [2:129].
Islam is a religion of progress, a continuation and culmination of the prophetic legacy spanning thousands of years. The process of illumination through God’s chosen Messengers was incremental and gradual.
Allah is Al-Sabur and Al-Halim, The Patient and Clement. It is His sunnah, nature, to be patient.
We often incorrectly believe that patience means passivity. This view is erroneous. My late father taught me that sabr, patience, meant self-restraint and that whatever the circumstances were, you followed God’s decree, not your whims, which will have you a partner in God: ‘O ye who believe! Seek help with patient perseverance and prayer; for Allah is with those who patiently persevere’ [2:153]. This verse is a jumla shartiyyah, a conditional sentence, meaning the reward of having God with us is conditional on the patient observance of His Laws throughout life’s challenges.
Impatience is a terrible pollutant. Spiritually, it separates us from God, and physically, it fills us with angst and many other maladies brought on, especially by the hurried methods of food production.
Farmers use insecticides, herbicides and chemical fertilisers to produce bumper monoculture crops and pump livestock with growth hormones to fatten them up faster. The processing of these foods denatures them even further. Today, the typical diet consists of food produced this way. Unfortunately, what we gain in convenience, we will later pay for in health.
God’s natural and Quranic āyāt—signs—guide us to profound wisdom in aligning our lives with the slow and natural life cycle.
If we haven’t yet, now is the time for us to adopt ‘the unfrenetic life’.
Surely, patience is an act of faith; for we prove our trust in God’s decree when we allow nature and life to take its course.
She wasn’t of great means, nor frightful mien, as she made her way from what I assume was the train station to her destination. But she was happy to help. That’s what the writing on her jacket said, ‘happy to help.’ And that should be the disposition of every believer.
Until next week, InshaAllah
Zaahied Sallie
Author of The Beloved Prophet – An Illustrated Biography in Rhyme
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