Yasmin Mogahed – Patience Light At The End Of The Tunnel
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the concept of Sabr, which is a way to avoid harming oneself or others. Sabr is a necessary healing process for everyone to be successful, and is dangerous to suppress emotions and prevent harm. Sabr is essential for healing and resilience, and is important for healing and preventing future struggles. The speaker emphasizes the importance of being honest, having a positive attitude, and not letting things happen to individuals. He also discusses the importance of helping individuals grow and become successful.
AI: Summary ©
I wanted to take a few moments to
talk about a very important concept and that
concept is sabr, but sometimes before we can
learn a concept correctly, there is a lot
of unlearning that we need to do.
And I think that the concept of sabr
is one of those concepts where there is
an immense amount of unlearning that we need
to do.
In fact, our myths about sabr continue to
be barriers in our own resilience and in
our own healing.
I want to talk about the two most
common myths about what sabr means.
Myths that many of us grew up with,
many of us are taught, and actually myths
that become ingrained in every single one of
us.
The first myth about sabr that we must
unlearn is that sabr means to suffer in
silence.
That sabr means to drink the poison and
keep a smile on your face.
We have to unlearn these toxic concepts that
culture teach us and call it sabr.
When you are standing in a burning house,
and many of us are standing in burning
houses, some of us, our houses are on
fire because there's abuse in the home.
Some of us, our houses are on fire
because we grew up in abuse.
We come from generations of trauma, this generational
trauma that continues to be passed on from
generation to generation.
And then we pass it on to our
children.
And a lot of this happens because many
of us have been taught that if you're
standing in a burning house, go back to
sleep and call it sabr, or stand and
look at the fire and do nothing and
say, because I have so much sabr.
And we might even say, this fire is
the qadr of Allah, and therefore I will
stand passively and do nothing.
And then we call that sabr, and then
we have communities around us who come and
congratulate us for standing in a burning house.
They say mashallah, look at her sabr.
She stood in the burning house and she
did nothing, mashallah, her sabr.
This is a concept that is wrong and
must be unlearned.
Because sabr doesn't mean that we suffer and
continue to suffer silently.
Sabr doesn't mean we stand in the burning
house and do nothing.
Sabr doesn't mean we drink the poison and
make sure we keep smiling as we do
it.
In fact, sabr requires that if your house
is on fire, you go and you call
the fire department.
You get help to stop the fire.
You go and you get a fire extinguisher.
You do something actively to stop the harm.
The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam said, if you
see something wrong, you must try to change
it with your hand.
And if you cannot, then try to change
it with your tongue.
And if you cannot, then at least hate
it in your heart, and this is the
weakest of faith.
Our deen is not a deen of turning
the other cheek.
Our deen is not a deen of being
passive.
We cannot be passive and call it sabr.
When Hajar was in the middle of the
desert and there was no one around to
help her and her child, she did not
sit passively.
She did not say, this is the qadr
of Allah, so I'm going to do nothing.
In fact, she knew it was the qadr
of Allah, and she had sabr, and she
had tawakkul, but she took action.
She got up and she ran between Safa
and Marwa, and she did not just do
it once, she did it seven times, and
she must have been tired, and it was
hot.
And there wasn't white marble under her feet
as there is now when we do sa
'i.
She was striving.
And that action that she did between Safa
and Marwa, Safa and Marwa, Marwa and Safa,
seven times, that action itself is called sa
'i.
And sa'i in the Arabic language means
to strive.
It is striving.
When we find ourselves feeling trapped in the
middle of a desert, it might not be
an actual desert, it might be a problem
that you have in your life.
It might be an abusive situation that you're
in.
It might be something oppressive, a problem in
your home.
When we find ourselves in the middle of
a desert, we must do like Hajar.
And we must take action and strive.
Because her striving was to improve and change
her own situation.
Indeed, Allah does not change the condition of
a people until they change what's in themselves.
There is an action we must take.
Even Musa alayhi salam, when he's standing in
front of the Red Sea, we all know
how he was saved.
We all know that Allah opened the sea
for him.
But do we realize that he was first
commanded to take an action?
He was first commanded to take his staff
and strike the sea.
And so it is very important that we
understand Allah will always save the believers.
Allah will always give us a way out.
There is always light at the end of
the tunnel, but there is an effort that
we must do.
And this toxic culture of sit down in
the burning house, sit down in the desert
and do nothing, this is wrong and we
have to unlearn it.
It is a barrier to our own healing.
And I promise you, of all the messages
I get from people in very, very painful
situations, people who are suffering all over the
world, and they're asking me what should I
do, sending me messages, what should I do?
I can tell you there is one usual
common denominator.
And that is that people sit too long
in bad situations.
In other words, their house is on fire
and they're asking me what should they do.
And the answer is simple.
When your house is on fire, the step
one is to try to put out the
fire.
Call the fire department, try to get help,
get people involved, reach out to resources.
Get a fire extinguisher, take action, stop the
fire.
But if the fire continues, now this is
not rocket science, what I'm about to say.
If you've tried to stop a fire and
the fire continues, what do you do?
Run, don't walk out of the burning house.
It is upsetting that we have to say
this, especially because the narrative is usually something
like this.
Have sabr.
Stay in the burning house.
Keep your children in the burning house for
the sake of your children.
And I'll repeat that so you can consider
that statement.
Keep your children in the burning house for
the sake of your children.
I think we can understand that our dean
is a dean of action.
Our dean is a dean of motion.
We do not sit passively and call it
sabr.
This is not our dean.
This is not what the previous, those prophets
and those nearest to Allah did.
The second myth about sabr, which is keeping
us from our own resilience and keeping us
from our own healing, is that we believe
and we are taught that sabr means to
suppress your emotions.
That sabr means to suppress your grief, to
not feel it, to put a lid on
it.
And why is this so dangerous?
I will give you evidence of why this
is dangerous and why it will prevent you
from having resilience.
We have this myth that sabr means you
cannot cry.
We have this myth that sabr means you
cannot feel sadness when you experience grief and
the grief of loss.
But my evidence for you, and I'll give
you two pieces of evidence that that is
false.
The first is from the Quran, Surah Yusuf.
We know that Yaqub alayhi salam had sabrun
jameel.
He had beautiful patience, better than all of
us.
And yet he cried until he went blind.
And yet he grieved and experienced the human
experience of sadness.
In fact, he says to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala, He says, indeed, I complain of
my pain and my sadness to Allah.
He is not suppressing it and calling it
sabr.
He is taking that pain and taking that
grief to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And that is how we heal.
That is how we will be resilient.
That is how we will actually have sabr.
But you have to actually take that pain
and take that sadness, process it with Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
You cannot suppress it and think that it
will disappear.
We are a community of so much suppressed
and unprocessed trauma.
I will say that.
We have so much, so much unprocessed trauma.
What do I mean by that?
I mean that many of us have experienced
trauma, sometimes as children.
And we do not deal with it.
We do not know how to deal with
it or we have shame attached to it.
And so what happens is it stays with
us and then we suffer from that and
then we pass it on to our children.
The effect of that trauma.
If you get a gunshot wound and you
cover it up with a band-aid and
you say, what wound?
The wound could be very old.
Does it disappear because you covered it up?
And the answer is absolutely not.
Because gunshot wounds need to be healed and
addressed before they can heal.
They need to be addressed before they can
heal.
It works the same with emotional and psychological
trauma.
It works the same with child abuse and
any kind of abuse or trauma.
And so this is another thing that we
as a community need to unlearn.
Because we have this idea that if you
suppress, things disappear.
And you will be able to be patient.
And that could not be further from the
truth.
We know that Yaqub did not suppress, but
he felt sadness.
He says, I complain of my sadness and
suffering to Allah.
And he cried.
But I'm going to give you a second
evidence from Sahih al-Bukhari.
Of our own Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.
When his son was on his deathbed.
When Ibrahim was breathing his last breaths as
a child.
The son of the Prophet ﷺ was dying
in his hands.
And the Prophet ﷺ started to cry.
So one of the companions came and said,
Even you're crying?
So he had a response maybe many of
us might have.
When we see one another grieving or crying.
He said, even you are crying.
And Muhammad ﷺ said, This is mercy.
He said, this is mercy.
So the crying is part of the healing.
It's part of the mercy of Allah ﷻ.
And then he goes on and says something
so profound and prophetic.
That actually provides a blueprint for healing.
Things that we are only learning now in
modern psychology.
When it comes to healing.
And when it comes to grief.
He gives us a blueprint in the second
part of the hadith.
Of how in fact to have resilience and
sabr.
He says, the eyes shed tears.
And the heart feels grief.
But the tongue does not utter except what
is pleasing to Allah.
I want you to reflect for a moment
on that.
Step one, he said, the eyes shed tears.
He said that the crying part of grieving
is mercy.
It's part of the process of releasing the
grief.
You have to process it first.
You know the cliche, you can't heal what
you don't feel.
This is true.
The Prophet ﷺ is teaching us.
He said, the eyes shed tears.
And the heart feels grief.
But the tongue does not utter except what
is pleasing to Allah.
And that is sabr.
That is resilience.
But it involves actually experiencing and processing the
grief.
Without complaining against Allah.
Without complaining against Allah.
We can complain to Allah.
We can say, ya Allah this hurts.
Ya Allah help me.
Ya Allah I am in grief.
That is what Yaqub ﷺ is doing.
He says, shakwa is complaining.
He says, I am complaining to you ya
Allah.
He was not complaining about Allah.
He said, I am complaining to you about
my pain and my sadness.
And so these are the two myths of
sabr that we need to unlearn before we
can be resilient.
Now how do we do it?
How can we have sabr and resilience?
We need to be able to have, number
one, the ability to process the pain without
suppression.
But there is another ingredient that is absolutely
essential in order to have resilience and sabr.
And that ingredient is hope.
We have to be able to have hope.
And that brings me to the very perfect
dua of Ayub ﷺ.
Ayub ﷺ, after going through years and years
of suffering, losing his wealth, his health, his
family, he calls out to Allah ﷻ and
he says, Indeed, difficulty has befallen me.
Indeed, difficulty has befallen me.
I want to pause here and point out,
he is not pretending that everything is fine.
He's in pain and he's taking it to
Allah.
He is saying, I am in difficulty.
His sabr doesn't mean pretending.
He's taking it to Allah.
Indeed, difficulty has befallen me.
It is hard.
This is what he's saying.
He's saying it's hard right now.
But look at the statement.
In the same statement, he says, وَأَنتَ أَرْحَمُ
الرَّاحِمِينَ And you are the most merciful of
the merciful.
And that is hope.
Within the same statement of processing and acknowledging
your current difficulty, not pretending, not putting a
band-aid on the gunshot wound, not drinking
the poison and keeping a smile and saying
everything is fine, not putting a filter on
it, but being honest about it.
But at the same time, having hope in
Allah.
وَأَنْتَ أَرْحَمُ الرَّاحِمِينَ That is the formula for
resilience.
You have to be honest about your current
situation, process the pain, take it to Allah,
but you always have to continue to have
hope.
You have to continue to have hope.
What this is, is like going outside when
it's dark.
And some people who are in denial, we
might call this toxic positivity, might look at
the darkness and say, what darkness?
It's really bright.
Well, that is not helpful because it is
not attached to reality.
It is denial and it is pretending.
But what is Ayyub a.s. teaching us?
He's teaching us that a believer in hardship
is like a person who goes outside while
it's dark and acknowledges it's dark right now,
ya Allah.
It's dark right now, but I have full
faith that the sun will rise again.
And that is a believer in hardship.
And that is what we learn from Ayyub
a.s. أَنِّي مَسَّنِيَ الضُّرُّ وَأَنْتَ أَرْحُمُ الرَّاحِمِينَ
We have to be truthful with Allah and
ourselves, but we have to continue to have
hope.
And that hope must be grounded in a
very important concept called حُسْنَ الظَّنَّ بِاللَّهِ Which
means always, no matter what happens in your
life, please remember this, no matter what happens
in your life, if you don't remember anything
else I said, no matter what happens in
your life, always have a positive opinion of
Allah.
Hold on to that and you'll be okay.
حُسْنَ الظَّنَّ بِاللَّهِ Always have a positive expectation
and opinion and concept of Allah.
If Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is putting
you through difficulty, always know with full certainty
that it is for your own good.
Like a parent who takes their child to
get a shot.
No child likes a needle.
No child likes to be poked by a
needle.
The child might be very angry at the
parent.
How could you do this to me?
How could you take me to the doctor?
How could you put me through pain?
But the parent knows that the needle has
medicine that is saving the child's life.
That is strengthening the child.
That is curing the child.
And Allah is high above any analogy.
Allah is curing us.
Even if it comes through a needle.
Even if it comes through hardships and difficulties
and loss.
Allah is curing us.
Allah is strengthening us.
Allah is training us.
Like a trainer at the gym.
The trainer at the gym is not gonna
make you comfortable.
The trainer at the gym isn't gonna say
go sit on the couch.
I heard it was very comfortable over there.
And here's some potato chips.
The trainer is gonna put you through struggle.
Is gonna make you lift weight.
Is gonna make you do resistance training.
You're gonna have to do some work.
Because no pain, no gain.
We know this in the physical world.
But we sometimes forget that Allah is our
trainer.
He might not always make us comfortable.
He might not always give us what we
want.
We want the potato chips.
We want the chocolate.
He might not give it to us.
But he gives us what's better and what's
better for us.
Even when it comes through a needle.
Even when it's weight that we have to
lift.
So please always have a positive opinion of
Allah.
Just like you would have a positive opinion
of the doctor who's curing you.
Or you would have a positive opinion of
the trainer who's strengthening you.
Always have a positive opinion of Allah.
Remember this.
If your mother came to pick you up
right now.
And she started driving down a route that
you don't understand.
And that you don't recognize.
And maybe there are bumps in the road.
And detours.
And you ask your mother, where are we
going?
Right.
And she says to you, don't worry, you'll
see.
How many of you are going to call
the police?
Call 911.
I don't know the route.
I don't understand.
We would not do that.
Why?
One reason.
Because we trust the driver.
And that's the only question we have to
ask ourselves.
Do you trust the driver of your life?
Who's the driver of your life?
Allah.
Do you trust him?
Do you believe that he has your best
interest in mind?
Do you believe that he's doing what's best
for you?
And if you do.
If you have a positive opinion of Allah.
And you trust him.
Then no matter which route he takes you.
Even when it's bumpy.
Even when there's detours.
You will never panic.
Because you know that the driver knows what
he's doing.
And has your best interest in mind.
Finally.
On this road of resilience.
We have to be able to deal with
our pain in a healthy way.
We have to be able to see hope.
But there's something else we have to be
able to do.
And that is we have to be able
to get up after we fall.
If we do not know how to get
up after we fall.
We won't survive this journey.
Any trainer who is training an Olympian.
Has to teach that Olympian how to get
up.
Because we all fall.
And so in our own training.
And I want to say this to parents.
Please parents listen carefully.
We have a major problem in the way
that we are raising our kids.
And I'll tell you that major problem is
this.
We are teaching with shame.
We are teaching our children.
That the moment that they make a mistake.
That it's because they're bad.
And that does not teach them how to
get back up.
This is like you know you get in
the car.
And you put the address in the GPS.
And as soon as you make a wrong
turn.
Imagine the GPS says to you.
You worthless driver.
I honestly don't know what's wrong with you.
You've already made 15 wrong turns.
I don't know why you're still driving.
Just park up over there.
Stop trying to get to your destination.
If that were to happen.
No one would get to their destination.
The GPS does not judge you.
When you make a wrong turn.
The GPS only has one job.
And that is to reroute you.
So when you make a wrong turn.
The GPS says you made a wrong turn.
Here's how you fix it.
My advice to you.
My pleading advice to you.
My plea to you as parents.
How about we be more like the GPS?
How about we be less like the crazy
GPS?
The moment our children make a mistake.
Or make a wrong turn.
We tell them it's because they're bad drivers.
It's because you're a bad child.
You're a bad girl.
You're a bad man.
You're a bad wife.
You're a bad husband.
That's called shame.
And it is absolutely debilitating.
It will paralyze us.
And it will not allow us to be
resilient.
We have to be able to get back
up after we make a mistake.
We have to be able to reroute.
And so as parents.
It's our job to reroute our children.
Without shame.
Without judgment.
This is wrong.
Here's how you fix it.
You're not a bad person.
But this is how you fix it.
And if we have those three things.
That's how we will find resilience.
Subhanakallah.
So just a quick announcement.
As the brother had mentioned.
I have three books where I talk about
these concepts at length.
We have some limited copies.
Inshallah I'll be doing a meet and greet
and signing after this session.
At the Al Maghrib booth in the bazaar.
Jazakumullahu khayran.