Where Is the Flaw? When Trial Comes with No Apparent Cause

Occasion: Transcription of a khatira delivered on 2018-11-29 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

Where Is the Flaw?

The young man sat down and said: Show me where the flaw is. I said to him: Tell me what is behind you. He said: I went out with my wife on a good day, we had lunch at a respectable place, and we came back home and spent a good night. In the morning I found her to be someone else; she put me out of the house and changed the locks, and I suddenly found myself sleeping in the car, for a long time. Then he asked me: Where is the flaw?

When the place of the wound is not visible, you search among the symptoms. He is like the doctor: as long as he sees nothing in front of him, he puts the stethoscope on and takes the pulse; if matters remain hidden from him, he goes into the blood and orders lab tests, an ultrasound, X-rays and the like. Our work is close to this in a different way: you tell him, tell me more, tell me more, and whenever he tells you, you say: Is this the point? Is this the detail? But sometimes you do not arrive.

And sometimes you do not see any cause for the trial at all. There are people who are perfectly obedient, who have knowledge of Allah, glorified and exalted, whose Islam is good, who earn from what is lawful, who have nothing to spoil their living or cloud their lives, and things are going perfectly well, and yet you find no direct cause for the trial, so you are amazed. So you say to him: Perhaps the trial you are in is nothing other than a trial from Allah, the Most High. And when matters are attributed to Allah, submission is what is required of the servant.

When the Frame Is Human and When It Is Divine

We search for causes as long as the frame is human and worldly. A man has been cut on his hand, so we bring a lawsuit against the knife, and we say: We must see the knife. Why? Because it cut and went on its way; it left us, took a taxi and went off! So we say: Bring us this knife so we can look at whether it was rusty, whether it was contaminated with something, and see what it carried over into this wound. Then we move on to the stage of investigation. For if the frame is worldly, we search for causes, effects and outcomes, and we analyze, and so on.

But if matters go beyond the frame of causes and return to Allah, then here you know that Allah, mighty and majestic, has a wisdom that the servant may not grasp until years later. So you say to him, for example: My son, is it not possible that Allah, glorified is He, wanted this woman to turn around like this so that you would move on to another woman and be granted a child by her? And you have had no child by her for some time. Is it not possible that Allah turned her around so that you would not be the one at fault, feeling pain in the period to come, if you were to leave her, and so Allah would grant you another who is more obedient to you? Is it not possible that He wanted to lighten your burden by reducing your expenses and her heavy spending, and that you would be granted another who manages your livelihood better? Is it not possible that it is such and such and such? Are there not possibilities?

Yūsuf, Peace Be upon Him: Where Was the Flaw?

Let us look at where the flaw was in Yūsuf, upon our Prophet and upon him be prayers and peace, such that he was put in prison for all that time. The man was a respectable young man, good at his work, meticulous in his duties, with everything in his hands in order. Then a trial comes through human beings, and he meets the trial with what it ought to be met with. A young man in the prime of youth, and a woman wants to commit immorality with him; what is the natural thing? To say to her no, this is forbidden, and the matter is over. And this is what he did; he did nothing unnatural. So did he fulfill his role toward his religion and his commitment to his morals? Yes. And the natural thing is that he be rewarded for that, but we found the matter to be the opposite: it turned into prison, and the prison was not a short, limited period, but a long one.

When our Lord, glorified and exalted, says "several years," we are not talking about a number of months; we are talking about years taken from a person's life between four walls^[1], for a crime he did not commit, did not come near, and did not even think of, but quite the contrary. And he is reproached with having committed it, and is publicly defamed throughout the whole city. The matter is not simple: there is a prison within the walls, and there is another prison inside the self, which is the feeling of oppression, may Allah protect us. So what had Yūsuf, peace be upon him, done to be tried in this way?

But when we look at the dawn of the sun that rose over Yūsuf's life after this stage, we understand that our Lord placed him in this position in order to train him. Train him for what? For the complete ability to control himself and to use his faculties and capacities. And someone may say: What did we learn from prison? Had we not learned this outside it? The answer is that when a person becomes accustomed to such a life and sees its effect on people's souls, he feels compassion for others, if he is a righteous person of course, because there is another kind of human being who comes out more criminal, who comes out vengeful against the rest of the society that imprisoned him, even if he himself was the wrongdoer. As for Yūsuf, peace be upon him, Allah, mighty and majestic, prepared him in this period so that a new sun would rise over his life.

Then everything changed: the clothing changes, the food changes, the positions change, the bed changes, and the whole land is in his hands, after he had been in prison, and the state of prisons is well known: a tormentor who beats and says throw yourself in here, and shuts the door, so the prisoner does not see the sun for days and weeks and months, we ask Allah, the Most High, for safety and well-being. Yet the Lord of Might, glorified is He, decreed decrees so that through them He would precede that person to what is better in his life. So you do not know what ground is turning you over, nor where your destination lies. And the trial you are in today is, for this reason, an easy matter; for Allah, the Most High, is preparing you through it for a better future.

You Are a Servant of Allah Before Every Job

One thing remains, so as not to take too long with you: that a person be at a certain level of awareness of the function he performs in this life. What is your function? I work as an engineer, I am a doctor, I am a professor. Let us forget this talk for a moment, for beneath it is the foundation on which all of that is built: that I work in my life as a servant of Allah.

So when people say: Please, Shaykh, we want to pray four rak'ahs after 'Ishā', set aside a day in the month for us. Can I say I cannot? Why? Because this is my function, the one I belong to. And when they say: We want to talk about such and such a topic, I say: May Allah bless you, think the topic through for us and find a suitable time. Could I object? It would not be right, because this is my work. Just as if I bring a contractor and tell him: I want this wall in this shape, this is his job, and he cannot tell me: I will build it to the left or to the right. So if we keep in mind that we work in life as employees within the framework of devotional service to Allah, then what is your basic job in life? A servant of Allah. And what do you do in your life? I worship our Lord. And what else? A doctor, an engineer, a merchant, a professor, a teacher, an imam and so on, but all this is added on, and it too is included within the matter of servanthood, as we agreed before.

You are leaving the Fajr prayer for your work, and your intention is that you are toiling for Allah through buying and selling, so you return at the end of the day hoping that our Lord, glorified and exalted, has written for you good deeds as many as the words you spoke with people, as many as the steps you took, as many as the things you carried in your hand and put in another place, as many as the coins you counted and placed in the drawer, and as many as all the breaths that went out and came into your body, as many as the beats of the heart, all of them hoped to be in the scale of good deeds. Why? Because from the morning, as I was going out, I reckoned that I went out this day of mine as a servant of Allah, blessed and exalted, and I have no job other than this.

And look at the job in a shop: the man came in at seven in the morning, and whatever he does until five in the evening he is paid for. If there are no customers and he is sitting on the chair waiting, we tell him: You are not working, we are losing from you two hours and thirty-five minutes in which there were no customers! He says: I am sitting waiting for the customer. So it is with you: if you sleep the sleep of one who gains strength from it for more obedience, Allah, blessed and exalted, writes the reward for you.

Back to the Question

So we return to the question we began with: Where is the flaw? Sometimes there is no flaw, but Allah, the Most High, wanted good for you. So whoever receives what has come to him from Allah, blessed and exalted, with the intention of correcting a fault he has, let him search among the wounds as we said at the start, and we look at causes and effects; and if he does not find anything, then his matter is with Allah, glorified, high in His majesty.

I ask Allah, the Most High, to make us and you pleased, to mend our hearts, to prepare for us right guidance in our affair, and to preserve for us the well-being of our hearts and the security of our souls, O Lord of the worlds. O Allah, keep us safe from every evil, from the whisperings of Satan, and from the whims of the selves. O Allah, amen, by Your mercy, O Lord of the worlds.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: The Qur'anic wording in the story of Yūsuf is: ﴿فَلَبِثَ فِي السِّجْنِ بِضْعَ سِنِينَ﴾ (Sūrat Yūsuf, verse 42), and the speaker confined himself to saying "several years."