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Coming To Terms With Situations & God

Q:

Salam

I’ve been going through a really tough time in my life and I am experiencing a divorce. Sometimes I feel so upset and I think about why God is punishing me or I have a really big disillusionment from God. I have also begun to judge people and think badly of them even though my heart does not want to do this. I really want my faith in God to increase and to be a good person. Please can you give me help with anything I can do to make my heart soft and forgiving and strong again. I just feel so lost and i don’t want to get any further from God because I want to be a good Muslim.

I feel really far away from Allah and sometimes I have been having negative and bad thoughts about God, including swearing. I feel so bad and I don’t know why these thoughts come into my head and then I think God won’t forgive me and I feel so upset and sad. I really don’t know what to do and i am just feeling so lost and disillusioned

Please can you help me

Thank you

A:

Alaykum salaam

Thank you for your questions. Both the way you feel about your divorce and the thoughts you cannot control that you don’t want to have (which are known as khawatir) are tricks of Satan to bring you down. When you feel upset it is a prime time for Satan to start pushing his agenda in convincing you that there is no hope between you and God or that God somehow is “doing” this to you and “punishing” you. It is also the time khawatir start to set in. The thing is that with both of these if you don’t get a grip quickly it is a downward slope that is very ugly and distressful. It is a mental war in which you must be strong to overcome.

That strength comes from reassessing your understanding of God and being more confident in His Mercy and Wisdom. You should completely ignore all bad thoughts that you have. Like somebody that keeps calling you but you don’t want to speak to them. If you keep ignoring their calls they will eventually give up. The negative thoughts also work in this way. However if you pay attention to them they will just get worse.

Allah is not punishing you through your situation. He is testing you. And it is for you never to loose hope in Him. Hold on to that hope until your situation gets better and one day whatever situation you find yourself in, good or bad, it will only increase your iman. Perhaps what is happening in your life is the first stage of this development. It is only through your mistakes that you and I learn and it is through difficulty that we become humble.

May Allah make you successful.

‘Abd Allah Esmail