If you make intense supplication
and the timing of the answer is delayed,
do not despair of it.
His reply to you is guaranteed
but in the way He chooses,
not in the way you choose,
and at the moment He desires,
not the moment you desire
~al-Hikam of ibn Ata’illah
_____________
As a child, I used to collect Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures and would always be excited when my mother would take me to Toys R Us to get one. From Rocksteady and Bebop to Usagi Yojimbo and Casey Jones with sports equipment arsenal included, I had every one that you could imagine. Whenever my mother bought me one, I was really happy. But on those days when she told me I already had enough, I got really upset with her. How could she possibly say no to something that would make me happy?
(These days my Ninja Turtles collection, along with my Transformers, Thundercats, Star Wars, and GI Joe collections, is somewhere in Pakistan being played with by kids who probably don’t know that they are worth as collectibles. Twenty years later, I’m over it. Kind of 
Alhamdulillah. and I love my mom more than I can imagine. May Allah preserve her inshallah and grant her the best in this world and the best in the next.)
In retrospect, I had done two things that were problematic. The more obvious of the two is that I would get upset when I didn’t get what I wanted. The seemingly less obvious was not being appreciative when I did get what I wanted. I would never really say thanks. I felt happy, but I left it at that. (I was also 7 years old so give me a break please )
A lot of us do this in our respective relationships with Allah. We assess the worth of our relationships with the Divine not necessarily through what we have been given, but through our perception of the response we receive when we explicitly ask for something we want. If I ask for something and I get it, then I must be doing well. If I don’t get it, then something must be wrong. Aside from the pain of being denied something that I really want, I also feel a pain because I subconsciously need a sense validation of my efforts. I need to know that I am good and that how I am living my life is also good. But I can’t always tell that right away if I am being denied what I am asking for. In the absence of some tangible way of measuring my relationship, how do I really know that I am doing ok, or that my relationship with Him is sound?
In a nutshell, the question of “Why” becomes hard to deal with. Why didn’t I get what I asked for? Why did this happen to me? Why does everyone else get what they want, but I don’t?
Ibrahim ibn Adham, rahimahullah, was asked about the verse in the Qur’an that very definitively states that if one was to call upon Allah, regardless of their background, their call would be answered.
“And your Lord says Call upon Me, I will respond to you…” Surat Al Mumin, verse 60.
The people asked him if this was the case, then why do our prayers go unanswered.
Ibrahim ibn Adham responds with ten potential reasons:
You know Allah, yet you do not obey Him,
You recite the Qur’an, yet you do not act according to it,
You know Shaytan, yet you have agreed with him,
You proclaim that you love the Messenger of Allah, yet you abandon his Sunnah,
You proclaim your love for Paradise, yet you do not act to gain it,
You proclaim your fear for the Fire, yet you do not prevent yourselves from sins,
You say “Indeed death is true”, yet you have not prepared for it,
You busy yourselves with finding faults with others, yet you do not look at your own faults,
You eat that which Allah has provided for you, yet you do not thank Him,
You bury your dead, yet you do not take a lesson from it.
A very insightful set of considerations that help us to examine at what we might be doing that’s problematic and in turn preventative of things going the way we want them to. Realistically through, there’s not really too much else we can look towards. It’s not possible for us to begin to put definitive answers as to why Allah has decided what He has. Ultimately when the question of why is asked, we can really ultimately only say “I don’t know” and then be reliant.
So how do I know that I am ok? That I am a good person? That my actions are being accepted? I don’t. I just have to try my best and keep trying my best and allow for that to build into an ever-lasting satisfaction that gets me through times that are tough and helps me appreciate times that are not. I might not have gotten the girl, or the car, or the job. But I was still given a lot of other things. And I shouldn’t forget that. My relationship with Allah has to in fact be a relationship, not just something that exists on an abstract level. Just like any friendship would allow for me to go above and beyond in understanding my friend, so too I have to work at developing a close relationship with the Divine that allows for me to really trust His responses to my requests because I know He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala accept all of our prayers and secret wishes, as there are no secrets from Him. He is the All-Knowing, the Merciful. Ameen.
For those of you who are in Boston, I’m going to be giving the Khutbah at the ISB Cultural Center this Friday inshallah. The masjid is located at 100 Malcolm X Blvd. Boston, MA 02120 and Jummah starts at 1pm.
I’ve copied and pasted below an entry from 2005 that was the first one I wrote on my original blog. (The images are not from the original though) These were some thoughts that I had before going for the Hajj in 2005, and in a day or two I’ll put up an entry that I had written when I had returned from there.
Today a lot of people who I have been blessed with being close to said good-bye to me. For the next three weeks I will have no communication with them whatsoever. I am leaving behind the emails, the instant messengers, the blackberries, and the text messages. When I put my hand in my pocket it won’t be to silence a vibrating cell phone, beckoning me to answer it by the rhythmic tremors it unleashes upon me until I give in to its whims. When I awake in the morning, my first inclination won’t be to run to my laptop to see what new correspondence I might have received electronically during the course of the night. When I return to my place of rest in the evening from a day out in the world, it wont be in a state of tiredness that disallows the formulation of any coherent thoughts; a state that is further inhibited by an array of broadcasted images spewing notions of violence, hatred, anger and injustice from all over the world. None of this will be with me when I leave from here. What I will take is myself and the advice that has been given to me.
All around me people have been telling me what I should do and what I shouldn’t do. Literally about 200 people have sent me emails with their advice, their insights, but most importantly their requests for du’aas. The idea that their name might be mentioned in the holiest city in the world is an opportunity that they cannot let pass them by. But then the thought enters my mind that who am I to seek anything on their behalf? That it is true that I will be in the city, but what justice can I do to the sanctity that embodies it? That here is the place where Hajar alayhi salaam ran between the hills of Safa and Marwa, ascending to their very summits in hopes that she might find some nourishment for her infant child Ismael alayhi salaam. That here is the place when Ibrahim alayhi salaam, the friend of Allah, built, or rebuilt, the blessed Kaaba along with Ismael Alayhi salaam, many years ago. That this House, the kaaba, throughout time was under the protection of Allah, even when armies marched with elephants against it and the people fled to the hills, their fleeing was done with the understanding that Allah would protect His city, and protect He did. That most importantly in this city some generations late the best of creation, Muhammad ibn Abdullah, salallahu alayhi wa salaam, would be born; that that streets are not just streets, but they are more that that because he walked on them; that the winds are unique in that they carried his blessed words throughout the town to anyone who would hear it; that his blessed forehead prostrated on that same ground that potentially two million hajjis would be prostrating upon in the coming weeks. What then could I possibly offer to such a noble place? In trying to find answer to this question, I was reminded of some words that a close friend and teacher of mine sent to me when I was going to visit Mecca before. Although at that time I was going for umrah, a smaller pilgrimage, his overall message still applies. 
You may pray and beg for everything and every one and maybe even for me but most of all ask for the victory of Allah for the Ummah of His beloved Muhammad saws, pour your heart out let the heart ache you feel for the rest of this glorious nation find representation in your dua and tears there in the holiest of places, the pain of orphaned children, the hunger of our poor, the bleeding heart of our mothers, the screams of our tortured and the agony of our elders and pious, may almighty Allah change our hearts and the material mind set we have cultivated and the negligence to Salaah and our collective distance from the sacred Sunnah for victory comes from and only with righteousness and verily everything else is temporary and deceiving, may Almighty Allah in His greatest kindness accept and bless you your sacred Umrah.”
The following lecture was delivered at the University of Alabama in Birmingham some time ago . Check it out and do share with others if you think it is of benefit.
I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of converts to Islam in my life. Most of them face a series of challenges as they seek to adjust to their new lifestyles respectively. Today I was reminded of one of my favorite experiences with a friend who is a convert from about eight years ago.
their shahada. It becomes an even bigger problem when those of us who decide to give advice start off by saying things like “you should probably think of getting married now”. Can you imagine if you are a 19 year old girl and you come home to talk to your parents’ about your newly found religion and then tell them that you were told you have to get married soon? When I was 19 years old I told my dad I wanted to get married and he told me I was stupid and to stop saying stupid things 
cultural apostacy upon embracing Islam. Rather one should be able to infuse their Islam within their own cultural dynamic, allowing for even further evidence as to how truly beautiful this deen is that it can be applied anywhere and at anytime for any person or people. Yet our attachment to “our ways” can be more detrimental than we even realize.
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