The solution to our current emotional crisis is a return to a full Qur’anic commitment in which we try to see the reality of God’s agency in all things. Nothing else is likely to calm our spirits. We do not know whether ours are the end-times, but classical wisdom does seem more urgently required today than ever before.

Under conditions of extreme entropy and collapse the Qur’anic model of faith, which stresses patience in the shadow of the direct omnipotence of God more than any other scripture, and the Prophetic teaching of self-restraint and harmony, seem to provide the perfect armour against the incipient desperation, aimlessness and panic of the modern world. We can be as intolerant and furious as Mullah Karaki, or as peaceful as Nana Ajka: it is our choice.

Other religions have commended the virtue of rida but only Islam gives us the healing reassurance of the total monotheistic message, that God is ‘over all things Powerful’; and, as the Ottoman proverb had it, ‘whoever believes in qadar, is protected from kadar (misery)’: man amana bi’l-qadar, amina mina’l-kadar.

Shaykh Abdal-Hakim Murad

Source: Good anger, bad anger, and Shirk al-Asbab by Shaykh Abdal-Hakim Murad