Haste: The Human Condition And The Call To Patience

Overcoming Haste: The Human Condition and the Path of Patience

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, and peace be upon His servants whom He has chosen. I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Satan.

Man Was Created in Haste

Allah Almighty said in the Qur'an:

"Man was created in a hurry. I will show you My signs, so do not be impatient."

Allah Almighty said in another place:

"Man prays for evil as he prays for good. Man was created hasty." Allah Almighty has spoken the truth.

Allah Almighty, in the Qur'an, in different verses throughout the Qur'an, describes the different attributes He has created the human being with. One of those qualities is that Allah Almighty mentions: man was created in a hurry. Man — humans — not talking about a specific human, but humans in general. They were created from haste.

What does it mean by "created from haste"? Haste is something which is intangible. It's not that that was your form. But in order to understand the Qur'an, sometimes you have to understand how the Arabs spoke at that time, and what was their habit and their speech also. So when a person had an innate characteristic within them, they would say — whatever quality it is — it's as if he's created from that, because it's an innate characteristic of that person.

So Allah Almighty describes in numerous places in the Qur'an, and especially in Surah al-Anbiya, that humans are created from haste. And Allah Almighty is addressing: "I'm going to soon show you My signs, so don't hasten Me." Meaning that the Mushrikun would hasten and ask Nabi ﷺ, that if you're a true prophet, send some punishment on us. If you're a true prophet, send rocks from the heavens, from the skies, that will destroy us. So they would ask — they would never ask for good, they would ask: show us a punishment if you're actually a true prophet.

So Allah Almighty says: okay, just wait. Don't hasten, it's going to come. There's going to be a punishment that's going to come if you don't accept.

Allah Almighty has mentioned this is just a quality of a human being — that we tend to be hasty in everything, every action that we do. One of the Mufassirin, Imam al-Khateeb al-Iskafi, posed this question: does a human being, from the time they're born, have this innate characteristic of actually being hasty? And do they not have patience at all?

Many have mentioned that this quality of haste is actually formed later on, but he gave the response that actually, if you look at a baby — when the baby is born, the baby has a few needs: changing the diaper and eating, drinking milk specifically. Now, what is haste? As soon as some desire comes within your nafs, it passes by your mind, it passes by your heart — you immediately want to fulfill that desire. You want that instant gratification, regardless of whatever the desire is, be it halal or haram.

So a baby, as soon as it feels hungry, what does it do? It starts crying. And if you feed it a little bit, and if you stop — if it's still hungry — it's going to cry. It will keep crying until it gets its demand. What is that? That's haste. It doesn't have the ability to be patient. You find this from birth. Allah has given this quality to human beings.

The Dunya Is Also 'Ajal — Immediate and Fleeting

For us — we may be able to tolerate hunger to a certain degree — but what happens with other things? Whether there are haram desires or permissible desires, we want them instantaneously. And as a result of that, we are not able to refrain from sins.

Allah called the akhirah, akhirah, for a reason — because it comes afterwards. You have to live in this dunya first. The akhirah is going to come later. Though the reward is in the akhirah, that has been guaranteed and promised by Allah, but you have to be patient. You should not be hastening to receive the benefits, or trying to engage and indulge in all different types of sins because you're impatient and you just want the instant gratification.

The way we live in society — Allah describes this dunya using the same word, ajal. In Surah al-Isra, Allah mentions two ayahs. The dunya is ajal — it's something which is just immediate, it's quick. And insan also has a sifah — that quality of being hasty. So it goes hand in hand: insan will obviously want the dunya immediately.

But this is how the environment is, whether it was in the past or even in this current era that we're living in. We find more and more ways that a human being is trying to satisfy their own nafs, their own desires. Whatever desires come in their mind, they immediately want to satisfy that desire — regardless of whether it's ethical, whether it's moral, whether if they have a religion they follow, whether it's permissible in their religion.

Whatever bounties a person has, be it in this dunya or even spiritual bounties that a person wants to acquire, everything requires time, effort, hard work, and diligence. You have to be patient. You will not acquire things instantaneously. You're not born with a car. You're not born with a house. You grow up gradually. Allah didn't create a human being such that you give birth to a six-foot baby — you give birth to a child that's small. So gradually they grow. Everything is done on a gradual process, in a gradual way.

That is the key to actually acquiring success in the dunya and in the akhirah, and in acquiring spiritual progress closer to Allah. A person has to curtail their desires and curtail their nafs, and fight off that hastiness.

Haste in Our Worldly Life

In this dunya, everything has to be done instantaneously. Before, when people cooked food, what did they have to do? They had to find fire, start a fire, get the wood, then actually cut the food — the onions, different vegetables — and then mix it together and cook the food. Now the food is just right across — go to the gas station, go to the convenience store, everything is available. Hence what happens, you've actually lost the value of food. We eat food not because we're hungry, just because our nafs wants to.

Whereas initially, we actually knew the difficulty of cooking the food and finding the right ingredients. You would cook just twice or three times a day. You would suffice when you were actually hungry. But because food is readily available, any time our nafs wants some type of food — something sour, something sweet, whatever other taste — we want it; we immediately satisfy the desire without even being patient, and without even being hungry. That's haste.

If you want to look at every aspect of our life — every desire a human being has — now they have all these different books and methods on how to become a millionaire in one year, or how to acquire money while you're young. Before, people worked hard to acquire that. Now you have cryptocurrency and different methods. But everything they want is instantaneous.

If you look at our parents — the majority of our parents were immigrants. They worked hard to acquire what they have now and what they provided for us. And we want the opposite: just grant us everything immediately.

For our youth — the sins of, for example, pornography and their own shahawat — because we sometimes as parents stop them from marrying, or they say, "I want to marry at a much later age." Then what happens? They start indulging themselves in sins because they can't remain patient. They are hastening their own satisfaction and fulfilling their desires.

So all of this quality of ajala, of 'ujala — it's within a human being. And why did Allah put that within us? To test us. If none of us had this quality, then what's the point? If you tell a person: abstain from this sin — there's no problem, I can abstain from it, it's easy, I'll just wait till the akhirah and get the reward. But Allah put this within every human being so that you can get reward by curtailing your nafs. And Allah made it as a test for us.

Haste in the Deen — A Barrier to Spiritual Progress

Now, because we have haste in the dunya, we bring that into the deen also. In the deen, you cannot acquire anything through haste. You want to feel khushu' in salah — you're not going to get it in one day. It requires time to build it up.

What happens is we hear some magnificent bayan and lecture, or we hear the fada'il, the virtues of different a'mal, different actions. Then we want to do the action and get the results. One day passes. Two days pass. Three days pass. We don't get it. What happens? We give it up — "I'm not getting anything." Because you're thinking that just as how the dunya is easy to acquire, the deen is the same. But deen is not the same — it's the opposite.

It takes time to acquire deen. It takes time to build a ta'alluq with Allah, to become a close friend of Allah. It takes time to actually derive the true benefits of the Qur'an and adhkar and our salawat and all the different a'mal that we do. It just doesn't come instantaneously.

Walking to Salah with Composure

This is why Nabi ﷺ has mentioned that when you are coming for salah, you shouldn't be sprinting and running. Sometimes, when the imam is in ruku', what happens is someone sprints like they're running a marathon all the way to catch the raka'ah. You're not supposed to run like that. Because Nabi ﷺ mentioned that when you are walking to salah, walk with waqar — with composure, with tranquility — because while you're walking to salah, it is as if you're in salah also. If you miss the raka'ah, it's not a problem — you get the reward for the entire jama'ah because you had your intention there. But Nabi ﷺ mentioned to maintain your composure and tranquility when you are coming for salah.

Marriage and the Process of Nikah

When a person is looking for a spouse, there's a whole process. Once everything is determined, then yes, you should hasten to do the nikah — but there's a whole process. You don't just jump and say, "The first person I see, okay, that's who I want." No — you do istikhara, they do istikhara, you ask the questions in front of the maharim, and you see if it's suitable and compatible.

Reciting the Qur'an with Reflection

Every single action in our deen has waqar in it. Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, radiyallahu anhu, mentions in a narration regarding reciting the Qur'an: don't just recite the Qur'an like you are shaking a branch that has dried dates on it, that you just want to pick the dates quickly. You're reciting the Qur'an very quickly just so that you can take the benefit quickly. Whereas if you actually want to derive the true benefit of the Qur'an and to do the tadabbur of the Qur'an, you actually have to recite in a slow manner. To reflect and ponder over the Qur'an, you won't be able to do that if you're just reciting it in a hasty manner. Recite it slowly.

Praying Salah Properly

In our salah, Nabi ﷺ has mentioned: while you're in salah, don't be pecking like how a rooster or a bird pecks — meaning you're just praying salah very quickly, just going up and down. You won't derive the benefit of salah, and you won't derive the ability to abstain from sins from that salah. As Allah says:

"Indeed, prayer prohibits immorality and wrongdoing, and the remembrance of Allah is greater. And Allah knows what you do."

That true salah will stop you from fahshah, from obscene actions, from sins — when you actually pray in accordance to how you're supposed to pray, in accordance to the Sunnah and with tranquility and composure. When you're praying it in a hasty manner, you will not derive that benefit.

Fasting as a School of Patience

This is why Allah made many things in our deen such that you have to be patient in order to acquire true firmness and true quality in our actions. Fasting itself teaches us patience, because you can't just eat and do whatever you want the entire day or indulge yourself in sins. You have to eat at a specific time in the morning and after sunset. So Allah is teaching human beings: learn to be patient. Instead of whatever desires come within a person's heart, you just satisfy those desires immediately.

The True Meaning of Patience

Patience is not just something that you exercise at the time of difficulty. The scholars define patience as:

"Restraining the nafs from evil."

Patience is a word which is applied in different scenarios — when you're stopping your nafs from any evil action. At the time when a person has the ability to engage in sins or to do good deeds, and he remains patient and says, "No, I'm going to be steadfast in my deen and do good a'mal" — that's a different type of patience. A person who is out fighting for the sake of Allah on the battlefield — he can act as a coward and run away. At that time, it requires patience: you're stopping yourself from the bad quality of being a coward and actually facing the enemy at that moment.

Patience is used in different scenarios. It's not just refraining from evil deeds and enduring calamities and misfortunes. But also when you are doing good deeds, you need to have patience. Because in order to do the deed constantly, it requires patience. It's easy to do deeds every now and then and start new things. But istiqamah — being steadfast — that requires more patience than actually starting the action itself.

Applying Patience in Everyday Life

In every single action that we do in our deen, we have to analyze our own selves — are we doing it in a hasty manner? Knowledge itself requires sukoon, it requires tranquility. You can't just be running around thinking you're going to gain knowledge. When people study, they study sitting down or in the library when it's quiet — because that's how you're able to retain the material. You're not going to be able to retain it while driving the car or walking around. You won't be able to study properly.

Studying requires waqar — composure and tranquility. You have to do it in a gradual way. You don't memorize one book entirely in just one night. You study gradually. All of that goes back to the sifah of a human being — that he's always desiring haste.

This is a quality every single one of us has. The way to curtail it is by being patient over different things that we do, be it the dunya or the deen. Especially in our deen — let us look at all of our a'mal that we do and ask: are we doing them in a proper manner without being hasty? Whether it be our salah, whether it's spending time with our children, our spouses, our family.

Quality Time with Family

Now what do we do? Because we don't have — quote unquote — time, we just give them the phone. We get them addicted to the phone, to video games, to TV — because we don't have the time. You have the time. Give them the time. They don't need excessive time; they need quality time. That small 20 or 30 minutes — you take them out to the park, you play with them, whatever it may be — that's a bond they will always remember for the rest of their life.

And you put ihsan in that. You were patient despite your busy schedule. You did not hasten. And as a result of that, you'll see the fruits of that effort with your own children. But if you just try to spend five minutes with them and then give them the phone, you'll see the repercussions of that — and there will be bad repercussions when they grow up, and you see the relationship between you and your children.

The Sunnah with Spouses

The same thing applies with our spouses. You find this from the Sunnah of Nabi ﷺ. Despite having numerous wives, he would spend equal and quality time with all of them. The hadith of A'ishah, radiyallahu anha — she narrates that when she drank water, Nabi ﷺ would put his mouth in different parts of the cup just to express his love for her, so that his lips could touch the area where the lips of A'ishah, radiyallahu anha, had touched. You can't do that out of haste. That takes time.

In order to build a proper relationship with your spouse, you have to have sabr. You can't think you're going to have a good relationship just out of haste. Everything requires patience when you want to achieve the actual benefits — especially when it comes to our deen.

So may Allah give us the understanding and give us the ability to curtail our desires of always desiring haste.

Second Khutbah

And Allah Almighty has said in the Noble Qur'an:

Ibadallah, may Allah have mercy upon you. Indeed Allah commands justice, excellence, and giving to one's relatives, and He forbids immorality, wrongdoing, and oppression. He admonishes you that perhaps you will be reminded. Remember Allah and He will remember you. Call upon Him and He will answer you. And the remembrance of Allah is the greatest.

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