Attributes of the Muttaqeen: Spending, Anger Control, Forgiveness, and Repentance

Attributes of the Muttaqeen: Spending, Controlling Anger, and Tawbah

Hasten Towards Forgiveness and Jannah

In these ayat that were recited, Allah is giving us a list of different actions and different rewards we get for a believer. And He starts off, before listing out the different attributes, He starts off by telling us:

That hasten towards the forgiveness of your Lord. That we do not know where we will be tomorrow. We don't know how we will wake up tomorrow. We don't know if we will even wake up tomorrow. All we know is that today we are here, and Allah has given us the blessing of iman, the blessing, the honor to be able to worship Him. So we must make the best opportunity of this.

And Allah also says that we should hasten towards gardens, towards Jannah, whose vastness is the vastness of the seven skies and the earth. And all of this has been prepared specially for the muttaqeen — أُعِدَّتْ لِلْمُتَّقِينَ. So how do we become from the muttaqeen? How do we become from the people who get these rewards?

In the next two ayahs, Allah lists out different attributes of the people who will get these rewards.

The First Attribute: Turning to Allah After Sinning

We will start from the second ayah, and come back to the first one. In the second ayah, Allah says:

That when someone commits a sin, an obscene act, a fahisha — أَوْ ظَلَمُوا أَنفُسَهُمْ — or he commits a minor sin, he oppresses himself — ذَكَرُوا اللَّهَ فَاسْتَغْفَرُوا لِذُنُوبِهِمْ — he immediately turns towards Allah and seeks His forgiveness. He recognizes that what I did was wrong, and I need to turn towards Allah.

وَمَن يَغْفِرُ الذُّنُوبَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ — No one can forgive other than Allah. We shouldn't turn towards anyone except Allah.

وَلَمْ يُصِرُّوا عَلَىٰ مَا فَعَلُوا وَهُمْ يَعْلَمُونَ — And this person doesn't just stop there, he doesn't just stop at asking forgiveness from Allah. Rather, he makes sure that he will never commit this sin again, that he makes sure that he never persists on that sin again. He completely cuts it off from his life.

The Three Conditions of Tawbah

And this fulfills the three conditions of tawbah. That tawbah isn't just asking forgiveness from Allah. Rather, it comprises of:

Number one: أَنْ يُقْلِعَ عَنِ الْمَعْصِيَةِ — That he uproots that sin from his life. That he takes all the avenues towards that sin and makes sure he cuts them all off. So he doesn't just stop the sin, but he makes it hard to even get towards that sin again.

The second one: أَنْ يَنْدَمَ عَلَى فِعْلِهَا — That he has complete regret. He's not just saying "I seek forgiveness" verbally. Rather, in his heart, he has great sorrow for the sin he has committed.

And number three: أَنْ يَعْزِمَ أَلَّا يَعُودَ إِلَيْهَا أَبَدًا — That he makes firm conviction that he will never return to this sin again.

So these three are the conditions for tawbah. And it's all mentioned in this ayah.

The Three Special Attributes of the Muttaqeen

Now going back to the first ayah, Allah then mentions three specific and special attributes of the muttaqeen. That the previous one was a general attribute of the muttaqeen — that when he commits a sin, he immediately turns towards Allah. But the next three attributes are specific and special.

First Attribute: Spending in the Path of Allah

الَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ فِي السَّرَّاءِ وَالضَّرَّاءِ — The first one: those who spend in sarraa, in times of ease, and darraa, times of difficulty. That in all conditions, no matter what, no matter if he's poor, no matter if he's rich, no matter if he's going through tough times, he's always spending in Allah's path.

And not only does he love to spend, but he loves to spend that which he loves:

That you will never attain piety and righteousness until you spend from that which you love. Not just spending whatever we have in excess, but those things that are close to our heart, that we love — we must spend that in the path of Allah.

So this is the first quality — that whenever this person gets anything, whenever he loves anything, he always spends it in the path of Allah. And it shouldn't be such that in our minds, when we're giving sadaqah, we think that it's decreasing our money, that our bank account is going down. Because in reality it's the opposite.

It comes in a hadith:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 1442; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 1010)

There is no morning where a slave wakes up, except that two angels descend from the skies. One of them says: "O Allah, give the person who spends in Your path full compensation." And the other angel says: "O Allah, give the person who is stingy, the person who doesn't give anyone else anything, give him destruction."

So in reality, us spending in the path of Allah will only lead to us getting more. Because when Allah compensates, it is no ordinary compensation — أَضْعَافًا مُضَاعَفَةً — it will be multiplied hundreds, thousands. We don't even know how much Allah will give us. And if we hold back, we do not spend in the path of Allah, we do not give sadaqah to people, then that will only lead to our own detriment, to our own destruction. Now technically this goes against logic, but it is from the miracles of Allah — it's not supposed to make sense, and that's the beauty of it.

Second Attribute: Swallowing One's Anger

وَالْكَاظِمِينَ الْغَيْظَ — That this person, whenever he gets angry, he swallows his anger. Now what does it mean to swallow one's anger? The mufassirun say: إِمْسَاكُهُ وَإِخْفَاؤُهُ حَتَّى لَا يَظْهَرَ عَلَيْهِ — that he holds back and hides his anger such that you cannot see that anger on him anymore. There's no effect, there's no trace of it. He completely forgives the person and conceals his anger such that if you look at him, he's acting the same way as he did before he got angry. It's as if he never got angry in the first place.

Now many of us think that we are concealing our anger when we don't speak to someone — that "okay, I'm not speaking to him, so that's me being patient and concealing my anger." But in reality, many times people don't talk to someone, and this is a worse punishment than speaking to them and lashing out at them in the first place. Because some people show their anger through not speaking to someone.

Also, كَاظِمِينَ الْغَيْظَ — swallowing one's anger — it doesn't occur when we don't have any power to do anything about it in the first place. That is not concealing one's anger. Rather, كَاظِمِينَ الْغَيْظَ is when the person has the power to do something about it, and he is justified to do something about it, but he puts away his personal preference and he conceals his anger because that is the best thing for that scenario.

Imagine if someone got angry at you, someone did something that harms you, and then you completely forgave him and acted like it never happened in the first place — what would the relationship be with this person after that? He will be amazed: "I hurt this person and he's still being kind to me." So we must conceal our anger whenever something happens, and act like it never happened in the first place. This is one of the qualities of the muttaqeen.

And Nabi ﷺ also had this quality. But we must also not keep it general — we don't always conceal anger. There are times and places when anger is necessary. For example, if you have a child and this child does something bad, it doesn't mean that every single time the child does something wrong you say "I'm not going to say anything." Rather, this would be zulm for the child, because the child would not know what is good and what is wrong. So in the proper place, in the proper situation, if getting angry is good for that scenario, then we get angry. But if concealing our anger and forgiving the person is the best thing, then that is what we should do.

And this is seen in the hadith of Nabi ﷺ that he said:

(Sunan Abi Dawud, Hadith 4681)

That the person who loves for the sake of Allah, and the person who hates and gets angry solely for the sake of Allah — not because of his own desire, rather because he thinks that is the best thing in the scenario and the best thing for that person — the person is not fulfilling the rights of Allah, not fulfilling someone else's rights, so he gets angry for the deen of Allah. He doesn't get angry for his own sake. وَأَعْطَى لِلَّهِ — He gives for the sake of Allah. وَمَنَعَ لِلَّهِ — And he also withholds for the sake of Allah. Then this person has complete iman.

Third Attribute: Forgiving People

And كَاظِمِينَ الْغَيْظَ — this attribute of swallowing one's anger — also pairs up with وَالْعَافِينَ عَنِ النَّاسِ — forgiving people. That we first must forgive the person, and then we must act like it never happened in the first place. We completely forgive them and pardon them.

These Qualities Are the Mark of the Muhsineen

So these are the qualities which Allah mentions are of the muttaqeen. But as we mentioned, these three qualities are special. Because after this, Allah says:

That the people who have these qualities are not only muttaqeen, but they are also muhsineen — people of excellence. Muhsin comes from ihsan, which means excellence. These people display excellence.

How? If we look at the first attribute — الَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ فِي السَّرَّاءِ وَالضَّرَّاءِ — those people who spend in times of ease and times of difficulty. The standard is that if someone is rich, if someone is affluent, then that is the person who will spend. No one will rebuke or blame someone who is poor for not spending. But now if this poor person who is in a state of darraa, in a state of hardship, goes and spends — this is going over and above. This is going over and above the standard.

And now if we look at كَاظِمِينَ الْغَيْظَ — the person who swallows his anger. When someone does something wrong to us, the standard is that we get angry at them, and it's an eye for an eye. They do something to us, we do the same thing back to them. That's the standard, and that's allowed in Sharia. If someone does something to us, we can do the same thing they did, but not more. But to go above and beyond is to completely forgive the person, to not harm them, to not take retribution from them, and to act like it never happened in the first place, and mend your relationship with them. This is going above and beyond.

The Example of the Prophet ﷺ at Uhud

And if you look at Nabi ﷺ, our role model — this is what is found with him. In the battle of Uhud, when Hamza رضي الله عنه was killed and martyred — as soon as he saw him, Hamza رضي الله عنه was one of the closest people to Nabi ﷺ, he loved him so much. So when he saw him in the state of being killed and martyred, he said: لَأُمَثِّلَنَّ بِسَبْعِينَ رَجُلًا مَكَانَهُ — "I will do the same to 70 of your men, the same way you harmed Hamza رضي الله عنه." Because of how sad and how much grief he was in, he said this.

So immediately, Jibreel عليه السلام was sent down to Nabi ﷺ from Allah, and the verse was revealed:

That Allah said: O Nabi ﷺ, if you take retribution for what happened to Hamza رضي الله عنه, then only take retribution for the amount of harm they afflicted — they killed one person, so you do the same, only one to them. That is the standard. But — وَلَئِن صَبَرْتُمْ لَهُوَ خَيْرٌ لِّلصَّابِرِينَ — if you are patient and you forgive them, then that is the best thing. And then Allah gives a direct command to Nabi ﷺ: وَاصْبِرْ — O Nabi ﷺ, you are the best of mankind, you are the role model for mankind, so for you, you must have patience. The standard for you is to go above and beyond.

And if you look at the outcome — Nabi ﷺ pardoning Wahshi رضي الله عنه and not taking retribution was actually the best thing, and it was very fruitful. For Wahshi رضي الله عنه came into the fold of Islam — he accepted Islam. Not only that, but after Nabi ﷺ passed away, he was the one who killed Musaylimah al-Kadhdhab. Musaylimah al-Kadhdhab was a false prophet who claimed prophethood after Nabi ﷺ. So the same person, Wahshi رضي الله عنه — the same person who killed Hamza رضي الله عنه — was also the same person who killed the one who was trying to falsify the seal of prophethood, the Khatm al-Nubuwwah of Nabi ﷺ. So we see there is great benefit in concealing our anger, and that Allah will recompense us in the future.

Preparing for Ramadan by Inculcating These Qualities

So now as Ramadan is coming up, we must try to inculcate these qualities into our lives — spending in the path of Allah, concealing our anger, and whenever we commit sins, always turning towards Allah. We're only two weeks away, so we should try to inculcate these qualities as soon as we can, so that as soon as we reach Ramadan, we have a head start.

Practical Remedies for Controlling Anger

Now to finish off — what are some ways that we can bring these qualities into our lives? Not getting angry when someone does something wrong to us is one of the hardest things to do. It is very hard for the nafs. So Allah has given us a few treatments, a few aids to help us when we get angry.

Remedy One: Recite the Ta'awwudh

Number one is to recite the ta'awwudh:

Then it comes in the Quran:

That if Shaytan comes and insinuates something in you, insinuates anger in your heart, then seek the protection of Allah from Shaytan.

And it is seen in the hadith of Nabi ﷺ that one time two men were fighting and Nabi ﷺ saw that one of the men was getting so angry that his eyes were getting red and his jugular vein was pulsating. So Nabi ﷺ said:

Indeed I know a phrase that if this person says it, then whatever anger he is in will go away: أَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ — I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Shaytan.

Remedy Two: Remove Yourself from the Situation

The second thing we should do is get away from that situation. If someone is getting us angry, we should leave the situation. It is found in the hadith of Nabi ﷺ that he said:

(Sunan Abi Dawud, Hadith 4782)

That if one of you gets angry while standing, then sit down. And if the anger subsides, then that's good. If it does not subside, then lie down.

And in another hadith:

(Sunan Abi Dawud, Hadith 4784)

Indeed, anger was created from Shaytan, and indeed Shaytan was created from fire. And indeed, the thing that extinguishes fire is water. So if one of you gets angry, he should go and make wudu.

So these two hadith — sitting down, lying down, and making wudu when one gets angry — show that we should leave the situation. Sitting there and getting more angry isn't going to help anyone. Rather we should turn towards Allah and seek refuge in Him and ask Him to help this anger subside so we can get on with our life and forgive the other person.

Closing Du'a

So I ask Allah that He allows us to inculcate all these qualities into our lives, that He allows us to spend in His path, that He allows us to control our anger, and that whenever we commit sins, we always turn back to Him. Ameen.

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