With Hardship is Ease by Shaykh Ammar Alshukry

With Hardship is Ease

By Shaykh Ammar Alshukry

Opening — Khutbah al-Hajah

He conveyed the message, fulfilled the trust, and gave sincere counsel to this ummah. He left us upon a clear white path — its night is like its day — no one deviates from it except one who is destroyed. May the salutations and peace of his Lord be upon him.

O servants of Allah. Allah says in His noble book, after seeking refuge from Shaytan the accursed:

All praise is due to Allah. We seek His guidance and His forgiveness. And we seek refuge in Allah from the evil of ourselves and the whispering of our desires. Whom Allah guides, no one can misguide. And whom He allows to be misled, no one can guide. And I bear witness that there is nothing worthy of worship except Allah alone. And that Muhammad ﷺ is His slave and His messenger.

The Revelation of Surah al-Sharh

To proceed. Rasulullah ﷺ in Mecca was persecuted. His followers were persecuted. He was belied, although he was known as having never told a lie. And he was rejected by his people. And he was mocked. To the point where the people of Quraysh would ask him and they would say, "Is this money that you need? Is this claim of prophethood a ploy to get money? Should we do a fund for you?" And Allah knows the hurt that Rasulullah ﷺ experienced from his people.

And so Allah revealed:

Allah mentions in a sequence of verses things that He had granted Rasulullah ﷺ: "We expanded for you your chest, and we removed from you the burden of your sins that had weighed you down, and we have raised your remembrance." Until Allah says:

Allah says: "Verily with hardship there is ease. Verily with hardship there is ease." This verse repeats twice. And so in this brief khutbah I wanted to comment on a few reflections from this verse.

A Linguistic Reflection: One Hardship, Two Eases

When you read the scholars of tafsir, they mention the formulation of the verse includes a word that is what's called in Arabic مَعْرِفَة — it is الْعُسْر, the hardship. It is a hardship that is defined. It is a noun that is defined. It is speaking about a particular hardship. And Allah makes يُسْر — He makes it نَكِرَة — He makes it undefined. And then in the second verse Allah again says:

Again with the hardship — the same defined hardship — is ease. And so Rasulullah ﷺ said:

(Referenced by scholars of tafsir in commentary on Surah al-Sharh, 94:5–6. See Ibn Kathir, Tafsir al-Qur'an al-'Azim, commentary on Surah al-Sharh.)

This verse indicates to us that the same hardship comes with multiple eases — it comes with two eases. And so the Prophet ﷺ said: one hardship is not going to overwhelm two eases. And Ibn Abbas said that when a hardship is created, two eases are created alongside it.

Reflection One: Hardship is Part of the Human Experience

The first is to understand that hardship is part and parcel of the human experience. There is nobody who gets to live problem-free. However many people there are in this masjid right now — that's how many problems you have, bare minimum. There are probably a lot more. But every single one of us has problems. Allah says:

"We've created man to be in a state of difficulty." This was not meant to be a place of raha. This was not meant to be a place of ease. This was not meant to be a place that is problem-free. That is what Jannah was designed to be. This world here? Oh no — you're going to have problems. When you're in school you're going to have the problems of being a student. When you become an employee, you have the problems of being an employee. And so you say, "No, I want to be an entrepreneur." So then you become an entrepreneur and you have the problems of being an entrepreneur. And then you're single and you say, "I want to get married." And you go from having a single person's problems to married people's problems. You go from one stage to another.

"We've created man to be in a state of turmoil, in a state of difficulty." So I understand that this is the nature of the game. I am not broken by the fact that I have problems, because I was always going to have problems.

Reflection Two: Your Lord is More Merciful to You Than You Are to Yourself

The second is to understand that these problems are still coming to you from a Lord who is more merciful to you than you are to yourself. And He is more merciful to you than your parents are. If they were to write your script — whoever it is that you think is the most merciful person you've ever encountered — what Allah has written for you is more merciful to you than you would have written for yourself.

And so being content and having tawakkul in Allah — Rasulullah ﷺ says to Ibn Abbas:

(Jami' al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2516 — graded Hasan Sahih)

The Prophet ﷺ says: "If the entire world were to gather to benefit you, they wouldn't be able to benefit you with anything more than what Allah has already written for you. And if they were to gather to harm you, they wouldn't harm you with anything more than what Allah has already written for you. The pen has been lifted and the ink has dried." And who is the one who wrote? It's Allah. And so I'm comfortable with what Allah has decreed for me.

But even then, with that hardship, there are a number of eases that come. And so the scholars mention, for example, because Allah says إِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا — He says with the hardship is ease — even though we understand that the ease comes after, He doesn't say إِنَّ بَعْدَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا — He doesn't say after the hardship is ease. He said it is with. As if to say that the ease follows the hardship so closely that it's almost like they're racing one another.

And the Prophet ﷺ pointed at a hole — it was the hole of an animal that had burrowed — and he said that if hardship were to enter into this hole, ease would enter with it too. It has to come.

The Sweetness of Nearness to Allah in Times of Hardship

Of the manifestations of ease that come with hardship is the sweetness that Allah gives you — of being able to call upon Him, and being able to worship Him, and having the sweetness of conversing with Allah with a frequency and a level that we might not have outside of that difficulty. And how many of us have experienced that? Where things are going great in life, and that causes us to forget about Allah. And then a crisis happens. And then you find this nearness. And you find this tahajjud. And you find this du'a. And you find these tears. And then when the crisis passes, you look back on those moments and you say: SubhanAllah, there was such a sweetness to those days. I don't miss the test, but I miss the sweetness that had come with that test.

Allah says in the hadith qudsi reported by Muslim, that on the Day of Judgment He will say:

(Sahih Muslim, Hadith 2569)

"O my servant, I was sick and you didn't come and visit me." And a person will say, "Ya Rabb, how can I visit you when you are the Lord of the worlds?" And Allah will say: "Didn't so-and-so become sick? If you had visited him, لَوَجَدْتَنِي عِنْدَهُ — you would have found me with them."

Allahu Akbar. When you think of the sick person — or when a person is sick — how many of us are cognizant of the fact that in that sickness, Allah doesn't leave them alone? Even if nobody visits them. Even if people forsake them. That Allah is with them. Allah is near them. Allah is in their company. Allah tells that person on the Day of Judgment: if you had come to visit them, you would have found Me with them.

Practical Ways to Invoke Ease in Hardship

What are some of the things we can do to invoke ease in hardship? I'll mention a number of things.

One: Istighfar

Rasulullah ﷺ says:

(Sunan Abu Dawud, Hadith 1518)

Rasulullah ﷺ says: "Whoever constantly makes istighfar, Allah will make for him from every difficulty relief, and from every hardship a way out."

And Nuh alayhi salam said to his people:

Nuh alayhi salam said: "Make istighfar, and Allah will cause the rain to fall, and Allah will grant you gardens, and He will grant you children."

Two: Make Things Easy for Other People

Rasulullah ﷺ says:

(Sahih Muslim, Hadith 2699)

"Whoever removes a difficulty from a Muslim in this life, Allah will remove from them a difficulty in the hereafter." And he says:

(Sahih Muslim, Hadith 2699)

"And whoever makes things easy for a person in difficulty, Allah will make things easy for them in the dunya and the akhira."

As you can imagine, there is no one who loved ease and loved to make things easy for people more than Rasulullah ﷺ. He said:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 69; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 1734)

"Make things easy and don't make things difficult. Don't be someone who makes things difficult."

There is a hadith that describes the Prophet's ﷺ spirit of ease, and it is amazing to me. The hadith is in Bukhari and Muslim. Abu Hurairah radiallahu anhu says: we were sitting and a man came rushing to Rasulullah ﷺ and he says:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 1936; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 1111)

He said: "O Messenger of Allah, I am destroyed! I was intimate with my wife during the day of Ramadan." And so the Prophet ﷺ says to him: "Can you free a slave?" He says no. "Can you fast two months back to back?" He says no. "Can you feed sixty people?" The man says no.

So the Prophet ﷺ has gone through all of the expiation with him — he's out. So then Rasulullah ﷺ simply sits there quietly. And then a man comes later on and he brings a basket — a bucket of tamr, of dates. And then Rasulullah ﷺ gives it to the man and says: "Go and distribute this amongst the poor." And the man says: "Ya Rasulullah — to someone poorer than me? Wallahi, between the two mountains of Medina there is not a family that is poorer than me." And so Rasulullah ﷺ laughed — Abu Hurairah said until his molar teeth could be seen — and then he said to him: "Go and feed it to your family."

Look at this incredible ease. This man came thinking that he was destroyed, and he leaves from the Prophet ﷺ with food for his family. Many of us might have gotten frustrated by that audacity — "How dare you try to take advantage of this situation! No, you're going to go and distribute it to the poor. Don't try to find a loophole in the deen." But Rasulullah ﷺ said: make things easy for people, don't make them difficult. And the Prophet ﷺ loved ease.

So number two is to make things easy for people:

(Sahih Muslim, Hadith 2699)

Three: Taqwa

And you knew this was coming — taqwa. Allah says:

"Whoever has taqwa of Allah, Allah will make their affairs easy."

Four: Du'a and Adhkar

And the last that I'll mention — of course — is to make du'a. There are many many du'as that a person can make, and there are many adhkar. Of them is:

Ibn Taymiyyah rahimahu Allah said that with this phrase, terrors are met — because you're asking Allah to transform your state from a state of difficulty to a state of ease.

Of them is the du'a of Yunus. Rasulullah ﷺ says: there is no Muslim who makes this dhikr except that Allah removes from them hardship and distress:

(Jami' al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 3505 — graded Hasan)

Closing Du'a