While recording a recent podcast, Shaykh Dr. Haitham al-Haddad asked me to carry a sentence to every person I could reach: in Islam, there is no such thing as losing hope.
Hoping that Allah will cure you, forgive you, grant you victory after defeat, light after darkness, mercy after tribulation, is not delusional. Hope in Allah is not misplaced, foolish, or naive. For the believer, the door to Allah’s mercy does not close. As Rumi said: this is not a caravan of despair.
If understood properly, this single principle answers much of what pushes a human being towards the edge. And I want to speak about that edge, because there are more people standing near it than we like to admit.
Almost everyone now knows someone who has thought about ending their life, or someone who has been swallowed by a darkness they could not explain to anyone. It reaches further than people imagine. Even those who carry the daʿwah — who teach, serve, lead, organise, speak, smile, and appear strong — are not always spared this kind of pain.
If that is you, or if it has been you, I want to say something before anything else. What you are carrying is real. The weight is real. The exhaustion is real. The moments when you could not see a way forward were not a sign of weakness or a failure of faith. They were a sign of how much pain can press in on a human being. You do not need to have it explained to you that life is hard. You are living that knowledge.
Let me ask something of you
What is it that you are actually carrying?
Not the version you present to others, not the composed face or the careful answer, but the thing that sits with you in the early hours when the world is quiet and you are most honest with yourself. The grief that has not lifted. The loneliness that persists in crowded rooms. The sense, perhaps, that you have been asking Allah for something for a long time and the silence has become its own kind of answer. You do not need to name it aloud. But I want you to sit with it for a moment, because what comes next will only reach you if you are reading from that honest place.
I understand why a person in that place stops wanting to think about the future. The future, when pain is this intense, does not look like a different chapter. It looks like the same chapter, repeated indefinitely. And a person does not despair of life because they are weak. They despair because pain, when sustained long enough and carried alone, narrows everything. The horizon contracts. What is possible shrinks. The soul, under that kind of pressure, loses its ability to imagine otherwise.
That narrowing is not a spiritual verdict on the person. It is what happens to human beings under unbearable weight. The Prophet ﷺ wept. He experienced grief so acute that Allah revealed a surah to comfort him. The Companions were shaken to the point where they cried out asking when relief would come.
Do you think you will be admitted into Paradise without being tested like those before you? They were afflicted with suffering and adversity and were so violently shaken that even the Messenger and the believers with him cried out, ‘When will Allah’s help come?’ Indeed, Allah’s help is always near.” [1]
Being broken by this life is not disqualifying. It is part of the journey that Allah acknowledged in His revelation.
There is also something that needs to be said directly. Many in our communities, when someone reaches this place, reach immediately for warning and judgement rather than presence. They speak about the gravity of despair before they have sat with the person who is despairing. They treat the wound with law before they have treated it with mercy. That is not the Prophetic way, and it has caused damage we need to be honest about. If you have encountered that kind of response, or stayed silent about your pain because you feared it, then I am sorry. That failure was ours, not yours.
Listen to this hadīth that should change the way our communities speak about the subject:
Jābir relates that a man who had migrated to the Prophet ﷺ became severely ill. In his anguish, he took his own life. Later, he was seen in a dream in a good state, and when asked what Allah had done with him, he said that Allah had forgiven him because of his hijrah, because of his striving towards his Lord. When this was mentioned to the Prophet ﷺ, he confirmed it. [2]
From narrations such as this, Imam al-Nawawī articulated the position of Ahl al-Sunnah: a believer is not expelled from Islam by a major sin, even one as grave as this. The idea that a Muslim who dies in this way is necessarily outside Islam or necessarily lost forever is not the position of Ahl al-Sunnah. It is a harshness that many have absorbed, repeated, and then mistakenly attributed to the religion.
What Allah is displeased with, as Shaykh Haitham explains, is not merely the outward act. It is the despair that can sit beneath it. The thought that Allah will not help, will not forgive, will not relieve, will not open a door, will not show mercy. And despairing of Allah is one of the heaviest things a heart can carry.
Allah says,
Say, O Prophet, that Allah says: ‘O My servants who have exceeded the limits against their souls, do not lose hope in Allah’s mercy, for Allah certainly forgives all sins. He is indeed the All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.'” [3]
And He says,
None despairs of the mercy of Allah except the disbelieving people.” [4]
We remind people that this sin is unlawful. Yet we do not remind them enough that giving up on the mercy of Allah is itself forbidden. It is among the gravest spiritual diseases, because it places an imagined limit on the One whose mercy has no limit.
Three truths
This life was created as a test
Three truths want to be restored here — not as instructions to feel better but as realities that, once held, can begin to widen the frame that pain has narrowed.
The first is that this life was created as a test. Allah did not promise us uninterrupted ease and then break His promise. He told us what this world is.
He is the One who created death and life in order to test which of you is best in deeds. And He is the Almighty, All-Forgiving.” [5]
This changes the question available to you. The wounded heart asks: why is this happening to me? That is the question pain cannot answer. But the believer who has absorbed this reality can ask a different question: how do I respond to this in a way that brings me closer to Allah? That question has answers. It opens rather than closes.
The strange thing is not that life contains hardship. The strange thing is how much ease we have been given despite deserving so little of it. And even ease is a test. Wealth is a test. Health is a test. Comfort is a test. Popularity is a test. Being admired is a test. Being left alone is a test. No one escapes being tested. We only differ in the form our test takes, and the test can take us to Paradise, to eternal bliss.
The meaning we give our suffering matters
The second truth is that you can stand in the possibility that the meaning you have given your pain is not the only meaning. This is the power of meaning.
Pain is real. What happened to you was real. But the interpretation built upon it, the story that says this is permanent, that this is all there is, that you have gone too far, that nothing is coming, that story is not the only one available. It is the story pain tells when it is loudest. It is not the story Allah tells.
It is important to recognise that suffering is not defined only by the event itself, but also by the way a person gives meaning to and processes that event. The same incident may deeply wound one person while leaving another relatively unaffected. Even the same person may respond differently to a similar event at different stages of life, depending on their emotional state, maturity, support system, and spiritual resilience.
These events can shape the way a person thinks and affect their world-view. A woman who has been abused by a man may develop the distorted belief that all men are evil. This may then become the lens through which she interprets reality. If she later approaches aspects of Islamic law through that lens, she may see them as expressions of oppression, even before carefully understanding their wisdom, context, and objectives. This shows how negative experiences can influence a person’s deeper assumptions about existence, knowledge, human nature, and purpose — operating beneath the surface yet affecting the way a person judges Islam, Islamic law, and the moral order that Allah has revealed.
Suffering can become a path back to Allah
The meaning a person gives to suffering can become a path not only to healing but to growth.
After experiencing grief and devastation, even ordinary blessings can appear extraordinary. Pain can make us more aware of the value of the people around us. Life-altering experiences can clarify priorities and reveal opportunities previously overlooked. After surviving great hardship, future challenges may appear less overwhelming. Suffering can awaken the heart, renew īmān, and bring a person closer to Allah. When worldly attachments are shaken, Allah can become more central in one’s life, bringing stability, surrender, and spiritual maturity.
Consider what we are weighing here. Two ways of understanding suffering stand facing each other.
The first is expressed through the atheistic world-view of Richard Dawkins:
On the contrary, if the Universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies like the crashing of this bus are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a Universe would be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind.
In a Universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The Universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” [6]
Now consider what it means to stand in the possibility that meaning can come from Allah:
Your pain and suffering will be rewarded with eternal bliss in Paradise. If you suffered for a whole lifetime and were dipped in Paradise for a moment, you would feel that you had never suffered. Evil and suffering exist to test you, elevate you, and facilitate a higher spiritual state. It is meant to bring you closer to the divine, therefore closer to Paradise. As a believer, any pain or suffering is a means to absolve you from your shortcomings and sins. When you are tested with evil and suffering, it is a sign of divine love, for He knows you have the ability to overcome the trials in your life. He knows you better than you know yourself.
The Prophet ﷺ said,
Amazing is the affair of the believer. All of it is good for him, and this is for no one except the believer. If good comes to him, he is grateful, and that is good for him. If harm comes to him, he is patient, and that is good for him.” [7]
There is no outcome in which the believer is left with nothing. There is shukr (gratitude) and sabr (patience). And both are doors to Allah.
Ending one’s life does not end the pain
The third truth is that our life is not ours in the absolute sense. It was given. Who gave you life? Allah. Who sustains it at every moment? Allah. Who has the right to take it? Allah.
The sanctity that Islam places on a single soul is astonishing. Allah tells us that whoever takes a life unjustly, it is as though he has killed all of humanity, and whoever saves a life, it is as though he has saved all of humanity. The Prophet ﷺ rebuked a man for killing a small bird without right. If even the life of a sparrow is not ours to take casually, then what of the human soul, honoured by Allah, carried by angels, breathed into by divine command, and created for an eternal meeting with its Lord? [8]
There is another kind of despair. It is not born from guilt over sin, but from exhaustion. From grief, loss, and loneliness. From a pain so heavy that the person cannot see any light ahead of them. They are looking for a reason to stay alive.
The shaykh described to me a man who called him from another country. He was educated, capable, outwardly functioning, but ready to end his life. He insisted it was not because of the woman who had left him. It was because he had prayed and prayed and felt that Allah was not with him. The shaykh did not begin by preaching at him. He entered his pain and reasoned with him from inside the darkness.
Who told you that ending your life ends the pain? You believe that you will live on after death. So the pain you are trying to escape is not escaped by death. It may be carried into a place where you can no longer act, no longer change, no longer seek help, no longer repair what is broken.
And this thing you cannot bear today, this loss that feels final, how do you know that what is coming is not better? The first time you lost something precious, you may have felt that nothing could replace it. Then time passed. Allah opened another door. You could not see it then. But your inability to see the door was never proof that the door did not exist.
Pain narrows the world. It makes tomorrow look identical to today. It makes the future feel like a repetition of the wound. We should not condemn people for this. When pain is intense, it contracts the soul’s horizon. The work of mercy is to help the person see beyond the point to which pain has reduced their vision.
Against the scale of the Ākhirah, this entire Dunya is merely a breath.
The Prophet ﷺ said,
The most miserable person in the world among the people of Paradise will be brought on the Day of Resurrection and dipped once in Paradise. Then it will be said to him: ‘O son of Adam, did you ever see any hardship? Did you ever experience any distress?’ He will say: ‘No, by Allah, my Lord. I never saw any hardship and I never experienced any distress.'” [9]
One moment of Paradise will erase a lifetime of pain.
Prophetic grief and Allah’s reframing
I want you to consider something. The Prophet ﷺ was the most lovingly merciful person to have walked this Earth. Now imagine the love he had for his son. No one can argue that his love was any less than ours; in fact it was much greater. And with great love comes great pain.
And yet Allah did not respond with a form of condolence in the ordinary sense. He shifted the meaning from grief to gratitude, and when someone is in a state of gratitude, it becomes difficult to remain entirely in a state of pain.
Allah reveals in Surat al-Kawthar:
Indeed, We have granted you, O Prophet, abundant goodness. So pray and sacrifice to your Lord alone. Only the one who hates you is truly cut off from any goodness.” [10]
This does not mean that the grief was gone. But it helped the Prophet ﷺ reframe his pain in a way that made the pain bearable. Allah provided a shift in meaning, and with that shift it became a tool to transcend grief with gratitude.
In the Hadīth Qudsī, Allah says,
I am as My servant thinks of Me.” [11]
Think well of Him. And you will find Allah greater than any of your expectations.
Allah keeps accepting repentance until the Sun rises from the West. He spreads His Hand by night to forgive the one who sinned by day, and spreads His Hand by day to forgive the one who sinned by night. The man who killed ninety-nine people, and then a hundred, was still not beyond return. The tyrants of the Trench, who burned believers alive, were still being invited to repent before they rejected that invitation.
If that door remained open for them, by what measure do we imagine it has closed for the person whose pain became unbearable?
On what helps
None of what has been written here is a substitute for care. If someone is in danger, they must seek urgent help. Therapists, doctors, psychiatrists, crisis teams, trusted family members, community leaders. Reaching for them is not a failure of tawakkul. It is part of taking the means Allah has placed in the world. Īmān does not replace the means. It gives the means meaning.
A human being is not merely a body, nor merely a mind, nor merely a set of symptoms. A human being is body, intellect, heart, and soul. A wound in one part is rarely healed by attending to only that part.
For the intellect, there is the reminder that life has meaning, that pain is not random, that hardship can purify, elevate, awaken, and return a person to Allah. For the heart, there is tenderness. Sometimes the heart does not need an argument. It needs an embrace. The shaykh spoke to me of a young man whose suicidal pain was treated, by Allah’s permission, with a single hug, because beneath the despair was an emotional hunger that no argument could feed.
And then there are the actions we neglect as though they have nothing to do with the soul’s condition. Pray, and feel what wudhu does to a heavy morning. Recite the Qur’ān aloud for twenty minutes a day and see what begins to change after two weeks. Go outside. Watch the sunrise. Walk. Eat properly. Sleep. Sit with people. Greet others and allow them to greet you back.
Do not seal yourself away from the community, because isolation gives despair a louder voice. If the community has not come to you, go and find it. Live near the masjid if you can. Sit with people of goodness. Visit the sick. Walk to the house of Allah. Let the angels make du’ā for you as you walk.
Even language matters. The Prophet ﷺ taught us not to curse our own souls.
None of you should say: ‘my soul has been wicked.’ Rather, let him say: ‘my soul has faulted.'” [12]
He taught us not to say words that degrade the self. Even a forced smile can begin to move something real in the body. The heart sometimes follows the limbs home.
When the calamity is real and cannot be undone, there remains a choice in how we carry it. There is a passive patience that says: what can I do, it has happened. There is reward in that. But there is a higher patience, an active patience, which turns to Allah and says: My Lord, I accept what You have decreed. Reward me in this affliction and replace it with what is better.
This is why the believer says: innā lillāhi wa innā ilayhī rājiʿūn. Indeed, to Allah we belong, and to Him we are returning.
These are not words for funerals alone. They are words for every moment the soul remembers its origin and destination. We came from Allah and we are returning to Him. Nothing between those two realities can ultimately own us.
Yusuf (ʿalayhi al-Salām) saw his dream as a boy. He did not see its fulfilment until years had passed through a well, slavery, false accusation, imprisonment, and separation from his father. The dream was true from the beginning, but the road to it was not short.
An answered du’ā is not always the next morning’s gift. Sometimes Allah delays because the reward is being made vast. Sometimes He withholds because what you asked for would harm you. Sometimes He replaces what you wanted with what will save you. Sometimes He gives in the Ākhirah what the Dunya was too small to contain.
Conclusion
We were created, Shaykh Haitham reminded me, to lead and not to be led. This is also true inside our own lives. We are not meant to be dragged behind our pain until it decides our future. We are meant, by Allah’s help, to walk ahead of it.
Look at where this truth is being written in our time. There are people in Gaza who have lost homes, parents, children, entire families. A father may lose six children in a single night and still say “alhamdulillāh”. People who have seen what most of us could not bear to see still say: we will live here, and we will die here — if hope can survive there, then hope is not a slogan. It is a power Allah places in the hearts of His servants.
The Prophet ﷺ, surrounded at the Trench, with hunger pressing into the stomachs of the believers, struck the rock and spoke of the palaces of great empires opening to them. The hypocrites laughed. The believers held on. History told us who understood reality.
So this is what I would say to anyone reading this who is standing near that edge, and to anyone who loves someone who is: hold on.
The pain is real, and I will not insult you by pretending otherwise. But it is not the whole picture. It is not the end of the story.
The One who made you has not abandoned you. He is nearer to you than you are able to feel in this moment. You have not exhausted His mercy and can never exhaust it.
Change the meaning. Reach for help. Reach for people. Reach for your Lord. Let someone walk beside you until the light returns.
And by Allah’s permission, it can return.
Hold on.
Source: Hold On / Islam21c
[1] al-Qur’ān, 2:214
[2] Sahīh Muslim, 116; https://sunnah.com/muslim:116
[3] al-Qur’ān, 39:53
[4] al-Qur’ān, 12:87
[5] al-Qur’ān, 67:2
[6] River of Eden by Richard Dawkins
[7] Sahīh Muslim, 2,699; https://sunnah.com/muslim:2999
[8] al-Nasā’ī, 4,446; https://sunnah.com/nasai:4446
[9] Sahīh Muslim, 2,807; https://sunnah.com/muslim:2807
[10] al-Qur’ān, 108:1-3
[11] Sahīh Muslim; https://sunnah.com/qudsi40:15
[12] Sahīh Muslim; https://sunnah.com/riyadussalihin:1739
It is not Allah SWT who has failed to provide, it is humanity that continually refuses to follow His path. And yet He is patient and continues to give us time, knowledge and power so we can correct ourselves, follow Him and earn his rewards.
One example of how we are failing is how we continue to gouge house prices so most people who don’t already have a house cannot afford to buy one without getting a huge debt and paying interest. Islamic loans are the same they collect fees which they do not call interest but let’s just call a spade what it is.
Allah forbids interest and also does not tell us to make our brother into slaves. But we have chosen these paths. The Qur’an tells us not to hold onto things for the value to increase.