Sabr That Is Fard, Sunnah, Makruh and Haram

There is another division of ṣabr in Islam, and a comparison will make it clearer, though the question may at first seem laughable. Is it known that for some people it is fard to get married; for some people it is sunnah to get married; for some people it is wājib to get married; for some people it is makrūh to get married; and for some people it is ḥarām to get married? Since when, one might ask, is marriage ḥarām? Well — take a psychopath who hates women, who is in chains in a rural mental hospital, and one feels so sorry for him that one thinks he should get married. If he is let out to marry, what will happen? He will commit — what? Murder, of course; he will become a murderer, and whoever arranged it will be responsible for it. So it is ḥarām for him to get married until he becomes a normal person. At the opposite extreme, marriage becomes fard upon a person who is at the very edge of committing zinā, who thinks of nothing, nothing, nothing but ḥarām. If a man is thinking of nothing but ḥarām, and is that close to falling into it, and has never done it before, never gone into ḥarām before, it becomes fard upon him to get married; and it becomes fard upon his parents to get him married and to pay his expenses — it is compulsory. There are other categories and degrees in between.

In terms of ṣabr, likewise, there are times when ṣabr must be shown and it is fard to show it; there are times when it is sunnah to show ṣabr; there are times when it is makrūh to show ṣabr; and there are times when it is ḥarām to show ṣabr. But was ṣabr not supposed to be a good thing? Some examples will show what is meant.

It is fard to show ṣabr against the ḥarām of Allah. There is alcohol in front of a person: it is ḥarām for him to drink; Allah made it ḥarām for him; he has to show ṣabr. Yes, it gives pleasure. There is LSD in front of him — have a tablet, somebody offers it. There is ecstasy sitting next to him, and it is good, the techno music is going, he can hardly feel anything, and he is with his friends. It is ḥarām for him — it is fard upon him to resist that ḥarām; it is fard upon him to show ṣabr against that ḥarām. It could be women, it could be men, it could be any ḥarām at all. People ask all kinds of foolish questions on this. One man once said that he was homosexual — but that story is better left untold, or it would become… It is a thing that upsets one quite often. The condition of the Muslims is really bad; the condition of the youth is very, very bad. May Allah help us. So the first form of ṣabr, the fard ṣabr, which everyone is obliged to show — an injunction, a commandment from Allah — is to show ṣabr against the temptation of ḥarām.

The second form of ṣabr, which is sunnah of Rasūlullāh (peace be upon him), or mustaḥabb — preferred; perhaps something preferable and liked — is the ṣabr shown toward the muṣībah, the balāʾ, toward calamities, difficulties and hardships, as well as some loss in the family: a son has died, a daughter has died, parents have died, the dog has died, the cat has died — whatever one loved so much passes out of one's life. To show ṣabr toward it — to accept the reality, to accept the destiny of Allah (swt), to exercise ṣabr toward it — is mustaḥabb. This particular form of ṣabr is returned to later in the chapter.

The third form of ṣabr, the makrūh form, is a ṣabr in which a person puts up with evil out of simple fear of what people will say to him — he simply wants to fit in. For example: a man allows his wife, his sister, his mother to dress indecently, Islamically speaking, in front of her bosses, for fear that the boss will be upset with her and she will lose her job. We have to make ṣabr, he says; we live in a non-Muslim country. Dingili bozuk. That is not ṣabr; that is stupidity. He allows strange men to look at his wife in the ḥarām way because he is afraid to say anything — he is a chicken; he cannot say anything. This is the makrūh form of ṣabr.

The worst type is this: a man has no sense of jealousy, of Islamic jealousy, toward his wife, his sister, his mother. Anybody can poke at them, anybody can talk at them, anybody can make a pass at them, anybody can do anything — and he simply shows ṣabr. We are a tolerant society, he says; I must have ṣabr. This is what is called ṣabr-i ḥimārī: donkey ṣabr. It is the ḥarām form of ṣabr. There is no such thing as ṣabr in this regard, and extreme care must be taken here.