As-salaamu alaikum,
In tonight’s video, a young woman in my ER said something that has stayed with me for years: “I’m just angry. Why did He do this? Why did He let my brother die?”
She wasn’t rejecting Allah. She was drowning in grief and didn’t have a container large enough to hold what she was carrying.
Tonight, I want to go further than the video had time for — because you deserve the full presentation.
The container
Most of what we experience in catastrophic loss doesn’t fit inside normal life. The pain is too large. The confusion is too deep. The questions are too vast.
And so people look for containers. Some run to busyness by losing themselves in work. Some run to numbness by drowning their pain in alcohol or drugs. Some run to bitterness that gradually hardens the heart and creates distance from the only real source of relief.
What Yaqub ﷺ shows us is that there is a container large enough. One that doesn’t break under the weight of what you’re carrying.
Ashku bathhi wa huzni illa Allah. I pour out my suffering and my grief to Allah.
The classical scholars — Ibn Kathir, al-Tabari, al-Qurtubi — are unanimous: Yaqub is directing his grief to Allah, in the manner of a servant who seeks relief and mercy from the Lord he trusts completely. He didn’t go to anyone else with that pain. He brought it — raw, unfiltered, with eyes white from weeping — before Allah alone.
And he held it alongside something deeper than understanding: I know from Allah what you do not know. Not certainty about the outcome. Just trust — rooted in his knowledge of who Allah is, and in the hope carried by Yusuf’s dream — that everything happening had a purpose; everything happening, no matter how bleak it appeared, was safely enveloped in mercy.
The container is Allah Himself. And He does not break.
But why? The question that deserves a real answer
I want to give you the most compelling Islamic answer to this question that I know — and it comes not from abstract theology, but from a story you likely already know.
Every Friday, we read from Surah al-Kahf. And in that surah is the story of Musa and Khidr — a story Allah placed in the Quran specifically to teach us about the dimensions of divine wisdom that human beings cannot see.
Musa ﷺ— one of the mightiest messengers of Allah, a man of complete knowledge of divine law and justice — traveled with Khidr ﷺ, a prophet acting on direct divine instruction. And he watched three things happen that he could not remain silent about:
A poor family’s boat — their livelihood — was deliberately damaged. Khidr ﷺ put a hole in it just as they reached the other shore.
A child was killed. Playing with other children. Without apparent reason.
A wall in an inhospitable town — a town that had refused them food and shelter — was rebuilt for free.
From Musa’s perspective, the first two were clear wrongs. The third was senseless generosity toward people who deserved condemnation. He objected each time, because he was applying the full weight of his knowledge of right and wrong — and yet, he was wrong.
And then Khidr explained:
The damaged boat protected it from a king who was pirating every seaworthy vessel by force. That family lost a few days of work and needed some repairs — but kept their boat and their livelihood. Some reports say Khidr even overpaid the rent to help cover the repairs.
The child who died was headed toward a life of oppression toward his own parents and society at large. He was taken in mercy — for them and for him. His parents were given another child. And that boy went to live with Ibrahim ﷺ in Jannah, where he will play with others who died as children until the Day of Judgment and then, he will intercede for his parents, so that all of them enter Jannah together.
The wall being rebuilt protected the inheritance of two orphaned boys whose righteous father had hidden his life savings beneath it. The wall stood long enough for those boys to grow up and claim what was theirs.
Three apparent wrongs. Three profound mercies — invisible from the inside, fully visible only from where Allah stands.
This is why Allah says in Surah al-A'raf:
وَرَحْمَتِى وَسِعَتْ كُلَّ شَىْءٍۢ
“My mercy encompasses everything.” [7:156]
And why the Prophet ﷺ taught us to say in du’a:
wal khayru kulluhu fi yadayk, wash sharru laysa ilayk
“All good is in Your Hands, and evil is not attributed to You.”
Evil in Islam is like darkness — the absence of light. Allah does not create evil. All that flows from Him is good, even when we cannot see the goodness from inside our pain.
Even scenarios like war, starvation and severe illness—you are probably saying, how could that be good? The element that we miss, that we can’t always see, is that every circumstance has good in it. That doesn’t mean that there will also be difficulty or suffering or pain. It only means that the suffering and pain have a greater purpose, and that good will come of it.
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “The people who lived in prosperity will wish on the Day of Resurrection to have the reward of those who were put to trial (due to the honor they will receive), even if their skin had been torn away with shears.” (Tirmidhi)
Yusuf was removed from a life where he would have been bullied by his brothers into the poverty that eventually fell on the whole family. He was taken to a grand purpose: the salvation of a civilization, the repentance of his brothers, and the reunion that restored his father’s sight. Yaqub couldn’t see any of that from inside his grief, nor could the young Yusuf, abandoned by his brothers and taken as a slave, see the honor that Allah would one day grant him as an adult.
You cannot see the end of your story from inside your pain. But Allah can. And everything He does is enveloped in a mercy that encompasses everything.
What happens when grief has nowhere to go
I have seen, in over twenty years of clinical practice, what happens when pain has nowhere to go. When a person allows their anger to flow unchecked into words that lash out at Allah and reject the decree. When they allow their heart to turn to destructive directions that feed off that anger and that refusal to accept.
In these cases—all of them—it does not disappear. Suppressed grief resurfaces — in physical symptoms, in depression, and the worse possible outcome—a slow hardening of the heart that eventually affects every relationship, including the relationship with Allah.
Grief that is directed into bitterness does something innocuous, but so terribly dangerous. It puts distance between the person and the only source of actual healing. The one who most needs Allah’s mercy actively builds a wall between himself and Allah.
This is why the direction matters so much. Not the existence of the pain — that is human, and Allah knows it. But where you take it.
Don’t take it away in any direction other than Allah. He is the only one who can actually help.
What sabr actually means
I want to address something else that causes real harm in Muslim communities: the misunderstanding of sabr as emotional suppression.
Sabr is not the performance of calm. The Prophet ﷺ said, “Patience is at the first strike of calamity.” (Bukhari) What is being praised is the response in the immediate moment — turning toward Allah rather than away, not saying what displeases Allah. It does not mean that you should feel nothing.
The Prophet ﷺ himself wept at the death of his son Ibrahim. He said, “The eye weeps and the heart grieves, and we say only what pleases our Lord.” (Bukhari) Tears are explicitly permitted. Grief is not a failure of faith.
Yaqub wept for years. The Quran records it with compassion and without criticism. And calls him patient and righteous.
Real sabr has room for tears. What it guards is the tongue and the heart’s orientation — not the existence of pain. Despite our sadness, we restrain our tongues from expressing displeasure with Allah, and we keep our hearts oriented toward Allah only.
Tonight’s journaling prompts
Prompt 1: Where does the feeling go? When something painful happens, what is your instinct? Where does the pain go — toward Allah, away from Him, into numbness, into busyness? Be honest with yourself.
Prompt 2: The Musa and Khidr question. Think of something in your life — a loss, a hardship, a door that closed — where you couldn’t see the wisdom at the time. Looking back, can you see any dimension of mercy you couldn’t see from inside it?
Prompt 3: What are you carrying right now? Is there a loss you haven’t fully brought to Allah? Name it. Then bring it.
Prompt 4: Yaqub’s words. The next time you face a hardship or undesirable outcome, say:
إِنَّمَآ أَشْكُوا۟ بَثِّى وَحُزْنِى إِلَى ٱللَّهِ
Innama ashku bathhi wa huzni ila Allah.
“I only pour out my suffering and my grief to Allah.” If you are carrying something tonight — pour it out before Him. He is waiting.
Resources
Surah Yusuf — read the full surah tonight, slowly, with tafsir if possible. It is the Quran’s most complete story of loss, patience, and restoration
Surah al-Kahf, the story of Musa and Khidr — read it this Friday with fresh eyes, thinking about what you cannot see from inside your own story
Reclaim Your Heart by Yasmin Mogahed — one of the most accessible Islamic treatments of loss and where to place the heart
Khalil Center (khalilcenter.com) — Muslim mental health support including grief counseling
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988 if grief has become a crisis
Remember.
You cannot see the end of your story from inside your pain. But Allah can. And everything He does is enveloped in a mercy that encompasses everything.
Bring it to Him. He can hold it.
My inbox is open. Just reply.
May Allah replace every loss with something better, grant you the patience of Yaqub, and give you the reunion he was given. Ameen.
— Dr. Ali