Ihsaan Magazine May 2020 Issue - Living your best Life | Page 46

A Ray of Hope
Written By: Kerina Mohammed
Searching for
Answers in a
period of Low
``
A look into Surah Duha and
its benefits for feelings of
sadness and depression
Surah ad-Duha is the 93rd Surah of the Holy
Quran and contains 11 beautiful verses. Most
of us know this surah by heart and probably
recite it in our daily Salaah. We would have
even read its meaning multiple times and would
have found it quite straightforward, but as with
many surahs, truly understanding the message
behind the revelation requires further insight.
Alhamdulillah, many scholars have published
tafsirs on this amazing surah and its message,
after extensively researching and comprehending
several factors such as time of revelation and
grammatical uses. In this article, I would just like
to highlight a few of these messages and show
how relative it is to our daily lives
Surah ad-Duha was revealed to Prophet
Muhammad (SAW) at a time when he had not
received any revelation for several days. The
Prophet (SAW) was intensely grieved at this and
was in a very disturbed state of mind, feeling
negative and depressed, believing that Allah
was displeased with him. This feeling didn’t just
appear because of the lack of revelation but also
because of the taunts that he endured during this
time from the mushrikun. Every day that went by
without revelation, came these taunts and words
that made the Prophet (SAW) concerned and
even placed that tiny level of worry in his mind.
“We see that your Lord has abandoned you”, “He
is displeased with you”, “He has forsaken you”,
imagine hearing words like these, day in and
day out, all while carrying one of the
biggest responsibilities of all time on
your shoulder. He (SAW) was the last
and final messenger, his purpose was
to deliver the word of Allah to all of
mankind, ‘What if he didn’t do a good
job?’ ‘Would the entire mankind be
doomed? His purpose was to deliver
a message, where was this message?
Why wasn’t the message coming?
Internally, the Prophet (SAW) was worried
and the taunts caused this worry to heighten,
worry turned to concern and concern to fear. I
am almost certain most of us can relate to this,
whether in a brief moment or consistently. We
probably did not get our dua’s answered the way
we wanted and probably thought to ourselves
“Allah must be displeased with us” or “Maybe
Allah is angry for that thing I did some time ago”.
These moments when our level of imaan is low
and our connection with Allah feels like it has
diminished. When we feel like our dua’s are not
being answered or our salaah is not having that
impact it would normally have on our hearts,
this is the time when we can feel our worst. We
can feel like we aren’t good enough, like we are
horrible human beings who don’t deserve to be
happy and depression and feelings of sadness
overcome us. We may struggle to continue
performing our daily salaah but without hope,
without khushoo.
We continue fulfilling our duties towards
our families and neighbours, but with no real
emotion, no connection, just mundane acts day
in and day out. The constant negativity and lack
of hope can overtake us and soon we become
resentful, bitter and angry which seeps into our
daily lives causing a sense of helplessness.