CHAPTER 2
Duʿā’
and Disappointment
T
his reminder is actually inspired by a number of conversations I’ve had the
opportunity to have with young people and old people alike, on a subject that is
central to the life of every Muslim—that subject matter is
duʿā’
. A lot of people
come up to me and say, ‘I’m trying to make so much
duʿā’
because there’s this
one thing I am trying to get’. When it’s a young man; it’s a girl he wants to
marry, or a job he is looking for that he really wants to get, or immigration
papers to be sorted out. If it’s somebody a little bit older, sometimes it’s
duʿā’
for their children to be guided. Their children have become rebellious; they’re
not praying any more, they’re not listening to their parents anymore and the
mother comes to me crying and says, ‘I make lots of
duʿā’
for my son, I’ve been
making it for years but nothing is changing. Things are not getting better, things
are getting worse. What am I supposed to do? Why is my
duʿā’
not working?’
There are people that come to me and say, ‘I’ve been sick and I’m getting
sicker and sicker. I even made umrah and I went to hajj and I made
duʿā’
at the
Ḥaram
, and I went to
al-Masjid al-Nabawī
, and I am making
duʿā’
in the middle
of the night, and I am praying all night, but my
duʿā
s are not getting answered.
What am I supposed to do?’ And then there are people who say: I used to make
duʿā’
, I used to pray to Allah. Like this very interesting young man I met. He
said, ‘Man, I didn’t even pray a lot but I had this exam, it was really hard so I
decided that I am going to make a lot of
duʿā
s so I even like prayed and stuff. I
prayed for a whole
ten minutes and I still failed; so I don’t pray anymore,
because I didn’t get what I was looking for.’
So my own analysis after a lot of these conversations is that there is actually
a real confusion about what
duʿā’
actually means. What does it mean that we are
asking Allah for something? From what position are we asking? Is asking Allah
the same as asking your parents or asking somebody else? If it’s not the same,
how is it different? What are we supposed
to expect when we make
duʿā’
to
Allah (
ʿazza wa-jall
)?
There seems to be, among the average Muslim, a lot of confusion about this
very simple and very fundamental thing. As a matter of fact the centre of our
religion is
duʿā’
. The Fatihah which is the opening of the Qur’an and is the heart
of the Qur’an is itself a
duʿā’
. Every prophet (
ʿalayhim al-salām
) that Allah talks
about in the Qur’an makes
duʿā’
. Every one of them; it’s their lasting legacy. We
may not know every detail:
Nūḥ
(
ʿalayhi al-salām
) lived 950
years among his
people. We don’t know all the details of those 950 years, but we do know the
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