What would you say if it were possible for you to know a secret capable of solving all your problems as they arise, and to see every tortuosity in your life smoothed out? With ease, facility. This is exactly what we are going to try to bring to light through this text with verses from the Quran to support it.
A promise is made to us by Allah, to Him the Power and the Glory, in the Quran, and three secrets are revealed to us. If only we paid more attention to them... Let us meet at the heart of Surah The Night to realize it.
What does attaining ease mean?
Everyone walking on Earth experiences, at one moment or another, difficulties in their existence. Believing men and women, sincerely practising their religion, are not exceptions. Allah tells us in Surah 84 The Splitting Asunder, verse 6: O man! You who strive towards your Lord relentlessly, you will meet Him then.
If there is effort, it is indeed because Man finds every day difficulties that obstruct his path. Whether they come from within, like his own flaws and limits, illness and the various sources of anguish, or whether they come from outside, from humans and the problems they cause, or again from the circumstances in which he finds himself, like poverty, natural disasters, difficulties will certainly arise during the passage on Earth of each and every one.
So what to do? Give in to fatalism, and remain paralyzed, or continue to strive? The answer seems obvious but not complete... To work with effort, yes, but while seeking from the One who created the heavens, the Earth, and the Universe, the ease, is even better!
This ease will present itself in several forms according to each person. For one it will be a job regained, for another it will take the form of a recovery from an emotional shock or an illness. According to the exegesis of Ibn Kathir, ease is explained to us in these terms:
God swears by the night when it envelops the earth, by the day when it shines, just as He created the two sexes, male and female; the efforts and activities of men are divergent. There are those who do good and others who do evil, then God explains "He who is charitable and fears Allah" who gives alms and fears God in accomplishing his deeds, "who believes in the good word" by declaring true the promised reward which is Paradise, or according to Al-Dahak who proclaims that there is no deity other than God, "That one, We will facilitate his undertakings" by making the access to happiness easy for him, or according to the words of Ibn Abbas: We will predispose him to the act of good.
To see one's affairs come about with ease, to love doing good instinctively, to see a favourable outcome at each of our steps, all this is gathered in the promise that Allah makes to the believers in Surah Al-Layl, The Night.
There are perhaps a thousand and one versions of this divine fulfilment according to the life contexts of each, which Allah knows well, but what is certain is that it is the promise coming from the Most Merciful, in response to very specific acts on the part of the believers.
Let us therefore be attentive to what is asked of us by Allah in Surah Al-Layl, The Night.
What qualities to develop to attain ease?
It is therefore in Surah 92 Al-Layl, The Night, that this promise is found. Secrets, three exactly, are to be retained as a believer to lead a peaceful life, with a heart made tranquil by the decree of Allah:
5 As for him who gives and fears (Allah)
6 and declares true the most beautiful reward
7 We will facilitate for him the path to the greatest happiness.
- Giving
Generosity is the first quality mentioned in this quest for success to attain the Pleasure of Allah. It requires detaching oneself from the goods of this world. Developing it is crucial in order to be able to attain this ease, while being aware that this constitutes a blessing on the part of the Most Generous. To give is to detach oneself from causes since our Lord Allah is the Only cause of all that happens to us for good and for ill. His Wisdom is hidden in every event of our life. And every occasion to make efforts in view of our Meeting with Him is good to take into consideration for him or her who wants to strive for good. The first thing asked of the one who wishes for an easier life is therefore to give.
Thus when the believer gives, he gives of what he truly loves, whether he is in possession of much or little. He knows that nothing can diminish his sustenance since it is already predestined. The Pen has already written our destiny by His Orders, and has dried. Our means and our becoming were calculated by the Most High, from whom nothing escapes.
To give is therefore to detach oneself from material goods and money. Moreover, these are not the only sources of giving to consider.
To give love, to speak well, to smile, to bring help to those who need it hold the treasures of the gift of self and are more precious than material gifts. Sometimes for some they are even harder to offer than a banknote. Yes, to give of oneself is to detach oneself from oneself, from one's preconceptions, from one's pride and from many other vices hidden within us that obstruct the path of the generosity asked by Allah.
To give is to think of one's neighbour without expecting anything in return. Because it is from Allah that we expect everything!
- fearing (Allah)
To live in the fear of Allah, which one can equate with the awareness of His presence, the deepest and most recurrent in our daily life (we will avoid saying permanent because, let us be honest, we are not angels!), does not mean to live in fear. It is rather to live in the worship of Allah as if we saw Him, for if we do not see Him, He sees us.
This requires conquering one's ego. Taqwa, the fear of Allah, seems obvious when we are alone, but what about it when our relationship with others pushes us to our limits, or to excesses, rather than facing the situation in which we find ourselves? To act with gentleness, tolerance, with fairness and equity, yes, requires a constant struggle against one's ego. Out of love and reverential fear of one's Lord.
To remember that Allah sees us, hears us constantly when we act, is to fear Him. It is to worship Him. This manifests itself, for example, when we must keep away from controversy rather than take part in it. To detach oneself from people's gaze is also a sign of the fear of Allah instead of seeking it and risking falling into ostentation in our acts of worship. Just as not to expect the praises of one and all, out of fear of Allah, requires taking distance from events and people to control one's feelings.
Fear is therefore to become aware of the presence of Allah in order to keep away from blameworthy acts and to draw closer to meritorious acts.
Our success in the pursuit of ease in this life before that of the Hereafter depends on it.
- believing in Paradise
Finally, to hold fast to one's faith, and to declare true the existence of the Supreme Reward which is Paradise, is secret number 3 to attain the ease promised by Allah through His Sacred Word.
Indeed, it is not enough only to give and to fear Him. All these meritorious acts in our daily life could not be complete without a pure faith in Allah, without attachment to the divine prescriptions and to the Sunnah of our prophet Muhammad, may peace and blessings be upon him.
This is what is asked by Allah to have a life made easy in this life before the Future Life.
And what about otherwise?
To work is a choice. Not to do so is another.
This is the idea represented by the first verses of this magnificent surah. Allah, to Him the Majesty and the Glory, tells us that we work differently, that "our efforts are divergent" in verse 4.
Then He enumerates first the actions of the believers with the promise of ease, before citing the opposite of the encouraged actions... which will cause the ruin of the people devoted to evil on Earth before the Hereafter.
8 And as for him who is miserly, dispenses (with the worship of Allah),
9 and treats as a lie the most beautiful reward,
10 We will facilitate for him the path to the greatest difficulty,
Thus as our beloved, peace and blessings be upon him, said, some will have the deeds of the people of Hell made easy for them, while the people of Paradise will see the deeds of good made easy for them. The hadith is cited thus by Ibn Kathir in his exegesis of Surah The Night:
In this regard, Ali Ben Abi Talib relates: "We were attending a funeral at Baqi' Al-Gharqad (a cemetery) when the Messenger of God -may Allah bless him and grant him peace- joined us; he took his place and we sat around him while he held a stick with which he struck the ground, lowering his head. He said to us: 'Each of you, or: every soul created, its place is already fixed either in Paradise or in Hell; its destiny is happy or wretched.' A man asked him: 'O Messenger of God, in that case, should we not surrender to what has been destined for us without being active, since if one of us is inscribed among the elect, he will have his happy destiny, while the one who is inscribed among the damned, his destiny will be wretched?' He answered him: 'The blessed will have the task made easy to do the works of the elect, and the wretched will have the task made easy to do the works of the damned.' Then he recited: 'He who is charitable and fears Allah.... up to: We will make his undertakings fail' (Reported by Bukhari and others).
What must we remember to attain ease?
As other verses indicate in Surah Ash-Sharh, The Opening Forth:
5 Beside difficulty is, certainly, an ease!
6 Beside difficulty is, certainly, an ease!
If Allah reminds us of it twice in the same surah, it is because there is reason to insist. It is because often, by looking more closely, one finds at least two sources of ease in the middle of the difficulty... even of the chaos.
Allah wants ease for us and He, to Him the Glory, never ceases to explain it to us through the Quran. In reality, only a positive outlook on what happens to us is asked of us in order to continue to remain active, to continue to be grateful towards Him.
And in truth, every lack in our lives indicates to us that Allah is going to give us... only... at the right timing, in the best place, in the best of ways. The one that He, the All-Merciful, will have decided. Let us trust Him more!
And Allah knows best.