Foot in the Sink

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf is another scholar whom I deeply respect.  Another epitome of American Islam.  He has a CD out in which he translated and commented on a work entitled the 17 benefits of tribulation, I’m just going to list these benefits, if you have a comment/question on any of them then express it when you comment.   Zaytuna actually gave out 5,000 copies of this CD at the recent ISNA convention as a waqf.  I recommend you purchase the CD, the list just that: a list,  Shaykh Hamza has some very interesting commentary that I’m not going to write about.

The list was compiled by Sultani Uleman (Sultan of the scholars) Izzuddin Abdul Aziz ibn Abdus Salam.  An egyptian scholar who died in 660 AH.  He is possibly the only one to have ever mastered by the maliki and shafi’i madhahib.

17 Benefits of Tribulation

1.You realize the power of Lordship over you

2. You realize your abject servanthood and your complete state of resignation and brokenness before the Will and Power of God. 

3.  Sincerity to God, one has no place of return in putting off or defending against the calamity except to Him.  It makes you sincere because the muhsin is the one who call on God without any shirk.

- a moment of ikhals in this world is enough to save a person

4 He returns to God and suddently is fervent in his desire of his Lord.

5. It leads to a humbled state before God and it leads to prayers (du’a), that you call on God.

6.  You’re forbearing towards the One who has afflicted you. 

7. You forgive the one who has wronged you

8.  To be patient during the tribulation

9. To be happy about what’s happening because of those benefits

10. To be grateful for it. 

11. Purification that these calamities have towards peoples’ wrongs and sins. 

12. Compassion that God enables you to show to people who are in tribulation and to help them  

13. Tribulation gives you the blessing of having true knowledge of the extent of well being.

14.  God has prepared rewards for the calamities that you’ve beared patiently or with contentment. 

15.  What is hidden inside the folds of these calamities are blessings

16.  Tribulations prevent you from arrogance.

17. Contentment.  Tribulation afflict the good and the evil [people], whoever doesn’t like it, its on him, he’s lost the dunya and the akhira.  Those who are pleased with it, its because he knows it  because paradise is better than anything in this world and if those tribulations are what it takes for him to get to paradise, then he’s content with it.