If you put your hope in Allah, will you never feel disappointed?
This is a question sister Yasmin Mogahed received while on a tour in New Zealand.
In a previous video, sister Yasmin talked about a related subject: Trust Allah & Know Your Creator.
The following was the answer on whether hope in Allah means no disappointment:
“I would like to reiterate that we are imperfect, and we are human.
That means that we don’t encompass perfection of these things.
These are concepts.
The perfection of tawakkul (or reliance on Allah) for example.
If we were to encompass the perfection of reliance on Allah, yes, we would not feel disappointed.
As the Hadith says, if you were to rely on Allah the true reliance, then he compares it to the birds.
They leave with their stomachs empty, and they come back with their stomachs full.
They are not concerned where their rizk is coming from, Allah takes care of them.
Allah (SWT) says in the Qur’an:
“… And whoever relies upon Allah – then He is sufficient for him…” (65:3)
But in practice, we’re human.
We are not perfect in our tawakkul.
We are not perfect in our tawheed.
We are not perfect in our ikhlas (sincerity)
And that’s part of why we seek forgiveness.
That is part of why we need the help of Allah, because we are not perfect.
We are not angels.
Allah is not asking for perfection from us.
But what He wants from us is to keep striving, and to keep trying and not to lose hope.
So to answer your question, in reality yes we will still feel these emotions, and it’s part of our human nature.
But that’s also how we learn.
That’s part of the wisdom of Allah.
Yes, there is emotions called pain, sadness, fear …
These are all emotions that were created for a purpose.
Part of that purpose is that it is part of our journey, and part of our learning and development.
If we didn’t feel anything, we wouldn’t be learning the lessons that we needed to learn.
Yes we will encounter disappointment…
But you know what happens when you encounter disappointment?
You learn …
Hopefully, if you are getting the purpose of that event in your life, then it means that you learned.
And then next time, you will know a little bit more, you would have developed a little more.
So really it’s a journey of development, a journey of training …
It’s a process.
It’s not just something theoretically you think of it, and then the next morning the whole idea of just transforming into an angel.
Don’t think of it like that.
We as human beings are a work-in-progress.
Allah (SWT) says:
“O mankind, indeed you are laboring toward your Lord with [great] exertion and will meet it.” (84:6)
Meaning that this toil will come to an end eventually, but it’s a struggle.
It is not just something we reach like enlightenment or Nirvana and we are just on auto-pilot after that.
In fact, if we go into auto-pilot, it’s like putting a car in neutral on a hill. What happens?
It goes down.
We have to always be striving.
Click here to watch the video, and don’t miss this excellent four minutes answer on hope in Allah.