• We Must Rejoice!
• The Paradox of the Prophet (Peace be upon him)
• To the One Carrying the Worries of the Ummah
• The Final Command

§We Must Rejoice!

There is a sickness that finds the ones who see.

Too often, the people most capable of changing the world, the ones who diagnose society’s deepest wounds, who refuse to look away from oppression, who burn with the certainty that things cannot remain as they are become consumed by the very darkness they set out to dispel. Their zeal, noble at its root, hardens into something else. The fire that was meant to light the way begins to consume them from inside.

They grow bitter. They grow sharp. Their faces tighten. Their laughter disappears.

This is not the way of the Muslim.

The Muslim is composed and balanced. His task is to convey the message gently, with ease, with beauty. He is not responsible for whether people obey; that lever is not in his hand. His objective is to preach, and to die upon Islam.

And yet, recognizing the corruption of this age is itself a mercy. It is the spark that births the revolutionary spirit, the holy restlessness that demands change.

To those who recognize the dangers of fiat — the slow theft, the silent debasement of every man’s labor while he sleeps. To those who recognize how liberalism and feminism have crept into the Muslim home. To those who recognize the machinery of the age — the screens, the systems, the soft tyranny of a world that has forgotten its Lord.

Understand: Allah granted this sight. He could have left these eyes among the sleepers. He did not. And blessings come with weight.

One day, every soul will stand before Him, stripped of every excuse. And Allah will ask: I gave you this knowledge. What did you do?

Will you then answer I knew, but the world was heavy and I let the heaviness win?

No, we will have a better answer. An answer we will craft in this life. So we will speak. We will build. We will call. We will die upon this Deen if Allah wills, and meet Him with the work of our hands. But — we will not let the darkness we are fighting become the darkness inside us.

§The Paradox of the Prophet (Peace be upon him)

Two complementary yet seemingly opposite hadiths come to my mind as I write this.

’Aishah (may Allah be pleased with her) said:

“I never saw anyone suffer more pain than the Messenger of Allah peace be upon him.”

[Sunan Ibn Majah 1622]

And Abdullah ibn al-Harith (may Allah be pleased with him) said:

“I have not seen anyone smile more often than the Messenger of Allah peace be upon him.”

[Sunan al-Tirmidhī 3641]

This is the man who buried six of his seven children. Whose beloved Khadijah (may Allah be pleased with her) died while he still needed her. Whose uncle Hamzah (may Allah be pleased with him) was killed and mutilated at Uhud. Who was called a liar by his own people, stoned in Ta’if until blood filled his sandals, who tied stones to his stomach against the hunger.

Joy in Islam is not necessarily a reward for an easy life. Joy and the resting of the hearts is the proof that Allah is with His servant in the middle of the suffering. Joy is the flag planted on the battlefield to tell shaytan he has not won.

The Sunnah is not only in the prayer and the beard and the miswak, the Sunnah is in the smile.

Therefore, we must rejoice!

Rejoice because Allah chose you. Out of every soul, every century, every land — He placed you here and made you Muslim. Your name was on the tongue of His Prophet (peace be upon him) when that beloved man wept for his Ummah in the dark. So why not rejoice?

Rejoice because gloom builds nothing. The Ummah will not be revived by men who hate being alive. It will be revived by men so in love with their Lord that the love spills out of them onto everything they touch.

Rejoice because the people will not enter this Deen if its bearers look condemned. Every soul searches for peace. If they cannot find it written on Muslim faces, the call will not reach them. The one who lacks something cannot give it.

Rejoice because the enemy wants the Ummah sad. They want it. The endless feed of horror is not accidental, it is warfare. Sadness is their victory. The smile is a knife in their plan. Allah said: “They shall not be grieved, nor shall they be humiliated.” [At-Tawbah: 120] He wrote reward into the provocation of His enemies. Provoke them.

Rejoice because the Qur’an is in our hands. Allah said that if He had sent this Book down upon a mountain, that mountain would have been seen humbled, split apart, shattered from the awe of it. A mountain. And this Book sits in our pockets.

“A healing for what is in the hearts.” [Yunus: 57]

Rejoice because Allah holds the hearts. If He wills a servant happy, no government, no algorithm, no enemy can make him sad. The children of this Ummah, from Gaza to Sudan to Myanmar, bodies wrapped in bandages thicker than their arms, smile and raise their fingers in tawhid. If they can smile, who is the rest of the Ummah not to?

Rejoice because the fate of every muwahhid is Jannah. Whatever pain comes before, the ending is written.

Rejoice because a Garden awaits whose shade alone will make the most broken man say:

“By Allah, O my Lord, I have never tasted wretchedness.”

[Sahih Muslim 2807]

Every tear of every year will be wiped away in a single moment.

Rejoice because he (peace be upon him) said:

“Make things easy, and do not make them difficult. Give glad tidings, and do not repel.”

[Bukhari 69]

Rejoice because even if the enemies own the skies, Allah is Dominant over His servants. Let their drones fly. Let their currencies inflate. Their plans are dust in His palm.

Rejoice because despair is the trait of disbelievers.

“None despair of the mercy of Allah except the disbelieving people.”

[Yusuf: 87]

To despair is to wear clothes that do not belong to the believer. Take them off.

Rejoice because smiling is charity, a free sadaqah, costing nothing, earning the love of Allah.

Rejoice because He loves us.

“It is He who confers blessing upon you, and His angels, that He may bring you out from darkness into light. And ever is He, to the believers, Merciful.”

[Al-Ahzab: 43]

Rejoice because He can be called in a single moment, and He forgives all of it. The years of negligence. The secret sins. The version of the self being run from. All of it. One sincere call. And He does not care. He erases it as if it never was.

§To the One Carrying the Worries of the Ummah

O bearer of the weight of your people, O sons of this Ummah that has forgotten how to live, smile. Smile like the one who knows nothing but to smile. You will raise a nation, a generation that will overcome the faults of this era, and for that to happen you must rejoice. Rejoice in your resolve, for what greater blessing is there than to find your own Jihad that will start with you and span multiple generations.

The frown will not lift the rubble. The frown will not free the prisoner. The frown will not guide the lost soul. It will only cost the Ummah space in the hearts of its own children, space the enemy is eager to fill.

This is his strategy laid bare: They inflict what would break any living heart, then film the grief, then present the picture to the world. Look at them. Look how miserable their religion makes them. Come to us, with us there is laughter, with me there is freedom. And so the youth slip away, one by one, because they were not given a reason to stay.

Do not give them that picture.

Create the smile. Earn its reward in the creating. The rule of the tyrants will end, and the good end is for the righteous.

§The Final Command

And finally, rejoice because the Lord of the worlds commands it:

“Say: In the bounty of Allah and in His mercy, in that let them rejoice.”

[Yunus: 58]

The one who sees what we see, who knows what we know, who carries what we carry, that one, more than anyone, must rejoice.

And Allah is predominant over His affair, but most of the people do not know.

[Surah Yusuf: 21]

Inspired by Eyad Qunaibi’s Book: Bashair (Good Tidings) https://eyadqunaibi.com/en/books/good-tidings