فَإِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا

إِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا

 

So verily, with the hardship, there is ease,

Verily, with the hardship, there is ease. (Ash-Sharh 94:6)

Long time ago, I was speaking to a sister. She is a convert in my area who has gone through an abusive marriage (with kids), the death of her father and now watching her mother just rot away in a nursing home. Personality wise, the woman is very strong and from day one I have looked up to her, for the way she holds herself and the wisdom that she has been given. She does her best to take care of her mother, even though she herself also needs someone to take care of her due to her older age. She works very hard and lacks sleep. Sometimes she goes 3 days with a total of 6 hours of sleep. For a mind like mine, that is overwhelming just to imagine.

I fail to understand how she handles it so well. Sometimes she does weaken and cries from the stress of her life but she still stands strong, as a woman who doesn’t complain.

When we had first met, we spoke about each other, introducing each other etc… She was telling me about her life and the first thing that I could feel was sympathy. I looked at my life and I looked at her life and thought alhamdulillaah that I am not going through that right now. However, every time I showed some type of sympathy, she would tell me, ‘with hardship there is ease dear, verily with hardship there is ease.’ She would then remind me of the blessing it is to recognize a hardship but also recognize the ease that comes along and be grateful for it.

She silenced me. The trials that she had been facing were not more then she could handle and she was strong and constantly remembering this verse. I, on the other hand, started to think of myself and how sometimes as humans we ignore this ease that comes with this hardship. Everytime she mentioned that verse, she said it with such emphasis. I remember when I first accepted Islaam and how I pondered over this ayah. I was in constant hardship with my family and I had to find a way to keep myself sane and strong. At the time that she mentioned it, I wasn’t facing the hardships that I faced before, but I did become ungrateful for the ease I had been granted.

It is a very powerful ayah but even more powerful when you understand why Allaah mentioned the same verse, two times.

Mufti Muhammad Shafi stated in the commentary of this verse in his Ma`arif al-Qur’aan the following:

Gramatically, if the Arabic definite article al- is prefixed to an Arabic noun and is repeated with the same definite article al-, they refer to the same antecedent. However, if the same noun is repeated without the definite article, they refer to different antecedents. the word al-`usr ‘[the] hardship’ in verse [6] is the repetition of al-`usr ‘[the] hardship’ occurring in verse [5]. It does not refer to a new hardship. In contrast to this, the word yusr ‘ease’ in both verses occur without the definite article. This indicates that the second yusr ‘ease’ in verse [6] is a different antecedent to the yusr ‘ease” occurring in verse [5]. Thus it may be concluded that there is only one `usr ‘hardship’ and two yusr ‘twofold ease’. ‘Twofold ease’ does not mean twice as much. In fact, it means ‘manifold ease’. The verse signifies that only one kind of hardship will face him, but in the wake of it many kinds of ease are assured.