Reading the story of the Youth of the Cave, one can’t help but be moved by the immense tragedy they endured.
Persecuted for their faith, threatened with torture and death, abandoned by their family, and eventually forced to flee their home and city.
It’s an affliction of great proportions, the worst kind a person can face in this life.
But their story is not one of despair. From the heart of their tragedy, while the events were still unfolding, came a cry of hope—a sincere duʿāʾ—from hearts that had fulfilled the essence of tawḥīd:
إِذْ أَوَى الْفِتْيَةُ إِلَى الْكَهْفِ فَقَالُوا رَبَّنَا آتِنَا مِن لَّدُنكَ رَحْمَةً وَهَيِّئْ لَنَا مِنْ أَمْرِنَا رَشَدًا
﴾[Mention] when the youths retreated to the cave and said, “Our Lord, grant us from Yourself mercy and prepare for us from our affair right guidance.“﴿ 18:10
With a little hindsight, perhaps this is the truest victory a believer can attain. Pray tell, how many leave this world without having tasted the sweetness of submitting the heart to Allāh?
When you step back and look, really look, at the dwindling nature of this life and the everlasting nature of the Next, what is a bigger tragedy? To never have attained tawḥīd, OR, to have been broken down to a point where you ultimately had no choice but to make that cry of desperation to Allāh? One so beloved to Him.
The case of Aṣḥāb al-Kahf maybe unique in the extent of the hardship they bore. But too often, out of Allāh’s raḥmah to His obedient slaves, He allows them to taste pain, forcing them out of the humdrum routine they’ve formed of neglect and semi-heedlessness and into consciousness and true worship of Rabb’l Ālamīn.
And this, my friend, is not a tragedy.
[From a course on sūrat al-Kahf that I’m teaching this Ramaḍān, more details here.]
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