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14/10/2026

*On Complainers (8): Public Complainers.*

If you're concerned about a problem in society or in your community, do something about it.

If you do not, you become a public complainer: someone who is so good at reminding people of their problems, but so lazy at doing anything to solve them.

Look around you at the people who constantly and bitterly complain about the state of our society, terrible marriages, irresponsible spouses and the like.

How many of them are actually running tarbiyah programmes to raise better spouses? How many are actively educating young people about their responsibilities? How many are making deliberate efforts to ensure that the next generation doesn't repeat the mistakes they keep complaining about?

You need to understand that drawing attention to a problem is not the same as solving it.

Habitual complaining is often an expression of weakness: the weakness of someone who has convinced themselves that they're powerless to change anything.

Other times, it's laziness: the choice to enjoy the attention of ranting rather than accept the responsibility of doing something useful.

Complaining can feel productive. You raise an issue, people agree with you, and you leave the conversation feeling accomplished when you've done nothing.

It becomes a trap because it offers emotional relief without the discomfort of actually solving anything.

Habitual complaining carries a deeper danger: it silently weakens your ability to solve problems.

Imagine two people facing the same difficulty. One asks what can be done, who can help and what alternatives are available.

The second spends the first thirty minutes expressing frustration, explaining how unfair it all is and telling everyone who will listen.

Which of them has any energy left to sit in silence and think of a solution?

Problem-solving is a skill, and it takes practice. You must learn to examine a situation objectively, identify what is within your control, weigh possible solutions and test them.

Sometimes what you try won't work, and you'll have to try again. Sometimes you'll work on a problem for months without seeing significant results. If all you do is complain, when will you ever start?

You don't necessarily need to establish an organisation or launch a programme. You can educate one person, support someone already doing the work, improve your own household or take whatever meaningful action is within your capacity.

And doing something about a problem makes you feel better than complaining ever will.

You are not the only one who can see the problem. So stop congratulating yourself for recognising problems, but never taking action.

The choice is yours: become a public complainer or a problem solver.

*Sayf Network*

13/10/2026

*On Complainers (7): Be Proactive and You'd Live Like You Have No Problems*

I once got up around 4am to record some classes. Some minutes into the recording, a preacher started making noise on the street.

My mic was very sensitive and would pick every noise on the street, which is why I had woken up so early, yet the distrbance had decided to wake up early too.

I had two options: I could start hissing, frowning, and go vent to my wife how frustrated i was and how the whole day had been ruined.

Or I could sit and ask, "What can I still do?"

If I chose the first, I'd be frustrated and angry, i'd transfer some of that to my wife. Our energy to do other productive things that day would be diminished; yet the preacher who caused the disturbance would be out there enjoying his day.

I immediately got on to weighing my options:
- Can I go out to stop him? No
- Can I record later in the day? No
- Can I wake up even earlier tomorrow? Yes!

- Is there something I can still do today? Well.... I think I went over and asked my wife for suggestions and she told me I could try recording with a duvet over my head.
I tried it and it worked marvellously. It drowned out all the sorrounding noise - though, it was so hot!!!

But by asking, "What can I do now", I saved my day, saved my energy, and saved my peace from anger a someone who wouldn't even know I was fuming.

Anytime you're faced with circumstances like that, ask yourself: What can I do now?

*Sayf Network*

10/10/2026

*On Complainers (6): Be Proactive!*

You need to train yourself to think like a proactive person if you want to stop complaining often and living better.

When something goes wrong, your first instinct should be to identify what can be done, who can help and what alternatives are available.

You should be far more interested in finding a way forward than in making sure everyone understands how terrible your situation is.

Imagine two people who suddenly lose their jobs. One spends the following weeks complaining about how unfair the company was, how terrible the economy has become and how difficult it is to find good employment.

The other person is equally devastated, but he immediately begins reviewing his expenses, contacting people who can help, exploring employment opportunities and identifying whatever can improve his situation.

Both people have the same problem, but the other person is being proactive about solving it, while the first one is being reactive.

If a reactive woman wants to study and power goes, she would start reacying: shed hiss, they complain about the country's situation. She fumes, and she eventually gets tired mentally. If the power gets restored 30 minutes later, she'd no longer have the energy to study.

A proactive woman would ask, "What can I still do?" She may decide to study with a lamp. SHe may decide to prep tomorrow's meal or tidy up the room instead so when power is restored, she can fully focus on studying.

If a reactive man encounters unexpected traffic jam, he would hiss and start reacting, fuming about how it will affect all his plans for the day.

If a proactive man encounters the same, he would ask: "What can I still do?" He may decide to bring out his mushaf and start revising - something he had planned for later. He may start calling people he had planned to call. He may start listening to a podcast.

Reactivity drains you of energy, makes you bitter, angry, sad frustrated, and difficult to be around.

Being proactive often, would lead you to solving your problems faster, so fast that it would seem like you have no problems at all.

In fact, if somthibng befalls you, being proactive and taking action can begin to relieve your distress long before the action produces any meaningful results.

This is why you must stop allowing complaints to occupy the time and energy that should be going into solving your problems.

Be proactive!

*Sayf Network*

09/10/2026

*On Complainers (5): A Completely Different Way To Think About Difficulties*

If you understand that life will be full of difficulties, you may begin to wonder whether there's anything to look forward to in life.

But in fact, developing the mindset that difficulties are natural can make life more meaningfu in ways you may never have imagined.

When you understand that life will naturally involve difficulties, you stop expecting to reach a stage where everything finally becomes easy.

You realise that even if all your present problems disappear, you will still need Allah tomorrow, next year and for the rest of your life.

You realize you will never ever have enough knowledge, resources, wealth, energy, to tackle all the problems life will throw at you.

This will then increase your feeling of faqr to Allāh: your absolute neediness, helplessness and dependence upon Him.

Your daily acts of worship begin to take on a much deeper meaning.

When you recite Ayat al-Kursiyy, the descriptions of Allah's power, knowledge and sovereignty become particularly meaningful. When you recite your morning and evening adhkār, or the supplications after your obligatory prayers, they all feel so reassuring and deeply comforting.

When you send ṣalawāt upon the Prophet ﷺ, you remember the promise of relief associated with increasing your prayers upon him. When you bow in rukūʿ and say سُبْحَانَ رَبِّيَ الْعَظِيمِ, you're glorifying the Lord whose greatness exceeds every difficulty you could possibly encounter.

You're conscious of how everything you want has its difficulties, and that leads you to seeing how desperately you need Allah's protection, guidance and assistance throughout your day.

Look at the morning and evening supplication:
يَا حَيُّ يَا قَيُّومُ بِرَحْمَتِكَ أَسْتَغِيثُ، أَصْلِحْ لِي شَأْنِي كُلَّهُ، وَلَا تَكِلْنِي إِلَى نَفْسِي طَرْفَةَ عَيْنٍ
"O Ever-Living, O Sustainer, by Your mercy I seek relief. Set right all my affairs, and do not leave me to myself even for the blink of an eye."

Imagine reciting that while genuinely recognising that there will be difficulties, and you cannot successfully manage your marriage, raise your children, earn your livelihood or even maintain your faith without Allah's assistance.

This feeling of absolute neediness to Allah - when paired with seeking such deep closeness with Allah - brings two tremendous benefits.

The first is that it leads to Allah opening doors for you and bringing relief to those difficulties in ways you can never imagine.

You may have absolutely no idea how a particular difficulty will be resolved or expect it to be resolved in a certain way, and Allah will keep opening different doors for you.

This neediness to Allah is itself one of the greatest means of getting Allah's help and having Him take charge of your affairs.

The second benefit is the tranquillity that comes from this relationship with Allah. There is something deeply comforting about knowing that you don't have to possess the strength, knowledge or resources to overcome every difficulty by yourself. You have a Lord to whom you can constantly return, complain, ask for help and express your weakness.

And that relationship itself becomes one of the most fulfilling parts of your life, even while life continues to bring difficulties.

Unfortunately, many of us approach difficulties with a completely different mindset. Something goes wrong, and our first instinct is to complain. We complain about our jobs, our spouses, our children, our finances and practically everything else.

We can spend thirty minutes telling someone how difficult our situation is and barely spend two minutes asking Allah to make it easy.

Think about that!

You have enough energy to narrate your problems to five different people, explain every detail of what happened and repeatedly express how frustrated you are. Yet, somehow, you don't have the same energy to raise your hands and explain those very problems to Allah?

*Sayf Network*

09/10/2026

*On Complainers(4) : Your Expectations Determine Your Frustration*

Have you ever noticed that when you go to a strange place for the first time, the journey often feels longer than when you're returning?

This is something called the “return trip effect.” Researchers found that you can perceive the return journey as shorter after experiencing how long the first journey took, because your expectations are better adjusted for the journey back.

Something similar happens with life.

For many habitual complainers, part of the problem is that they have a skewed expectation of what life is supposed to be like.

If you expect life to always be convenient, comfortable and cooperative, then every difficulty will feel like something has gone wrong. And so you complain because hardship keeps violating your expectations.

To reduce complaints, you may need to embrace what I call a hardship mindset: the understanding that difficulty is not an interruption to a good life. Difficulty is part of the package.

You need to accept the fact that everything good will come with some form hardship, even if you haven't seen the hard part.

If it were easy then everyone would have it - and then it wouldn't really be valuable again.

If you get married understanding that conflicts will happen, when the first serious disagreement comes, you're more likely to focus on solving it and moving on.

But if you went into marriage expecting everything to be smooth, the same disagreement can send you into a completely different line of thinking: “Is this marriage working? Did I marry the right person? Why is marriage this difficult?”
The conflict may be the same. The expectation isn't.

Allah tells us plainly: “We have certainly created man into hardship.”

So what exactly were you expecting adulthood to require from you?

You want an income, a stable home, meaningful relationships, children you are close to, progress in your career and something to be proud of.

All of those things come with responsibilities.

If they were easy, they wouldn't be valuable.

They require days when you wake up and do what needs to be done even when you don't particularly feel like doing it.

You cannot keep demanding a rewarding life while treating the effort required to build and maintain that life as an unreasonable interruption.

Of course, some things are difficult because something is wrong and needs to change. Having a hardship mindset doesn't mean becoming passive about problems you can solve.

But other things are difficult simply because you are alive, responsible for things, attached to people, trying to build something.

If you don't understand the difference, you can spend your entire life complaining about perfectly normal parts of being human.

*Sayf Network*

09/10/2026

*On Complainers (3): Are You Complaining or Telling a Story?*

Imagine two women whose children gave them a particularly difficult time that morning. Both women had practically the same experience, and both decided to tell their husbands about it when they returned home.

The first woman begins with a long hiss. "These children will not kill me! I'm so tired of everything. I don't even know why they can't just behave themselves. Imagine what your son did today..."

She proceeds to narrate everything that went wrong that morning, repeatedly expressing how frustrated and exhausted she is.

The second woman is almost laughing as she begins. "You won't believe what your son did today! I was trying to get him ready for school, and this boy decided ......"

She proceeds to narrate the same events, occasionally laughing at how ridiculous some of the situations were.

Both women had a difficult morning. Both women told their husbands about it. Both women even described their children as difficult. Yet, the atmosphere they created was completely different.

This is something married people need to pay serious attention to. The energy and tone with which you describe your difficulties can matter a lot.

You can actually turn what would ordinarily have been a complaint into an interesting story that you and your spouse enjoy discussing.

You can narrate a terribly stressful day at work in a way that makes your spouse laugh, sympathise with you and even look forward to hearing how the story ended.

Imagine returning home after spending two hours in traffic. You could walk into the house visibly irritated, hiss several times, complain about the country, insult the drivers you encountered and spend the next thirty minutes reminding everyone how terrible your day was.

Alternatively, you could sit beside your spouse and say, "You won't believe what happened to me today. I spent TWO HOURS in traffic! At some point, I was seriously considering abandoning the car and trekking home."

And then you narrate your experience, including the ridiculous things that happened along the way.

The traffic was the same. The exhaustion was the same. But you've managed to turn an unpleasant experience into an opportunity to connect with your spouse.

Of course, there will be times when you get overwhelmed by your emotions and just find yourself expressing them. This is what marriage is about.

But don't turn every problem to something everyone in the house must experience with you.

And this is particularly important because emotions can be contagious.

When you constantly narrate your experiences with bitterness, irritation and resentment, your spouse may end up experiencing some of those emotions too, even when they had a perfectly good day themselves.

You may think you're simply telling your spouse about your day, but consider what you're repeatedly bringing into the relationship.

You're turning every conversation into a rant and making the whole relationship tense and filled with bad energy.

Must your spouse become upset about every person who upset you? Must everyone in the house experience your terrible mood simply because you had a terrible day?

Sometimes, you can even laugh about an experience while admitting that it genuinely upset you. You can tell your spouse, "I'm laughing now, but I was seriously frustrated when it happened."

You haven't denied your feelings, and you've still managed to have an enjoyable conversation.

The most beautiful part is that when you narrate your frustration in a regulated way, it often helps you yourself feel better.

Pay attention to how you tell your stories. The same experience could become thirty minutes of complaining could become thirty minutes of laughter, sympathy, interesting conversation and emotional connection.

*Sayf Network*

08/10/2026

*On Complainers(2): What Complaining Does to Your Marriage*

One of the things that suffer the most when you become a habitual complainer is your marriage.

This is partly because your spouse is usually your safest person.

You may control yourself outside, smile at colleagues, speak politely to customers and laugh with friends.

Then you get home and finally feel free enough to say everything that annoyed you throughout the day.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with that. Your spouse should be one of the people you can tell when you've had a terrible day.

You should be able to talk about what is hurting you, what you're worried about and what you're struggling with.

The problem is when this becomes what being around you regularly feels like.

Every evening there is another person who annoyed you. Another thing your boss did. The tailor, the hairdresser, the neighbor's children.

Another problem with the children. Another family member you're angry with. Another complaint about the house, the country, your body, the weather or something your spouse themselves did wrong.

Eventually, your spouse can begin to associate conversation with you with receiving a list of problems.

And worse, the complaining eventually enters the marriage itself.

Your spouse makes an effort to take you somewhere nice, and before the day is over you've complained about the traffic, the service, the price and how long it took to get home.

Imagine repeatedly trying to make someone happy when their attention naturally moves towards whatever is still wrong.

After a while, you may unknowingly train your spouse to stop trying as much.

*There is another danger too.*

If you constantly
complain about your spouse to other people, you are repeatedly rehearsing everything you dislike about the person you married.

Every time something happens, you call someone, retell it, explain why you're angry and receive another round of validation for your anger.

You can slowly build a mental case against someone you actually have a reasonably good marriage with.

Your spouse should not have to live with the feeling that every interaction with you will become another rant.

And one of the questions you should occasionally ask yourself is: when my spouse sees me coming, what kind of atmosphere do they expect me to bring?

*Sayf Network*

04/10/2026

*On Complainers (1): Complaining Makes Your Life More Miserable*

Some years ago, something happened while I was on my way to the Madrasah. I was trying to get there on time when suddenly, we ran into a gridlock at a spot where traffic was usually free.

There was a woman on the same bus with me, and within that short period, she complained about three different times.

First, before she even knew what was happening, she complained about the traffic.

Then when she realised there had been a diversion, she went, “What’s all this? Why are they diverting us again?”

Then when we eventually discovered a trailer had been involved in an accident, and that was why traffic had been diverted. She complained again.

All this while, I was actually feeling grateful.

Typically, in my country, an incident like that could easily result in an hour of traffic. But on that particular day, the prompt response of the traffic management authorities meant that the diversion went smoothly. We probably spent only an extra five minutes.

So while I was thinking about how well the situation had been handled and feeling happier than I normally would in that situation, this woman was bitter and complaining.

Even when nobody responded to her, she kept going.

Does this woman sound very strange to you? Truth is, she most likely had no idea how much she was complaining.

A habitual complainer rarely notices it. The people around them are the ones who suffer for it.

You may actually need to ask the people closest to you to know how often you yourself complain.

As a habitual complainer, you could be in the same situation with another person and you'll feel ten times worse.

If this becomes a pattern for you, you will experience life, marriage, parenting, and everything else from a very miserable point of view. Everything will seem to be against you.

The dangerous thing about complaining constantly is that you can train yourself to become very good at noticing what is wrong while missing what is going well.

You get the job you spent months praying for, but within a few weeks, most of what you say about it is how stressful it is.

You go somewhere beautiful, but the first thing you mention afterwards is how expensive the food was. Someone does nine things right and one thing wrong, and somehow, that one thing occupies your mind for the rest of the day.

Yet, you may not even realise you're doing this because almost every individual complaint can be justified.

Look at the pattern: what percentage of your conversations are about things that annoyed you?

When your spouse comes home, what are the first things you report about your day?

When something goes slightly wrong, how quickly do you feel the need to tell someone about it?

You can actually have a reasonably good life and experience it as a bad one because you have trained your mind to constantly collect evidence that your life is difficult while good things barely receive the same attention.

Your child behaved beautifully for three hours before the thirty-minute tantrum you told everyone about. Your spouse did several thoughtful things before the one annoying thing you've been replaying in your head.

If your mind spends every day searching for what is wrong, it will keep finding it. Eventually, the problem will no longer be that your life contains unpleasant things.

The problem will be that the unpleasant things are all you can see.

That way, even if your life has so much good in it, you will experience it as miserable.

*Sayf Network*

01/10/2026

*Letter From the Hospital: A Brother’s Near-Death Experience*

Some years ago, I visited a brother who had been critically ill. He had spent a long time in the ICU before he was moved to a regular ward.

He told me that, at one point, he was certain he was about to die. He felt something moving up from his feet and thought his soul was leaving his body. I asked him what went through his mind then.

He said we deceive ourselves a great deal. We tell ourselves stories about why we do what we do, and after repeating them for long enough, we begin to believe them.

But when he thought death had come, it felt as though a veil had been lifted. Many of the deeds he had felt good about no longer looked the way he had described them to himself.

I have thought about that conversation often.
Many of us say we attend a gathering for the sake of Allah, while knowing that what draws us there most is the company and the feeling of belonging - not really the thought of the reward attached. (Many do not even know the reward.)

Many of us speak up to defend the truth, while enjoying the attention and the praise we receive for doing so.

In fact, someone may go against the status quo, be isolated, and still do all that because he enjoys the 'izzah (the feeling of esteem and self-respect) rather than for the sake of Allah.

Many of us memorise the Quran and seek knowledge to "update our CVs" with. We aim high because we have an image on our mind: an image of someone who achieved that thing and how everyone talks about him. Not an image of how much the person seemed to fear Allah or have a close relationship with Him.

Many of us keep some Islamic practices because everyone in our circle keeps them.

How many of us say, “I’m studying so I can benefit the ummah,” but secretly, we know it's because we enjoy the tag that comes with our course of study.

How many of us say, “I’m making money so I can serve the deen,” while they simply have some people they want to prove wrong.

How many times do we call something prohibited by Allah a necessity because we do not want to face how much we have become attached to it.

The dangerous part is that these explanations can contain some truth. We may truly care about the deen and enjoy being seen as someone who cares at the same time.

We may want to help people genuinely for Allah's sake but also want their admiration.

That mixture makes it easy to avoid examining ourselves closely, and that mixture is the exact trap of Shaytaan.

The brother told me that when he thought he was faced with death, he felt as though he had no good deeds.

At that moment, you can no longer comfort yourself with the stories you usually tell about your intentions.

You have time now to ask the questions he found himself asking in a hospital bed. Why am I doing this? What would I still do if nobody recognized me? Which excuse have I repeated so much that I don't even question it again?

Build a very personal and private relationship with Allah, and be willing to hear criticism from those who know you.

*Sayf Network*

29/09/2026

*How khushuu' can save our lives*

I've invested the last few days into learning some interesting things about 21st century technologies and one has especially sparked my interest.

It's the rise in the demand for Attention Engineers. Some very angry people call them Addiction Engineers

What they do is dangerous but not complex. Attention Engineers are professionals social media platforms hire with the sole purpose of keeping us here for longer.

So what exactly do they do?

They offer us shiny treats in exchange for minutes of our personal attention and bites of our personal data which can then be packaged up and sold.

They find out that we like AI, so they add it to WhatsApp. They find out that we like to talk about how our days went even if it doesn't necessarily benefit others, so they add status updates.

They design social media to fragment our attention as much as possible throughout our waking hours and this can permanently reduce our capacity for concentration.

They fill up social media with things that trigger our dopamine release. The most dangerous thing about it is that they make it too easily accessible. It's like locking an alcoholic up in a room filled with bottles of cold b**r. It's disastrous.

But here's where it gets really deep .

In a competitive 21st century economy, what the market values is the ability to produce things that are valuable and rare. People who can do these are the people that remain valuable.

To create things that are valuable and rare, you need to be able to concentrate and focus on particular things for long stretches of time. For the average person, social media is increasingly damaging this ability.

But for the Muslim, one of the blessings of Islam is that it protects even something as subtle as our ability to concentrate because we need it to live valuable lives. If we live our lives as devoted Muslims, social media won't hurt us.

It's one of the reasons Islam emphasizes the importance of khushuu' (concentration) in Solah. It's psychologically-proven that if you can maintain concentration on something with relatively-low dopamine release like Solah, you have enough focus to create rare and valuable things.

It means that working on your khushuu' in Solah will naturally make you a more valuable person outside of it.

It also means that your khushuu' in Solah can be a measure for how damaged your attention span is. If you have no khushuu', then you should not bother mentioning that you're not productive. We know already. Work on the Khushuu'.

This writing is to show you how an Islamic ritual like solah protects you not only spiritually, but also psychologically.

It's to show you why it's practically impossible to reach the height of your productivity as a Muslim without getting closer to Allah.

So for now, your inability to be productive is not due to the fact that you've not read hundreds of books on self-development. Work on your religion first and see what changes.

*Alhaytham*
*Sayf Network*

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