"So be patient with beautiful patience."
Quran, 70:5
This is one of the many verses in the Quran which deal with patience. I guess I chose this one simply because I quoted it to my students before the India trip as I sending around my famous/infamous Rules of Engagement, which I do on all of our trips. Someday I really should gather together a representative sampling of them and include them on this blog just for the sake of history (or to be a completist). Truthfully, one of the things that drew me to Islam is it's emphasis on patience. It's certainly not one of my virtues naturally. In some ways I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing, entirely anyway, because it's pushed me to make meaningful change when other more patience (or sane) folks would have accepted the illogical norm. Still, it's also made me a pain in the ass an awful lot of the time, and also caused more than its fair share of personal angst. I talked a couple days ago about my belief that we as Muslims, in a sense, misrepresent Ramadan because we say it's the month when Muslims fast as compared to the month when Muslims are supposed to be focusing on reading and studying the Quran, with fasting playing a role (again, I borrowed that observation from an Imam I follow on Twitter). My normal contrarian sense would quickly turn this notion into a tidy justification not to fast. So why do I fast? One of the chief virtues of fasting is to learn patience (along with greater self control and a very tangible reminder that there are many people in the world who are hungry involuntarily). Now, in Islam it's not simply an unquestioning patience that breeds acceptance of all wrongs. Instead, we are taught to always fight against injustice, so in this case the patience is tied to an activism. Even though we tend to say inshallah all the time it doesn't mean that we sit on our hands. Rather, there's a recognition that life is challenging and it's going to take a long time to make things better. This particular verse is drawn from surah 70, sometimes known as The Ascending Ways, which I featured before when I discussed the eight responsibilities of Muslims. It's another one of those surahs that I think I overlooked the first couple times I read the Quran, and only gained a greater appreciation of because Ramadan allowed me the time and space to study it more closely; once again, I guess, patience.
Oh, and another good example of a Quranic admonition for patience would be: "Bear patiently that which they say and take leave of them in a beautiful manner." (73:10) Of course, this one also includes a call for toleration, so I may revisit this one separately later.
Quran, 70:5
This is one of the many verses in the Quran which deal with patience. I guess I chose this one simply because I quoted it to my students before the India trip as I sending around my famous/infamous Rules of Engagement, which I do on all of our trips. Someday I really should gather together a representative sampling of them and include them on this blog just for the sake of history (or to be a completist). Truthfully, one of the things that drew me to Islam is it's emphasis on patience. It's certainly not one of my virtues naturally. In some ways I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing, entirely anyway, because it's pushed me to make meaningful change when other more patience (or sane) folks would have accepted the illogical norm. Still, it's also made me a pain in the ass an awful lot of the time, and also caused more than its fair share of personal angst. I talked a couple days ago about my belief that we as Muslims, in a sense, misrepresent Ramadan because we say it's the month when Muslims fast as compared to the month when Muslims are supposed to be focusing on reading and studying the Quran, with fasting playing a role (again, I borrowed that observation from an Imam I follow on Twitter). My normal contrarian sense would quickly turn this notion into a tidy justification not to fast. So why do I fast? One of the chief virtues of fasting is to learn patience (along with greater self control and a very tangible reminder that there are many people in the world who are hungry involuntarily). Now, in Islam it's not simply an unquestioning patience that breeds acceptance of all wrongs. Instead, we are taught to always fight against injustice, so in this case the patience is tied to an activism. Even though we tend to say inshallah all the time it doesn't mean that we sit on our hands. Rather, there's a recognition that life is challenging and it's going to take a long time to make things better. This particular verse is drawn from surah 70, sometimes known as The Ascending Ways, which I featured before when I discussed the eight responsibilities of Muslims. It's another one of those surahs that I think I overlooked the first couple times I read the Quran, and only gained a greater appreciation of because Ramadan allowed me the time and space to study it more closely; once again, I guess, patience.
Oh, and another good example of a Quranic admonition for patience would be: "Bear patiently that which they say and take leave of them in a beautiful manner." (73:10) Of course, this one also includes a call for toleration, so I may revisit this one separately later.
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