Yusuf · Makki · ayah 86 of 111

Yusuf 12:86

قَالَ إِنَّمَآ أَشْكُوا۟ بَثِّى وَحُزْنِىٓ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ وَأَعْلَمُ مِنَ ٱللَّهِ مَا لَا تَعْلَمُونَ

“He said, "I only complain of my suffering and my grief to Allāh, and I know from Allāh that which you do not know.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Ya'qub does not say he will stop complaining; he says he has only ever untied his grief in front of One.

A reflection

He did complain, and it was patience

Most of us carry a picture of patience that this ayah quietly breaks. Patience, in that picture, is the composed face. It does not complain. It says it is fine. So when a prophet says I complain, it sounds like a slip. Or else we hear it as a pious way of saying he never complained.

Read what is actually there. The verb is ashkū: I complain, I lay out my grief. Nothing in it is softened. The restriction, innamā, only, falls on the direction, not the act. Only to Allah.

One classical spiritual writer makes the point carefully. Complaint to Allah does not contradict patience. Ya'qub is the same man who said: beautiful patience (12:83). Ayyub said: harm has touched me (21:83). And of Ayyub the Qur'an says: We found him patient (38:44). The complaint and the patience sit in the same person, on the record, and Allah praises him.

What breaks patience, the same writer says, is a different thing. It is complaint of Allah, made to people, in words or in the way a person carries himself.

A son is told all day at his mother's funeral how strong he is being. Everyone admires it. At three in the morning he is on the bathroom floor with the tap running so his wife will not hear. Nobody told him there was a third way between performing strength and breaking down in front of people.

This ayah is the third way. Not silence, not a scene. A whole grief spoken, in full, to the only One who can do anything with it.

The composed face was never the measure. The question is where the words go.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.