“Why does it seem like Allah doesn’t accept my du’a?” He reached to me, I almost couldn’t hold my tears.

“Why does it seem like Allah doesn’t accept my du’a?” He reached to me, I almost couldn’t hold my tears.

I have just finished my Zuhr prayer when a friend of mine came by. One look at his haggard face and I knew  he was not the usual, happy guy I used to spend time together with.

I could see worry, despair and disappointment written all over his face. He sat by my side, looked down and struck my heart with some heavy questionings.

“I’m so tired of asking from Allah. Why the deafening silence? Am I asking too much? Is my constant asking displeasing Him ? Why  should my turning to Him displease Him? Why am I being rebuked after I gave all of my heart and soul submitting to Him?”

My heart trembled, my eyes welled with tears   from listening to his cracking voice. He was just being honest about his feelings. Certainly, this was not the cheerful, happy-go-lucky guy  as people used to know him. This is his inner self crying from the depth of his being, breaking, despairing and gasping for some air of hope from anywhere he could get .

As I tried to bring myself together, I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and said:

“You know, brother. Allah is so close to our being that He knows us better than anyone else. Allah is fond of our repeated appeals to Him because He made us so inclined. It is our fitrah to unwaveringly seek for His constant support. So how could He be displeased with our persistent dua – our cry for His rescue?”

As a lifelong friend, I had come to know him rather intimately — the ups and downs he had gone through, the heavy  trials and tribulations he had faced, and how all this had made him  a rugged survivor.

But now he is beset with nagging doubts as to whether Allah is really listening to him and granting what he had persistently asked for.

“Brother,” I patted his back. “There are three ways in which  Allah responds to our supplications”:

1. Allah decides to grant us precisely what we asked for.

Sometimes, Allah does accept our request as it is. For instance, when we fell sick and prayed for Him to cure us. At the appointed time, praise be to Allah, we found ourselves in the pink of health again.

We might be in a financial crisis, and we knew that money  never rain from the sky. And we have nowhere to avail ourselves of a quick fortune. So, We asked from Him. Suddenly someone appeared on the scene and voluntarily paid our dues.

We asked for the ease of heart after offering shahada and embracing this religion of Islam as our heart fluttered upon making that life-changing decision. Gradually, Allah granted us that ease.

2. Allah decides not to grant our requests so as to save us from a worse outcome.

We have been asking for a raise in our salary for some time already, but still, we returned home with a gloomy face on our payday. We began to wonder that since a pay raise is not a sinful thing to desire for, why isn’t Allah granting it to us then?

The truth is Allah knows us better than we do about ourselves. For all we know, had we been granted that ‘privilege’ of a pay raise we have been asking,  we could be under severe pressure later — due to the heavier workload or responsibility that came with that salary raise — such that we would not be able to bear it.

Perhaps, we might also become conceited and forget altogether that Allah is the sole reason for all the blessings. For our own ultimate benefit Allah desires that our faith in Him to be preserved intact by not being traded with the fleeting worldly trappings. For indeed Allah is the All-Knowing beyond the boundary of time?

So, our supplication is virtually answered by His relieving us of what is a worse outcome and for which we ought, indeed, to be grateful.

3. Allah decides to defer our  earthly reward for the ultimate recompense of Jannah in the Hereafter.

It feels like we have been asking forever. In the end, all we get is but the eternal  prison of  hope. The hardship remains until the end of our earthly time.

In such a predicament the right and wise thing for us to do is to stick with Him  no matter how dark the tunnel of our life is.

Let our conscience be illuminated that by this tribulation Allah is answering our supplication with even a better gift – the ultimate, the eternal reward of jannah in the Hereafter. What could be a better victory for us than  Divine forgiveness and Jannah as our homes? To think that after all the suffering that we had to endure going through this earthly life, it is unbelievable that we are finally  reaching the best finishing line of our journey.

So instead of despairing, what we ought to say  is “O Allah, forgive us for having bad thoughts of You. O Allah, grant us our Duas with what You know is the best for us. Amin.

May Allah grant us the strength and the wisdom to keep being steadfast. May Allah strengthen the heart and spirit of my friend, and the heart and spirit of ours too.