Does My Lord Hate Me?

Rejection and feeling unloved are possibly one of the most overbearing emotions felt by man. But what if you start to feel that you are being rejected from Allah swt? You may be surprised, but this feeling isn’t uncommon. 

Today, I will be focusing on exactly that. I will be talking about the dangers of how you perceive emotions linked to trauma and how this can lead you to develop the negative mindset of “Allah swt hates me”.

I’ll start off with the concept of emotional reasoning, which is defined as a cognitive process by which an individual concludes that their emotional reaction to an incident, ultimately proves that this is reality. A person who is following this emotional reasoning mindset might conclude that “I feel guilty, therefore I must have done something wrong”. This is a battle between emotions and facts. Through this, you are bringing to the surface your inner emotions and using these feelings to create scenarios in your head that may not necessarily be factual. When people think this way, often they end up creating assumptions about themselves, the world around them and sometimes even their relationship with Allah (swt). 

These feelings can often be linked to a traumatic experience that we may have suffered. When we talk about trauma, it doesn’t necessarily mean something severe or life-altering. In some cases, it may even be smaller events that build up over time. When we start to create these negative thoughts based off of experiences then we start to participate in a concept called projection i.e how I feel about myself is how the world feels about me, and inevitably, this must be how Allah swt feels about me too.

This mindset is incredibly unhealthy to have and can be spiritually damaging to an individual. How could you think that the one who created you, chose you to be a believer and loves you unconditionally could have the capacity to hate you?

When I was going through a difficult time, I struggled with this mindset a lot. Once I was praying salah and I had a panic attack on the prayer mat. This made me believe that I wasn’t worthy of praying and that Allah swt did not want me in front of him, which of course was not true. It took a lot of reflection and courage to start praying again as I had this fear that I was having these attacks because I simply wasn’t worthy of praying. The tragic thing about anxiety attacks is that you end up associating them with the physical trigger of it, as opposed to the actual psychological trauma or reasoning behind them. For this reason, the prayer mat became a trigger for me. Alhamdullilah, I consider myself blessed as I overcame this mindset pretty quickly. I did this by firstly acknowledging that this is not my lord punishing me. He does not hate me but he wants me to stop hating myself and understand that there may be something deeply rooted that I am ignoring. From this, I dug deep within myself to tackle the trauma from its core,  I took time to understand that it did not define my relationship with Allah (swt) nor did it define me as a person. From this, I was able to open up my heart to my lord and heal from my invisible wounds.

Unfortunately, your personal relationships can have a massive impact on your view of Allah (swt). For example, If you were raised in a hostile environment where forgiveness was not practised and often the people around you would hold grudges against you for very minor mistakes, you may subconsciously start to apply those feelings to Allah swt as well.

However, a beautiful blessing that we have is that our brains have the ability to mindset when we give it its given attention. The more effort that we put into healing and dealing with these negative thought processes and replacing them with healthier thoughts, the more chance that our mindset will reverse. The key is to rewire your brain into thinking that emotions are okay to feel but they do not always show an honest depiction of reality. The thing about feelings is that there seem to be two ends of the spectrum. You get those people who believe that your feelings are irrelevant and they should often be ignored, and then you have the other side that if you feel something it absolutely must be true. In fact, the matter is that it’s important to find the middle ground, yes your emotions do not define you however without acknowledgement of them you will not heal and those emotions will continue to linger.

I had a friend who unfortunately couldn’t escape those thoughts of negativity after facing trauma. She allowed her trauma to consume her and blamed Islam for it as she actually was hurt by someone who she deemed religious and her only source of an Islamic figure at the time. This lead to her hating Islam and firmly believing that Allah (swt) hates her, so much so that she left Islam in the end. May Allah (swt) guide her back to his light, ameen.

This is why I cannot reiterate enough the importance of healing your negative thought processes and understanding that the trauma you face is not a result of Allah swt hating you. Allah swt tests the ones he loves, and just because you go through these hardships it is not because Allah (swt) is rejecting you. In these tests, there is so much wisdom and growth that will insh’Allah benefit you in this dunya and in the hereafter. Remember to always think about the Prophet (pbuh). No one was tested more than him. He was the greatest of the great and Allah (swt) loved him more than anyone else on this earth but his hardships were completely unmatched, subhanAllah.

I pray that whatever grief or trauma any one of you may experience/are experiencing that you can fight your way through it with the help of Allah (swt). Remember that he loves you so much so that he gave you the beautiful gift of islam. What better display of his love than that? You are a lot stronger and capable than you give yourself credit for, and there is no pain or rejection that you can not defeat. Take my own story I mentioned previously for some motivation. If I could overcome it, insh’Allah so can you.

“Allah Almighty said: “My servant draws near to Me with nothing more loved by Me than the acts of worship that I have enjoined upon him. My servant continues to try to draw near to Me with more devotion until I love him. When I love him, I will be his hearing with which he hears, his sight by which he sees, his hand with which he strikes, his feet on which he walks. When he asks Me for something, I will respond and when he takes refuge in Me, I will grant it to him. I do not hesitate in doing anything I intend to do as much as I hesitate in seizing the soul of My faithful servant; he hates death and I hate hurting him. But death is a must for him”.”  (Narrated by Bukhari)

 

Nimrah Abbas is a 4th year Immunology and Microbiology student who will be starting her PDGE in biology teaching this year. She has a passion for visual arts including photography, painting and digital design and also enjoys travelling. Nimrah is an active member of the community and over the last few years, she has taken on leadership roles within her university ISOC and has volunteered in various other projects.

 

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