Do Not Ask for Difficulties

About his youth, Shah Baha’ ad-Din Muhammad an-Naqshband said, “I would arise early, three hours before fajr prayer, take ablution, and after performing sunnah prayers, I would go into prostration, supplicating Allah with the following prayer: ‘O my Lord, Give me the strength to carry the difficulties and the pain of Your Love.’  Then I would pray fajr with the shaykh.”  His shaykh then was Shaykh Muhammad Baba as-Samasi.

“On his way out one day, he looked at me and said, as if he had been with me when I made that supplication, ‘O my son, you have to change the method of your supplication.  Instead, say, ‘O Allah, Grant Your Pleasure to this weak servant.’  Allah does not like His servants to be in difficulties.  Although Allah in His Wisdom might Give some difficulties to His servants to Test them, the servant must not ask to be in difficulties.  This would not be respectful to your Lord.’”

This account comes from the manaqib, the hagiographic tradition surrounding Naqshbandi masters.  Treat it as instructive spiritual biography, not scripture.  The lesson it carries, however, sits comfortably within mainstream Sufi Hanafi Sunni teaching, and doesn't need embellishment to land its point.

There is a strand of contemporary spirituality, Muslim and otherwise, that treats suffering as a loyalty card.  Collect enough stamps in pain, and you cash in for sainthood.  Fast until you faint.  Pray until your knees give out.  Post the bruised prayer callus like it is a Rolex.  This is not devotion.  This is spiritual masochism wearing devotion’s coat, and Shaykh as-Samasi shut it down in one sentence nine hundred years before Instagram made it an aesthetic.  The Qur’an Itself Settles the matter without ambiguity.  Allah Says, يُرِيدُ اللَّهُ بِكُمُ الْيُسْرَ وَلَا يُرِيدُ بِكُمُ الْعُسْرَ — “Allah Intendeth every facility for you; He doth not want to put you to difficulties” (Surah al-Baqarah, 2:185).  That is not a throwaway line about Ramadhan fasting exemptions.  It is a statement of Divine character.  A God Who Prefers ease for His servants is not flattered by servants who go out of their way to manufacture hardship in His Name. 

The correction matters theologically, not just tactically.  Asking for difficulty presumes to know better than your Lord what your own path should look like.  It is, in effect, submitting a request form to Allah specifying the terms on which you would like to worship Him.  Shah an-Naqshband’s shaykh recognised the arrogance tucked inside apparent humility, and corrected it immediately.  Ask for His Pleasure instead.  Let the Tests, if they come, come from Him.  Do not audition for them.