01
(Essay)
Sit Down
Anger, forbearance, and why the strong man is the one who holds himself.
By Mike Rashid King • Allah's Humble Servant
The man who loads up
In the ring, anger is a tell.
You can see it before he throws. His shoulders climb. His breathing changes. He stops jabbing, because the jab is too small for what he is feeling, and he starts loading up, hunting for the one shot that pays you back for the last three. His hands drop when he winds up. His chin comes up when he charges. The calm man across from him does nothing special. He waits for the swing, slips it, and puts something on the chin the angry man just handed him.
The angry man thinks he is the one attacking. He is the one being run.
It works the same way everywhere else I have been. At the deal table, the man who gets heated starts fighting to win the exchange and stops fighting to win the deal, and the calm man across from him lets him have the exchange. On the block, the one you could provoke was the one who got used, because anybody who knew where his buttons were could send him wherever they needed him to go. At home it is worse. At home the people across from you are your wife and your children, and they cannot slip the shot.
I wrote Say Less about the tongue. This one is about what heats it. The worst words I have ever said, I said hot. A man who rations his speech and leaves his temper loose has a good jab and no defense.
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What Allah says about anger
Allah names the men He loves, and in the middle of the description is a man holding his anger.
ٱلَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ فِى ٱلسَّرَّآءِ وَٱلضَّرَّآءِ وَٱلْكَٰظِمِينَ ٱلْغَيْظَ وَٱلْعَافِينَ عَنِ ٱلنَّاسِ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ يُحِبُّ ٱلْمُحْسِنِينَ
Alladhina yunfiquna fi as-sarra'i wad-darra'i wal-kazimina al-ghayza wal-'afina 'ani an-nas, wallahu yuhibbu al-muhsinin
Who spend in the cause of Allah during ease and hardship and who restrain anger and who pardon the people, and Allah loves the doers of good. (Surah Aal Imran 3:134)
The ayah (verse) before it tells you who these men are. They are the muttaqin (the people of taqwa, of guarding themselves before Allah), and a garden as wide as the heavens and the earth is prepared for them (3:133). Then Allah gives three of their marks, and two of them are about anger.
Al-kazimin al-ghayz. Kazm is to restrain, to hold it down. Ghayz is rage. The ones who hold down their rage. That is the first rung. Then al-'afina 'an an-nas, the ones who pardon people. That is the second, and it is harder, because a man who holds his rage still carries it, and a man who pardons sets it down. Then Allah closes the ayah: and Allah loves the muhsinin (the doers of good, the people of ihsan, which means excellence). Hold it. Release it. Then do good to the man who caused it. That reading of three rungs is mine. The words are His.
Quran 3:133-134 · Lane's Lexicon on kazama
Allah says it again in Surah Ash-Shura, describing the believers: and when they are angry, they forgive (42:37). Read it closely. Allah describes men who get angry. The anger is assumed. What they do next is the measure.
Then Allah shows you anger in a prophet, and He shows you all of it.
Musa, ʿalayhi as-salām (peace be upon him), came back to his people carrying the tablets and found them worshipping a calf. His anger was for Allah. There is no cleaner anger a man could carry. And Allah tells you exactly what it did. He threw down the tablets, and he took his brother by the head and pulled him in. Harun, ʿalayhi as-salām, said: son of my mother, the people oppressed me and were about to kill me, so let not the enemies rejoice over me (7:150). And Musa's answer was a dua (a supplication): my Lord, forgive me and my brother, and admit us into Your mercy (7:151).
Then this:
وَلَمَّا سَكَتَ عَن مُّوسَى ٱلْغَضَبُ أَخَذَ ٱلْأَلْوَاحَ ۖ وَفِى نُسْخَتِهَا هُدًۭى وَرَحْمَةٌۭ لِّلَّذِينَ هُمْ لِرَبِّهِمْ يَرْهَبُونَ
Wa lamma sakata 'an Musa al-ghadabu akhadha al-alwah, wa fi nuskhatiha hudan wa rahmatun lilladhina hum li rabbihim yarhabun
And when the anger subsided in Moses, he took up the tablets; and in their inscription was guidance and mercy for those who are fearful of their Lord. (Surah Al-A'raf 7:154)
The word in the ayah is sakata, the same word Arabic uses for a man who stops talking. The anger went silent. Then he picked the tablets back up, and the guidance and the mercy had been in them the whole time. They were on the ground while he was angry.
If the cleanest anger a man ever carried put the tablets on the ground, look at what yours has put down. Your patience. Your prayer. Your wife's trust. Your son's respect. It is all still there, and it gets picked up the same way. The anger goes silent first.
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What the Prophet ﷺ said about anger
He took the word strong and gave it to a different man.
The strong man is not the one who overpowers people. The strong man is the one who controls himself when he is angry.
Sahih al-Bukhari 6114, narrated by Abu Hurairah
I came up in a sport that measures strength the first way. The Prophet ﷺ measures it the second way, and the second way is harder. A man who can put anybody on the canvas and cannot get through a traffic jam has the strength people can see and the weakness Allah can see.
A man came to him and asked for advice. He ﷺ said: do not get angry. The man asked again, and again, and every time he got the same answer. Do not get angry. The man wanted more. The Prophet ﷺ kept handing him the one thing he needed.
Then he ﷺ gave the instruction for the moment it hits. If one of you becomes angry while he is standing, let him sit down. If the anger leaves him, good. If not, let him lie down.
Sunan Abi Dawud 4782, graded sahih by Al-Albani
Read it as a fighter. Anger wants you on your feet and moving forward. The Prophet ﷺ told you to take the fight out of your body before it comes out of your hands. Standing, sit. Sitting, lie down. A man flat on his back throws nothing.
He ﷺ gave you the words. Two men were trading insults in front of him, and one was so angry his face had gone red. The Prophet ﷺ said: I know a word that would take this away from him if he said it. I seek refuge with Allah from Shaytan (Satan), the outcast. The men sitting there told him what the Prophet ﷺ said. He answered that he was not insane. That is the anger talking, refusing the medicine it was just handed.
He ﷺ gave you the Say Less of it. When one of you is angry, let him be silent. The tongue and the temper are one fight. Shut the mouth and the anger loses its exit.
Al-Adab al-Mufrad 245, narrated by Ibn Abbas · al-Haythami on its chain in Musnad Ahmad
And he ﷺ told you the price, with a clause in it a fighter understands. Whoever swallows his anger while he is able to unleash it, Allah will call him in front of all creation on the Day of Resurrection and let him choose whichever of the hur (the companions of Paradise) he wishes. The hadith is graded hasan. Hasan means sound, a chain the scholars accept, one grade below sahih (authentic).
While he is able to unleash it. That is the whole thing. The man who stays quiet because he is scared is doing something else. The man who could end the argument, the deal, or the other man, and lets it go, is the man this hadith describes.
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Why the angry man is the weak man
Anger is a handle, and the man who finds yours can carry you anywhere.
Think about what it means to be provoked. Somebody said a sentence, and now he decides what you do next. He picked the time. He picked the words. All you picked was the reaction, and you did not even pick that. The angry man calls it standing up for himself. From across the ring it looks like a man on a leash.
Three things anger takes from you, and the ring showed me all three before the deen (the complete way of life Islam prescribes) gave them names.
It takes your guard. A man who is angry stops protecting what matters, because protecting is slow and he wants it now. In there, what he leaves open is his chin. Out here it is his family's peace, his name, his money, his freedom.
It takes your eyes. Anger points you at the one thing that hurt you and nothing else. The counter coming from the other side is invisible to a man who is still looking at the last punch. In business that counter is the clause he signed while he was trying to win the argument. On the block it is the camera, the cop, or the other man's cousin.
It takes your word. Say Less was about this one. The angry man says the sentence he will spend years trying to take back, to his wife, to his son, to the brother who would have gone to war for him. It goes on the record hot and stays there cold.
Dialectical Thinking demands the objection. Musa, ʿalayhi as-salām, threw the tablets. Some things deserve anger. A man who feels nothing when the weak are crushed has a dead heart.
Correct, and the Prophet ﷺ drew the line himself. Aisha said he never once took revenge for himself, and when the sacred limits of Allah were violated, he took revenge for Allah's sake. Anger for Allah is aimed. Anger for yourself is aiming you.
Watch him on his own account. A Bedouin came up to him and pulled his cloak so hard that its thick border left a mark on his shoulder, and demanded to be given from the wealth of Allah that he had. The Prophet ﷺ turned to him, smiled, and ordered that he be given something. The man put his hands on the Messenger of Allah. The Messenger of Allah paid him.
Sahih al-Bukhari 6088, narrated by Anas
His own honor he gave away. Allah's honor he guarded. Turn that around and you get the man who explodes over a parking space and sleeps through Fajr (the dawn prayer) without a second thought.
He ﷺ told al-Ashajj of Abd al-Qays that he carried two traits Allah loves: hilm and anah. Hilm is forbearance, the strength to hold your hand when you could swing. Anah is deliberateness, the patience to let the moment pass before you move. Put them together and you have a fighter's whole defense. Hands up, eyes open, no wasted motion.
The anger will come. Allah described the believers as men who get angry. The question He asks is who is holding whom.
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The practice
The rules are the Prophet's ﷺ. The order is mine.
- Sit down. The moment you feel it rise, change your position. Standing, sit. Sitting, lie down (Sunan Abi Dawud 4782). In the car, pull over. In the room, leave the room. The body goes down first and the temper follows it.
- Say the words. A'udhu billahi min ash-shaytan ir-rajim. I seek refuge with Allah from Shaytan, the outcast (Sahih al-Bukhari 6115). Say it out loud, so you hear it. There is a full study of these words, the Ta'awwudh (the seeking of refuge), on this site.
- Go silent. When one of you is angry, let him be silent (Al-Adab al-Mufrad 245). This is Say Less at the exact moment it is hardest. Do not answer the text. Do not finish the sentence. Close your mouth and let your breathing slow down before anything else comes out of it.
- Find water. There is a report that tells the angry man to make wudu (the washing before prayer), and Al-Albani graded it weak (Sunan Abi Dawud 4784), so I will not put it in the Prophet's ﷺ mouth. I will put it in mine. Go wash. Cold water on your face and hands. Give your body a job that is not the fight.
- Decide nothing hot. The Prophet ﷺ said a judge should not judge between two people while he is angry (Sahih al-Bukhari 7158). If a qadi (a judge) cannot rule angry, you cannot fire the man, sign the contract, discipline your son, or send the message. Sleep on it. The decision will still be there in the morning, and so will a better version of you to make it.
- Repair fast. Musa's answer to his brother was a dua for both of them (7:151). When you have swung, go back. To your wife. To your son. To the man at work. Say I was wrong, and say it plainly, with no speech attached. A man who repairs fast keeps his house.
- Climb the ayah. Hold it. Release it. Then do good to the man who caused it (3:134). Allah tells you what that last rung does in Surah Fussilat: repel the bad with what is better, and the man you had enmity with becomes like a devoted friend. Then He tells you who reaches it: none but the patient, none but the one with a great portion of good (41:34 to 35). That last rung is the hardest thing I know, and Allah says only the patient get there.
Sunan Abi Dawud 4784, graded weak by Al-Albani · Sahih al-Bukhari 7158 · Quran 41:34-35
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The quiet work
The strong man the Prophet ﷺ described does not look like much from across the room. He is the one sitting down while everybody else is on their feet. He is quiet while the room is loud. He let the man who cut him off drive away. He came home after a bad day and did not hand the day to his wife and children.
None of that makes a highlight reel. It is the quiet work, and it is the hardest round I know.
Your sons are watching how you get angry. Let them watch a man sit down.
When the anger went silent in Musa, ʿalayhi as-salām, he picked the tablets back up, and the guidance and the mercy were waiting in them. Sit down. Let it go silent. Then pick yours up.
The strong man is the one who controls himself when he is angry.
By Mike Rashid King • Allah's Humble Servant