Love From Allah: Does Being Loved by Allah Mean We Have to Suffer?

“If Allah loves you, He will test you.”

Many Muslims have heard some version of this throughout their lives.

When difficulties continue, we may be told that our suffering is a sign that Allah loves us. We are reminded of the Prophets: Yusuf (AS) was imprisoned, Yunus (AS) was in the belly of the whale, Musa (AS) fled in fear, and the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ experienced bereavement, rejection, persecution and loss.

The message is usually intended to comfort us:

Have sabr. Allah tests those He loves.

There is truth within this. Islam does teach us that believers will experience trials, and that hardship can bring reward, purification and closeness to Allah.

But sometimes we turn this teaching into something it was never meant to become:

Allah loves me, therefore He makes me suffer.

And for someone who has experienced trauma, neglect, abuse or conditional love, that interpretation can have profound consequences.

When love has always hurt

Imagine growing up in an environment where love was unpredictable.

Perhaps affection had to be earned.

Perhaps another sibling was favoured.

Perhaps your needs were considered inconvenient.

Perhaps you learnt that being good meant tolerating poor treatment, remaining quiet, looking after everybody else or putting your own needs last.

A child growing up like this can internalise a powerful association:

Love comes with pain.

Then, years later, that child encounters religious language telling them:

Allah tests the people He loves most.

Without realising it, an old attachment wound and a religious teaching can become intertwined.

The person may begin to understand Allah through the same framework through which they understood human love:

If I am loved, I must suffer.

If life becomes easier, perhaps I am becoming less spiritually significant.

If I want the suffering to stop, perhaps my iman is weak.

If somebody else receives what I desperately wanted, perhaps Allah has chosen something harder for me because I am supposed to have sabr.

Eventually, an extraordinarily painful question can emerge:

Why does being loved always have to hurt?

Perhaps we need to separate these things.

Allah’s love is not human dysfunction

Allah tells us:

“Indeed, Allah does not wrong people at all, but it is people who wrong themselves.”

Qur’an 10:44

Human beings can neglect us.

Parents can fail us.

People can abuse the trust Allah placed upon them.

Relationships can wound us.

Other people’s choices can have consequences that remain with us for decades.

Allah allowing human beings moral agency does not mean He approves of everything they choose to do.

And something occurring within qadr does not automatically mean that the harmful behaviour itself was good.

Sometimes something was simply wrong.

We do not have to turn abuse into a blessing before we are allowed to believe in Allah’s wisdom.

The Prophets suffered — but that is only half of their stories

We often invoke the Prophets when talking about sabr.

And rightly so.

But sometimes we stop their stories at the point of suffering.

Yusuf (AS) was imprisoned.

But Allah brought him out of the prison.

Yunus (AS) was in darkness inside the whale.

But Allah delivered him from it.

Musa (AS) fled frightened and vulnerable.

But Allah gave him safety, companionship and purpose.

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ endured persecution, bereavement and exile.

But his story also contains love, companionship, provision, victory, family, community, mercy and openings from Allah.

The suffering was part of their stories.

It was not the entirety of Allah’s relationship with them.

If we use the Prophets to teach people how to endure hardship, we should also use their lives to teach people that they are allowed to hope for deliverance from hardship.

Sabr does not mean wanting nothing

Perhaps one of our misunderstandings is what sabr actually looks like.

We sometimes imagine the patient believer as someone who accepts every painful circumstance without emotional protest:

Allah gave this to me, therefore I shouldn’t be upset.

But consider Ya’qub (AS).

His grief for Yusuf was enormous. The Qur’an describes his eyes becoming white from sorrow.

Yet he says:

“I only complain of my suffering and my grief to Allah.”

Qur’an 12:86

He wanted Yusuf back.

He grieved.

He cried.

And he remained connected to Allah.

That was not the absence of sabr.

That was sabr.

Sabr does not necessarily mean:

“I am happy with what is happening.”

Sometimes sabr sounds more like:

“Ya Allah, I desperately wish this were different. I don’t understand why this has happened. But I am still turning towards You.”

You are allowed to want ease

Islam does not teach us that suffering is inherently more holy than wellbeing.

One of the most familiar Qur’anic supplications asks:

“Our Lord, give us good in this world and good in the Hereafter.”

Qur’an 2:201

Good in this world.

We are allowed to ask Allah for health.

Marriage.

Children.

Companionship.

Financial security.

A peaceful home.

Meaningful work.

Safety.

Rest.

Love.

Joy.

We do not have to apologise for wanting these things.

Allah is Ar-Rahman — The Most Merciful.

Ar-Rahim — The Especially Merciful.

Al-Wadud — The Most Loving.

Al-Karim — The Most Generous.

Al-Wahhab — The Bestower.

Ar-Razzaq — The Provider.

Al-Fattah — The Opener.

Why, then, should our entire understanding of our relationship with Allah revolve around how much suffering we can withstand?

Someone else’s blessing is not evidence of your rejection

This can be particularly difficult for people who experienced favouritism in childhood.

If you repeatedly watched someone else being chosen while you were overlooked, adulthood can awaken the same wound.

Someone else gets married.

Someone else becomes a parent.

Someone else receives the opportunity.

Someone else has the family you wanted.

Someone else’s du’a appears to be answered.

And somewhere beneath the disappointment comes an old feeling:

“Again, someone else has been chosen instead of me.”

Eventually this can enter our relationship with Allah.

Why did You give it to them and not me?

And underneath that question can be another:

What does that say about how You feel about me?

But perhaps this is where trauma and theology need separating.

Someone else’s qadr is not evidence of Allah’s opinion of you.

Their receiving does not prove your rejection.

Their ease does not prove their superiority.

Your hardship does not prove your inferiority.

And neither worldly ease nor worldly suffering, by itself, gives us a simple measurement of Allah’s love.

We don’t always know why

There is another sentence Muslims sometimes need permission to say:

I don’t know.

Why did Allah allow this particular thing?

Why did something seemingly achievable remain unavailable?

Why did one person’s life unfold relatively easily while another encountered repeated loss?

Why did Allah permit something when He had the power to prevent it?

We can discuss qadr, free will, wisdom, consequences, protection, purification and the Hereafter.

These are important parts of Islamic theology.

But when revelation has not told us Allah’s specific reason for an individual’s experience, we should be careful about claiming that we know it.

Sometimes telling a suffering person:

“Allah did this because He loves you.”

doesn’t comfort them.

It can leave them wondering:

“Then why does His love feel like the love that hurt me?”

Perhaps a more honest response is:

I don’t know why Allah permitted this.

But I know Allah is not unjust.

There is humility in allowing those two truths to coexist.

Trauma does not have to have been “sent” to make you who you are

People who have survived difficult childhoods sometimes make sense of their lives by saying:

“Perhaps Allah put me through that so I could become who I am today.”

Perhaps our experiences certainly shaped us.

Perhaps suffering developed extraordinary compassion, insight or strength within us.

But we do not necessarily know that this was why Allah allowed it.

There is another way of understanding it:

Allah did not waste what happened to me.

That is different from saying the trauma was good.

Something painful can remain painful.

Something unjust can remain unjust.

And Allah can still bring wisdom, compassion, understanding and goodness from its aftermath.

We don’t have to call the wound a gift in order to recognise what Allah enabled us to build after it.

Perhaps healing includes relearning what divine love means

For people raised with conditional, frightening or inconsistent love, spiritual healing may involve something deeper than simply developing more sabr.

It may involve learning:

Allah is not like the people who hurt me.

Human rejection is not divine rejection.

Being denied something is not proof of being unworthy.

Someone else’s blessing is not evidence that Allah prefers them.

Rest is not spiritual failure.

Wanting relief is not ingratitude.

Grieving an unanswered du’a is not the same as abandoning Allah.

And suffering is not something we have to pursue, romanticise or indefinitely tolerate to prove that we love Him.

Perhaps instead of asking:

“How much suffering must I endure for Allah to love me?”

we can begin asking:

“What if I have misunderstood what His love looks like?”

And perhaps our du’a can become:

Ya Allah, separate my understanding of You from the people who hurt me.

Do not let human rejection become my understanding of Your qadr.

When somebody else receives, protect me from believing that I have been forgotten.

Teach me to receive without fear, to rest without guilt and to love without abandoning myself.

Give me good in this dunya and good in the akhirah.

And when I do not understand what You have written for me, help me remain close to You without believing that my suffering determines my worth.

Ameen.

The Muslim Counsellor

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