Desist from Intolerance
The Quran (30:60) relates:
[S]o have patience [O Muhammad]! God’s promise is true; let not those who will not be convinced make you discouraged.
Consider a new tree. Based on the law of nature, this tree will start bearing fruit after a few years. But if some impatient people start demanding that the tree start yielding fruit after just a few months, they will destroy the tree with their impatience. Because of their behaviour, the tree will not be able to manifest its natural potentiality.
Similar is the case with developments that manifest themselves in the social sphere. Those on the path of truth will be repeatedly faced by provocations from people who are opposed to them. They will have to encounter numerous challenges, both mental and physical, that threaten to provoke them. This is a very delicate period for them. In such a situation, if they lose their patience and peace of mind and get entangled in the controversies that their opponents are bent on raking up, their real task will remain unfinished and they will start quarrelling with their opponents about unnecessary issues. By turning intolerant, they disobey God; and people who disobey God can never receive God’s help.
There are many different ways in which one can lose one’s patience and become intolerant. For instance, by not being willing to tolerate even a minor damage or inconvenience for the sake of a higher purpose or goal and to start fighting about this. Or, for instance, by not ignoring issues that might hurt one’s sentiments and by getting worked up because of them. Another way in which people might express this lack of tolerance is if, instead of working for their own social and economic development, they start making demands on others and take to protesting, demonstrating and engaging in other such forms of negative political action. Or, they may zealously rush ahead and take seemingly very daring steps without having developed their own character. Or, they may give inordinate importance to the challenges that they will necessarily have to face in society and then get provoked and start fighting with others. They may develop unrealistic expectations of others, and when these expectations are not met, they may get angry and start quarrelling with them. They may not take into account human weaknesses, and so when they see a weakness in someone, they may create a big hue and cry about it. They may refuse to negotiate with the political authorities, and, instead, start fighting with them. And so on.
The principle of not allowing yourself to lose your patience and tolerance is based on great wisdom. If you violate this principle in the desire for obtaining the opportunities that you do not possess, you will only lose the opportunities that you presently enjoy. If you launch an agitation to topple the political authorities who allow you to work in the non-political field, the latter will perceive you as their enemy, and, using the power at their disposal, can easily suppress you. If your opponent is strong and commits some excesses against you and you fail to tolerate this, deadly violence will break out, which will play havoc with your entire life.
Such are the perils of allowing yourself to lose your patience and tolerance.
Whenever you want to start some work, you will almost inevitably have to face complaints from others. You will have to contend with stiff opposition. Now, if you give importance to every complaint and every sort of hurt or damage caused to you by your opponents, you will inevitably start fighting with them. You will leave aside your real task, being so taken up in opposing them.
Suppose those who are on the path of truth do not abide by patience and tolerance and somehow still manage to acquire dominance in society. In such a situation, because of their lack of preparation, they will not be able to maintain this position for long. They will start fighting among themselves. If they had not focused on the task of purifying and developing their character, after grabbing political power they will promote strife and conflict, not peace and progress.
If people on the path of truth have not developed the firm conviction that the only thing of importance for them is truth and that all other matters are secondary, they will become engrossed in other issues if they acquire dominance in society. In this way, they will give birth to new social problems. If they have not risen above the psyche of revenge, after acquiring political power they will start killing off their former enemies, causing their societies and countries to become so weak that it will become impossible to manage them. If they have not developed the power of tolerance, they will unleash war against every person or group who might hurt their egos. If, stirred by their emotions, they lose control of themselves, in the name of ending one evil they will only succeed in producing many more.
Whenever you face an unpleasant situation at the hands of someone, you generally think just one thing: “This man is my enemy! I must suppress or fight him!” But this is a very wrong way to estimate a person. God has placed great flexibility in the human psyche. It is a proven fact that human beings do not remain in one state all the time. Rather, they keep on changing. To exercise tolerance means to wait for the manifestations of human possibilities that emerge from this ever-changing nature of human beings. Islam stresses the importance of patience precisely because one should wait for a future period to come to pass when the latent potentials hidden inside people can manifest themselves.
Some people go to extremes in their opposition to others by turning aggressive. But in this world that God has made to test human beings, your opponents too, have the freedom to act, just like you do. The best way to respond to them is to clear your own way ahead by exercising patience and wisdom, instead of becoming agitated by others and reacting angrily. A person’s lack of patience and wisdom is his enemy’s deadliest weapon. The most foolish person is one who hands over this weapon to his adversary himself. The same holds true for entire communities.
