Question:

I would like to ask you and seek your help with something.  I am a twenty-six-year-old physician. I fell in love with my  cousin, and we always tried to get married. Our marriage encountered obstacle after obstacle, and now his father has refused for the fourth time. I was compelled to give him up though Allah knows how much I love him. The problem is that even those who come to propose to me, I cannot accept them, and I cannot stop loving him. I have developed severe depression. I have come to hate my life, and sometimes I fear that Allah will punish me or that I will never find happiness. I am tired of seeing those around me happy while I am sad—sad to an extent known only to Allah. I have begun to despair of ever finding happiness, and I cannot imagine my life without my aunt’s son. Please issue me a religious ruling (fatwa), may Allah reward you with goodness: Will I be held accountable for this despair that has overcome me against my will? Because I no longer see anything but sadness and depression, and I have become certain that I will never find happiness, nor can I be optimistic. Help me, may Allah reward you with goodness.

Answer:

Al-ḥamdu lillāhi rabb al-ʿālamīn. To proceed:

I begin my answer with the words of the poet: ‘For everything you part from, there is a substitute — but for Allah, if you part from Him, there is no substitute.’

And the saying of another: “And every broken heart, Allah will mend, but for the brokenness of faith, there is no mending.”

Happiness, my dear daughter, lies in contentment with what Allah has apportioned — in our certainty that Allah’s choice for us is better than our choice for ourselves. and in tasting the devotion of being content with Allah Almighty—for it is Allah’s Paradise on Earth, and whoever does not enter it will not enter His Paradise in the Hereafter.How many things have people attached themselves to in their worldly life, only for their Lord to divert those things away from them out of His mercy and grace, knowing that they would not bring them the happiness they aspired to, but rather might contain their ruin and destruction?

Have you not read the word of Allah Most High: “And man supplicates for evil as he supplicates for good, and man is ever hasty.” (al-Isrāʾ 17:11)

The future, my dear daughter  is unseen (ghayb) — and the unseen belongs to Allah alone; it is hidden from us. A person must pursue the lawful means to attain what their soul longs for in terms of lawful hopes and desires, after istikhārah and consultation — and If their Lord holds it back from them, they should meet that with contentment and submission, certain of Allah’s care and kindness towards them, and that if they were to look into the Unseen, they would choose nothing other than what Allah chose for them.

On the other hand, despair, my dear daughter, can be one of two forms of relief— I do not mean, of course, despairing of the spirit of Allah Almighty, for that is disbelief. Rather, I mean despairing of obtaining that specific thing, so that the reins of purpose are turned away from it, while one’s state says: ‘If you cannot achieve a thing, leave it and move on to what you can do.’

The world will not stop for the attainment of a beloved thing or its loss, just as it does not stop for someone’s death or life.

The true crisis, my dear daughter, is a crisis of faith. When the spring of faith is renewed in the heart and the soul regains its spiritual well-being, crises clear away, fog lifts, and distress vanishes.

One final word remains: perhaps this suffering is an expiation for past shortcomings during the time of contact. This intense emotion does not arise from nothing; perhaps past indulgence in conversation and drifting into the realm of emotions back and forth, or laxity in lowering the gaze during meetings, was what kindled this emotion and brought the misfortune of its ship breaking apart.

Yet, whatever afflicts a Muslim comes under the words of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him): ‘No fatigue, illness, anxiety, sorrow, harm, or distress befalls a Muslim—even the prick of a thorn—except that Allah expiates some of his sins through it.'(1)

So I ask Allah Almighty to return you to Him in a beautiful manner and to guide you to the most praised of matters in His sight and the most beautiful in outcome. And Allah Almighty knows best.

And Allah Most High knows best.

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Footnotes :

(1) Agreed upon  — al-Bukhārī no. 5641; Muslim no. 2573 — on the authority of Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī and Abū Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with them both).