Times When Acts of Obedience Are Forbidden

The times when acts of obedience are forbidden are the examinations of the worshippers and the tests of the lovers: whether they will be patient in postponing the act of obedience until the time is over.

And if we told you about the wonders of those folk, you would find something astonishing!

For they told us of a young man who, out of his intense love of fasting, could not bear the days of Tashreeq, and searched for legal stratagems to contrive and find himself an excuse so he could fast!

Until he feared disobeying the Messenger ﷺ, so he held back and obeyed.

And Ali ibn Bakkar said: For forty years nothing has saddened me except the breaking of dawn.

I say: perhaps what saddened him was the time of being held back, then when the sun rose, he prayed and the intimacy returned.

And women during menstruation, and the distress they feel: she is not at peace until she returns to prayer, and if she is afflicted with it in the last ten nights or on the Day of Arafah, that is a great trial from her Lord. So if she is patient and bears being kept from fasting and prayer, and takes up remembrance, the Quran and supplication, then indeed Allah does not allow to be lost the reward of the doers of good.

And there is no place harder on the one who remembers Allah than the lavatory, where his tongue is held back from remembrance after flowing freely, so much so that Ibn Baz used to wrap his turban over his mouth when he entered the lavatory!

And perhaps this is among the wisdoms of saying: Ghufrānaka (“[I seek] Your forgiveness”); with it he calms his longing!

And so, whoever holds himself back from disobedience, Allah compensates him with being held back from obedience, as longing and love!

And whoever is patient against the self's enticements to disobedience, Allah replaces them for him with its enticements to obedience!

— Shoroog Almehmadi