Friday Meditations - Vices and Virtues: On Despair
From The Friday Prayer - January 26th, 2024
Disclaimer
Before we dive into the analysis of the vices of despair (al-yaʾs) and despondence (al-qunūṭ) we need to make a note. Today, we often talk about despair, despondence, depression as a clinical reality—a mental-health issue. We should not conflate the physiological/mental analysis of depression with the spiritual vice of despondence or depression. These do not match one-to-one; there may be a complex set of relations and interactions between the two but that is beyond the scope of these reflections.
So, as a disclaimer: we want to make sure that when we talk about depression or despondency as a spiritual deficiency we don’t conflate that with mental-health struggles. The analysis “clinical depression indicates a weakness in faith” does not hold and so remembrance of God (dhikr Allah) is not necessarily a comprehensive prescription just as it isn’t a comprehensive prescription for a broken leg.
The Spiritual Vice of Despairing of God
The Qurʾan uses two terms to describe this vice of despair: al-yaʾs and al-qunūṭ (ending in a ط as separate from qunūt ending in a ت which is to supplicate). Yaʾs is to feel bereft of hope in relationship to God; qunūṭ is to manifest that feeling in action. Some lexicographers consider them synonyms. At any rate, they are related terms with many considering qunūṭ to be more intense.
Why is this a taboo? Why can't I feel despair? If we're defining it as a vice, that means that there's a moral measure here. What is the moral assessment of despair and despondence?
Yūsuf 12:87
إِنَّهُ لَا يَيْأَسُ مِن رَّوْحِ اللَّهِ إِلَّا الْقَوْمُ الْكَافِرُونَ
Indeed no one despairs of God’s mercy except the faithless lot.
This phrase is stated by Jacob (Yaʿqūb) whose son Joseph (Yūsuf) is missing since, out of envy, his other sons let him to die in a well. And so Jacob tells his sons, "Look, Joseph might still be out there. Go search for him." To strengthen their resolve (and, perhaps, to trigger their consciences) he reminds them that no one despairs of God except the disbelieving people, al-qawm al-kāfirūn.
It is tantamount to disbelief to not believe that God will carry the day, to not believe that at the end of the day, despite my powerlessness, despite the difficulties I'm facing in my life, whether my material situation gets better or not, God is going to take care of me—either in this world or in the eternal abode.
The ICJ says that Israel’s actions are potentially genocidal, but they cannot enforce their ruling to cease all killing in Palestine. The Palestinians believe that, despite there being deep injustice via constant massacres, God will take care of us into eternity.
Without hope and conviction, despair sets in. And Jacob says, as a father who has lost his son and who has been searching for his son and is not sure if he's going to find him in this life or not, "don't despair." He's the one suffering. “Don't despair.” Only those who lack faith, only those who reject a higher reality, slip into the darkness of the world, slip into despondency vis-a-vis Reality itself.
Abraham (Ibrāhīm) also uses the word qunūṭ to describe a value judgment:
Al-Ḥijr 15:55
مَن يَقْنَطُ مِن رَّحْمَةِ رَبِّهِ إِلَّا الضَّالُّونَ
He said, ‘Who despairs of his Lord’s mercy except the astray?!’
Why the condemnation? Because of the effects. Despair is a hidden form of disbelief or misguidance because it is rooted in and caused by weak theological reflection or ignorance. And what it produces—its effect—is that we arrogantly take the load on our own shoulders when we are in total and utter hopelessness regarding the mercy of God (Rahmat Allah) and regarding God giving us a way out of our difficulties. "I have to do it. I will do it through my material means."
If we’ve denied that God will have mercy upon us—which is the implication of despairing in God's mercy—then we tend toward material pleasure. If you don't believe that God is going to forgive you, then why would you hold yourself back from vice? Why would you hold yourself back from tyranny? Why would you hold yourself back from “getting yours” at any cost? This attitude will leave us drowning in the mire of materiality (dunyā).
Al-Fatḥ 48:6
وَيُعَذِّبَ الْمُنَافِقِينَ وَالْمُنَافِقَاتِ وَالْمُشْرِكِينَ وَالْمُشْرِكَاتِ الظَّانِّينَ بِاللَّهِ ظَنَّ السَّوْءِ ۚ عَلَيْهِمْ دَائِرَةُ السَّوْءِ ۖ
That He may punish the hypocrites, men and women, and the polytheists, men and women, who entertain a bad opinion of God.
Here God states that He will rebuke the hypocrites and polytheists due to a root cause: that hypocrisy (nifāq) and polytheism (shirk) arise from thinking ill of God; they require having a corrupt conception of who God is. We can have a positive assessment (ḥusn al-dhann) of God or you can have negative assessment (sūʾ al-dhann)—that you think God is out to get you; You think that God is a tyrant, as some Western trends of thought think; or you think that God doesn't care about you. This form of thinking leads to rejecting Reality (kufr) or hypocrisy (nifāq).
The Cure
Hope is the cure. Properly understanding the power and desire of God is the cure. Growing in faith is the cure. So, what is faith?
Many scholars say it is knowledge (ʿilm) and assent (tasdīq). However, this falls short. Faith is not just a math problem to which you can assent upon recognition its truth. You can have the proofs of God’s existence and assent to them, yet still reject God. See: Satan.
Some scholars say it is knowledge plus deeds – but this too falls short for you can know and act, but have hypocrisy in the heart—to be duplicitous or to act in one’s self-interest.
Faith, according to ʿAllāmah Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī, is to have knowledge of God, to assent to that knowledge, and to make oneself answerable for it by an inseparable obligation.
Faith must have a quality of desire that accompanies knowledge and assent: to want to be with God, to love Him, to desire Him, to hope for His mercy, to be open-hearted. Or to be in Awe of Him and to want to obey Him at any cost. Faith requires an inner moral quality that elevates us beyond robotic ritual.
When a relationship or a marriage goes wrong it is not always due to a crisis. Relationships often weaken because they get “stale.” You’re going through the motions. You take each other for granted. You’re living together but there is no spark.
You can revive the relationship through re-realizing the internal beauty of your partner; through remembering the good times; through remembering the benefits you bring to each other’s lives – and through that to want to make each other happy again; to work for each other through an internal, independent desire that brings meaning back to the relationship.
In a similar way, our relationship with God must be dynamic. We must have a component of yearning. It may be through a “positive” quality of love and desire or it could be “negative” through fear and awe—in both cases they are dynamic. And in both cases the dynamism is based upon a proper recognition of God’s power and our total dependence on Him; knowledge of our spiritual anthropology is necessary.
In a prayer from al-Ṣaḥīfat al-Sajjādiyyah (Prayer 39), Imam ʿAli b. Ḥusayn Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn beautifully illustrates an approach to having trust and hope in God’s mercy while despairing in one’s self—one’s own independent power.
…Do that, my God, for one whose fear of You is greater than his craving from You,
whose hopelessness of deliverance is firmer than his hope for salvation!
Not that his hopelessness (yaʾsuhu) is despair (qunūṭan),
nor that his expectation is deluded.
No, rather his good deeds are few among his evil deeds
and his arguments are frail in face of everything due from his acts...[1]
Ultimately, our destiny lies in the hands of the One who gave rise to us in the first place; the One who speaks to us as such about His relationship to us:
Al-Zumar 39:53
قُلْ يَا عِبَادِيَ الَّذِينَ أَسْرَفُوا عَلَىٰ أَنفُسِهِمْ لَا تَقْنَطُوا مِن رَّحْمَةِ اللَّهِ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَغْفِرُ الذُّنُوبَ جَمِيعًا ۚ إِنَّهُ هُوَ الْغَفُورُ الرَّحِيمُ
Say [that Allah declares,] ‘O My servants who have committed excesses against their own souls, do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Indeed Allah will forgive all sins. Indeed, He is the All-forgiving, the All-merciful.
So, what can we do but be filled with hope beautifully balanced by awe of the Ineffable?
[1] https://www.al-islam.org/sahifa-al-kamilah-al-sajjadiyya-imam-ali-zayn-al-abidin/39-his-supplication-seeking-pardon-and-mercy
