“I am angry with Allah.”

If this is your sentence tonight, you are not the first to say it — and you are not being told anything is wrong with your iman. The tradition wrote down, in detail, what a person does about exactly this: not the theory of it, the treatment of it. Named masters, named books, numbered steps, and how long each one takes.

Two rules before any practice, and they are the tradition’s rules, not ours. First: one practice at a time, kept for two weeks, before you consider a second — the rush is the problem, not the cure. Second: do the practice and leave the result alone. Do not take your own spiritual temperature afterwards; the checking is itself a turning away.

The practices the book sends you to

• Dua when you are angry with the outcome Ten minutes, on the nights it is needed
  What to do with the anger — bring it in, rather than leaving it outside. — Section 8 — Dua
• Complaining only to Allah 5–15 min, once a day
  Ya’qub’s rule: unlimited complaint upward, disciplined speech sideways. — Section 11 — Sabr and Hardship
• The dua of Yunus Fifteen seconds each time
  A single sentence from the belly of the whale, and what it does to the one saying it. — Section 11 — Sabr and Hardship
• Naming qabd Two minutes tonight
  Learning the classical name for the state you are in, and what it is not. — Section 13 — When Nothing Works
• The prayer you do not want to pray 90 seconds, five times a day
  What to do in the ninety seconds when the adhan goes and everything in you refuses. — Section 13 — When Nothing Works

Where the first one comes from

Ya’qub, having lost a second son and been told to stop grieving, answers: “I complain of my grief and my sorrow only to Allah” (Yusuf 12:86). The word is ashku — I complain. Ayyub’s supplication is a statement of his own condition before a request is even made: “Adversity has touched me, and You are the most merciful of the merciful” (al-Anbiya’ 21:83). The sira preserves, through Ibn Ishaq rather than the sound collections, the Prophet’s supplication at Ta’if, in which he complains to Allah of his own weakness and helplessness. And Bukhari narrates that at the death of his son Ibrahim he said that the eye weeps and the heart grieves, and that they say nothing except what pleases their Lord.

Other sentences

• “I am religious in public and hard to live with at home.”
• “I lose my temper, and the house goes quiet when I come in.”
• “I stopped everything a month ago and I am ashamed to start again.”