“I am religious in public and hard to live with at home.”
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
- The man who is gentle at home 15 min at the door
- Preparing the character before the meeting One to two minutes nightly, for forty days
- Solitude without withdrawal from your family No time at all — a rule, not a practice
- Continue the deed, correct the intention Two words in the moment; ten minutes a day
- The evening ledger 6–10 min
Where the first one comes from
Al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Maja narrate that the best of you is the best to his family, and that the Prophet said he was the best of them to his family. Al-Tirmidhi also narrates that the most complete of believers in faith are the best in character, and the best of them are the best to their wives. ‘A’isha, in Bukhari, describes him at home as being in the service of his household until the prayer came, when he would go out to it. Muslim records from her that he never struck anything with his hand. Ghazali devotes Book 12 of the Ihya’ to the etiquette of marriage, much of it on the husband bearing his wife’s character rather than correcting it.
The full instructions — every step, what may change, the honest note, and the shariah note — are in the book, along with all 120 practices in order and the complete Index by Problem.
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