It is narrated from the words of Abu Hurayrah that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) once said:
ليسَ الشَّدِيدُ بالصُّرَعَةِ، إنَّما الشَّدِيدُ الذي يَمْلِكُ نَفْسَهُ عِنْدَ الغَضَبِ
“The truly strong is not the one who defeats many in a duel, but the one who is able to control himself in anger” [al-Bukhari 6114, Muslim 2609].
Hadith is a reminder, a hadith that can prevent many troubles and keep us from many bad and reprehensible actions …
It would seem, what is anger? Emotion, feeling, it seems that something is not even material, something that sometimes boils in each of us … But the hadith warns us about the danger of anger, letting us know that it is more difficult to fight – and cope – with it than to put down on the shoulder blades in a duel of a very strong opponent.
As soon as you think about it, you realize that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) opens our eyes to the true essence of anger, its destructive nature and bad consequences.
Anger is often like a tsunami, which has nothing to oppose, which in blind rage demolishes and destroys everything that comes in its path.
Anger, if not contained and controlled, can break a family. He can destroy friendships, even very old and cement strong ones. He can turn a friend into an enemy. Because of him, you can break family ties. Because of him, you can fall into the grave sin of disrespectful attitude towards your parents. Because of it, you can insult and curse a person. A child can be traumatized. In anger, you can cripple someone. You can even kill in anger.
The hadith unequivocally hints that anger is a negative feeling and must be fought against. Of course, there is a noble anger when a person becomes angry for the sake of Allah, seeing the violation of His prohibitions, desecration of His religion, blasphemy and the like. This is an exception to the general rule. But in addition to this island of righteous anger, there is a whole ocean of unrighteous anger that can destroy our life and the lives of people around us.
Therefore, the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) shows us the only possible way to deal with anger. This is a fight with him the way we would have fought with the enemy in the ring and with the enemy in battle. Because he really is the enemy. Because anger is a tool of the shaitan, with the help of which he easily achieves many of his insidious goals.
The simplest thing is to let your anger unleash, because giving up without a fight is always the easiest option. But this will certainly be followed by bitter regret and often irreparable consequences.
Each of us has a lot of reasons for anger, especially today, when the pace of life is high, you need to do a lot of things and you can’t do a lot with many.
But we will succeed only when our anger is chained, like an evil dog, deprived of the opportunity to harm someone. Therefore, it is in the interest of each of us to hear this hadith with our hearts before our anger has time to push us towards something that we cannot correct and that will cause long suffering in both worlds.
