Hard = Reward from God: A Mindset That Holds Us Back as Muslims in This Modern World

We have all seen it happen many times. You are scrolling through your phone on social media, listening to a religious speech or a lecture in a mosque, or just talking normally with people in everyday life, and the exact same topic comes up.

Someone starts talking about a very religious group or a community of people that is going through a really bad time and struggling heavily.

These people might be living in deep poverty, using very old tools from hundreds of years ago, or facing big problems that could easily be fixed with a little bit of modern help.

Instead of looking at this bad situation as a big emergency that we need to fix right away by working hard, making a smart plan, and building better things, the speaker smiles.

Then, the speaker tells the audience that every single hard thing and every piece of suffering these poor people face is actually a direct reward from God. They talk about the suffering as if it is a beautiful, humble, and very holy way to live our lives.

Now, let us be completely fair and honest from the very beginning of this post. There is a part of this old wisdom that I appreciate a whole lot, and it is very important.

When a person faces a sudden, terrible tragedy that is completely out of their control, like a big natural disaster, an unexpected sickness that nobody saw coming, or the sad death of a close family member, believing that God will give them a reward for being patient is a truly beautiful thing.

It gives people comfort in their minds, keeps them from giving up on life completely, and helps them survive the darkest and most painful moments of being a human being.

But we have to look honestly and clearly at how this belief is actually used in the real world today. Most of the time, this mindset is not being used to comfort people who are broken-hearted or crying.

Instead, it has turned into a very lazy cover-up. It is just a soft, religious excuse used to smooth over and hide plain laziness, a lack of knowledge, and a shocking amount of arrogance where people think they do not need to improve.

In this article, we are going to talk about why this specific mindset, the idea that "the harder and more miserable your life is, the more God loves you", is one of the main reasons why so many Muslims are completely stuck in the past like it is still the medieval ages, while the rest of the planet is moving forward and catching up to the modern world.

By treating easily fixable problems as special religious medals of honor, we are holding ourselves back and refusing to grow.

Even worse, this backward mindset leaves us completely weak and defenseless. It makes us easy targets for outside forces and people who want to see Islam completely gone and destroyed, because we choose to be weak while they choose to be strong.

Disclaimer

Before we go deep into the main parts of this argument, it is incredibly important to make a very clear distinction so that we do not misunderstand each other.

I completely understand the reason why this belief exists in the first place, and I know that there is a very small number of people who are completely sincere in their hearts.

There are individuals who truly and deeply want to learn the real spiritual side of Islam, like Tasawwuf (which means cleaning your heart from bad traits) and Tawakkul (which means truly trusting in God).

These specific people genuinely want to separate their hearts from the greedy, hyper-capitalist, and materialistic race of the modern world.

They just want a quiet life focused entirely on their Creator, and they are happy to live with almost nothing to get that peace inside their souls. When a sincere person chooses to live with less, they do not brag about it to others, they do not look down on people who have money, and they do not sit around begging or becoming a heavy burden to society.

But we have to be completely honest about what is happening in the majority of cases around us most of the time. In most situations, it is completely different. It is not high spirituality at all.

Instead, it is just a bad mix of laziness, having no proper education, corruption inside institutions, total recklessness where people do not care about safety, and an absolute inability to understand or use modern technology.

The sad part is that all of these human failures are wrapped up nicely in a beautiful package labeled "religion" and "self-independence."

When a school, a community, or a single person refuses to do the heavy work of learning, planning, and building a better life, they do not want to look bad. They do not want to admit to the world that they failed because they were just too lazy or too scared to try.

So, they use religious words as a big shield to hide behind. They call their laziness "patience," they call their ignorance "purity," and they call their broken buildings and dirty water "holy simplicity."

This article is talking directly to that lazy groups who use God’s name to excuse their own stagnation and open the door for the enemies of our faith to easily overpower us.

Their Argument to Defend It

To understand how deep and dangerous this problem really is, we have to look closely at the exact arguments these communities and their leaders use to defend their backward way of living.

If you walk into a traditional religious boarding school or an isolated village that completely refuses to modernize, the leaders will give you a very specific set of simple points to defend why they keep things so broken:

The "Corrupting Modernity" Argument:

They claim that the material world (which we call the Dunya) is completely worthless, evil, and dangerous. They argue that modern things like clean running water pipes, advanced technology, financial wealth, and high-level science classes are just tricks and distractions made by non-believers to pull Muslims away from God.

Because of this, they believe that by keeping their schools and villages backward, dirty, and old-fashioned, they are keeping their people safe from the sins of the modern world.

The "Self-Independence" Argument:

They frame their broken living conditions and their total lack of basic facilities as a proud, independent spiritual choice.

If the school forces children to use an old, dirty well instead of clean water pipes, or if the kids are fed terrible food and told to just pray away highly contagious skin diseases instead of getting real medicine, the leaders will say:

"We only rely on Allah. We do not want to depend on modern medicine or government systems made by outsiders. We take care of ourselves, and Allah will take care of us."

The "Pious Hardship" Argument:

They constantly repeat carefully chosen stories from history about how great scholars lived with no money. They tell the young students:

"Imam Shafi'i studied by the light of a tiny candle and became a giant of Islam. Why do you need air conditioning, clean rooms, or digital laptops? Real knowledge only comes when you suffer physically."

They completely convince their followers that being physically miserable and uncomfortable is a mandatory requirement if you want to be close to God.

The Reality

When we take off the emotional glasses and look at the actual truth through history, science, and real Islamic teachings, their whole defense completely falls apart.

The reality is that this lazy mindset is not just a massive failure in the modern world, but it is also completely forbidden and viewed as a sin by the very religion of Islam that they claim to be protecting.

To keep ourselves from being fooled, we need to understand the sharp, practical differences between them. They are not the same thing at all.

Poverty (An Absolute Lack of Resources)

Poverty is not a spiritual choice, it is a material condition where a person lacks the basic resources needed to live a healthy, dignified human life.

It means having no access to clean drinking water, lacking nutritious food, living in unhygienic or unsafe shelter, and being unable to afford medicine when you are sick.

Poverty often breeds constant panic, severe anxiety, and a feeling of helplessness. Because you are constantly worrying about how to survive the next 24 hours, your brain is under immense stress.

And, Islam views systemic poverty as a social danger, not a blessing. It makes people vulnerable to exploitation, forces them to beg, and strips away their human dignity.

True Humility (An Attitude of the Heart)

Humility (Tawadu') has absolutely nothing to do with how much money is in your bank account or whether you use modern technology. It is entirely about your character and how you treat other human beings.

A person with true humility can be an incredibly wealthy CEO, a top-tier software engineer, or a powerful political leader. They use the absolute best modern tools, live in clean houses, and wear nice clothing.

Despite their high status, wealth, or intelligence, they do not look down on others. They do not boast, they are always willing to learn from anyone, and they admit when they are wrong.

They recognize that their talents and wealth are gifts from God to be used to help society, not weapons to make themselves feel superior.

You can be penniless and incredibly arrogant (such as looking down on people who work hard as "greedy materialists"), and you can be a billionaire who is deeply humble. Humility is a state of mind, not a lack of running water.

Self-Independence (Sovereignty and Responsibility)

Self-independence means you have the capability, the discipline, and the infrastructure to take care of yourself and your community without needing to beg or rely on handouts from outsiders.

It means building your own clean water filtration systems, funding your own top-quality hospitals, mastering modern sciences, and creating financial security.

It comes from a mindset of deep responsibility. An independent person says, "I will use my brain and my hands to solve my problems so that I am never a burden to my neighbors or my society."

True self-independence requires you to actively master the modern world. You cannot call yourself independent if your school is running down and you only survive because other people keep sending you charity money. That is called dependency.

The True Definition of Trust in God

In the proper teachings of Islam, there is a massive difference between two words that sound very similar but mean the exact opposite things, Tawakkul and Tawaakul.

Tawakkul means that you use every single bit of your brain, your physical strength, your money, your time, and your modern technological tools to plan out and solve a problem perfectly first, and then you leave the final result to God.

Tawaakul means you sit on your hands, do absolutely nothing, refuse to study or plan, and just expect a miracle to drop down from the sky while you make a lazy prayer (dua) with zero effort.

The Prophet Muhammad explicitly fought against this lazy approach. In a very famous story from history, a Bedouin man left his expensive camel loose without tying it to a post, claiming that he trusted God to keep it from running away.

The Prophet directly corrected his broken understanding of religion, telling him sharply:

"Tie your camel first, then put your trust in God."

Making a prayer without putting in the physical work and effort is not a sign of high faith; it is just negligence and laziness using religion as a mask.

The Illusion of "Self-Independence"

The argument that these groups are "self-independent" just because they refuse to use modern systems is a complete lie. If a traditional school refuses to modernize, cuts itself off from the normal economy, and lives in dirty conditions, food does not magically rain down from the sky into their mouths.

So, how do they actually survive and buy food? They survive by relying entirely on the charity money, donations, and hard work of other Muslims.

They depend on Muslims who actually went out into the real world, worked hard, studied difficult subjects, built successful businesses, and earned real money.

This is the absolute highest form of hypocrisy.

They look down on the modern world and call it bad, but they completely depend on the wealth created by that exact modern world just to keep their doors open and survive.

If every single person followed their bad advice and sat in a broken room refusing to build businesses or study modern sciences, the entire Muslim community would starve to death.

True independence means you build your own advanced water systems, your own top-tier hospitals, and your own economic strength so that you never have to beg anyone else for help.

Living in a state where you constantly need other people's charity money while calling yourself "independent" is an intellectual lie.

Historical Proof from the Companions and Imams

The idea that true Islamic scholars hated technology and preferred to live in backwardness is completely wrong according to history.

The Prophet, his close Companions, and the great Imams of Islam were always at the absolute front line when it came to using the best technology available in their time, even if that technology was originally invented by non-believers.

When the early Muslims had to run away from Mecca to Medina as penniless refugees who lost everything, one of the greatest companions, named Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, was offered free houses and free money by the local people of Medina.

If he had the modern lazy mindset we see today, he would have just accepted the free handouts, sat in the mosque all day, and done nothing else.

Instead, he famously turned down the free money and simply said, "Show me the way to the marketplace."

He went straight to work, used his sharp brain for business, and became one of the richest entrepreneurs of his time. He understood that financial strength is a duty, not something to be ashamed of.

Furthermore, when the early Muslims had to fight the famous Battle of the Trench, they faced an enemy army that was way too big to defeat with normal Arab fighting methods.

A companion named Salman al-Farsi, who came from Persia, suggested digging a massive defensive trench around the city. This was a military technology completely foreign to the Arabs, it was invented and used by the non-Muslim Persian Empire.

The Prophet did not reject it just because non-believers invented it. He adopted it immediately because it was smart and efficient, and it saved the community.

Later on in history, when Muslims encountered Chinese papermaking technology, they did not ban it or call it a bad non-believer invention. They took it, industrialized it, built massive paper factories in the city of Baghdad, and used that foreign technology to mass-produce the very books of Hadith and Islamic law that we read today.

The great Imams like Al-Bukhari or Al-Ghazali used the absolute best tools of their era. If they were alive in this modern world today, they would be using advanced computer data, high-speed internet, and modern digital technology to organize knowledge, not sitting by a dirty well refusing to change.

Embrace Modernity

This brings us to the most dangerous flaw in this anti-modernity ideology, the absolute failure to understand how global power, safety, and security actually work in the real world.

Those "religious" persons who tell us to reject modern tools just because they "come from non-believers" are making a fatal mistake that can destroy us.

By running away from modern science, advanced technology, global economics, and modern media, we are completely taking away our own weapons. We are voluntarily choosing to be blind, deaf, and weak in a world where everyone else is highly advanced and strong.

1. Stopping Ourselves From Being Fooled

When a community refuses to learn modern sciences, computer data technology, psychology, and how modern media works, they become incredibly naive, like little children.

They completely lose the ability to analyze global trends, they cannot recognize fake news or clever propaganda, and they have no idea how modern global institutions actually operate.

Because of this deep ignorance, Muslims who reject modernity are easily manipulated, lied to, and tricked by outside forces every single day.

If you do not understand how modern banking systems, digital surveillance, or psychological warfare work, you can never defend yourself against them.

Embracing modernity is the only way to build a sharp, analytical, and critical mind that cannot be easily fooled or exploited by people who have much better tools than you do.

2. Defending Against the Threat of Destruction

Let us be completely blunt and honest here, there are hostile forces, nations, and groups in this world who do not want Islam to exist at all. They want Muslim societies to remain weak, broken, poor, uneducated, and completely dependent on them forever.

When our religious schools and our leaders choose to stay stuck in the past, refusing to master modern engineering, high-level medicine, complex economic systems, and advanced technology, they are handing those hostile forces exactly what they want on a silver platter.

An impoverished, uneducated society that relies on dirty well-water and refuses to use modern medicine cannot build defensive technology.

It cannot protect its borders, it cannot secure its digital data from hackers, it cannot fund its own growth, and it cannot survive a big existential crisis.

By rejecting modernity, we are not protecting Islam at all, we are leaving the front gates wide open for people who want Islam to be gone.

True struggle in the modern era requires us to master the exact same tools that are used in the world today, so that we can meet other nations on equal ground and protect our communities from being wiped out.

The General Reason Behind That Mindset

If this passive, hardship-loving mindset is so clearly wrong and so incredibly dangerous, we have to ask ourselves a very important question: why is it so popular? Why do so many heads of schools, religious preachers, and ordinary people continue to defend it with so much anger and passion?

The answer does not come from real religion, it comes from human psychology and power dynamics.

1. A Psychological Shield Against Fear of Failure

The modern world is highly complex, fast-moving, and intensely competitive. To build a successful modern school or a thriving, wealthy community today, you have to work incredibly hard.

You have to learn how to manage large financial budgets, understand digital technology, follow strict public health guidelines, study modern psychology, and constantly change and adapt to new challenges. This requires massive mental discipline, and there is always a very high risk that you might fail.

For many people, that level of tough competition is absolutely terrifying. Their egos and their pride cannot handle the painful fear of failing in the modern marketplace.

So, human psychology creates a hidden defense mechanism to protect their feelings. Instead of admitting the embarrassing truth, like:

"I am too lazy to learn how to use a computer or write code," or "I do not have the leadership skills to build a clean, modern school."

It is much easier for them to say:

"I am choosing to live in this broken, dirty way because I am holy and I do not care about the material world."

It instantly turns a personal, lazy failure into a spiritual achievement and pride. It makes people feel good about their own lack of achievement, even if that lack of achievement makes the whole Muslim community weak against outside threats.

2. The Preservation of Absolute Control

In many traditional educational institutions and boarding schools, the head of the school enjoys absolute, unquestioned power over the young students and their parents. This total power is maintained by keeping the students completely isolated from the outside world.

If you bring modern technology, digital internet access, critical thinking, and high-quality modern education into these traditional schools, the students will start to open their eyes.

They will start to see how the rest of the world lives, and they will start asking very difficult questions that the leaders cannot answer:

"Why is our drinking water making us sick when simple water purification technology exists?"

"Why are we being taught outdated information from centuries ago when the rest of the world has moved forward?"

"Why are our leaders living in comfort while we are told that suffering in filth is a reward from God?"

By keeping the school in an old, medieval state and glorifying that hardship as a religious virtue, the leadership successfully stops any criticism before it starts.

They use the concept of Barakah (which means divine blessings) to shame and silence anyone who stands up and demands better conditions.

If a poor child gets sick from dirty well-water or a lack of basic hygiene, it is labeled as a "spiritual test of patience from God." This completely frees the administration from any responsibility or blame.

It allows them to run a low-effort, low-budget operation while maintaining total control over a submissive population that will never grow up to challenge global systemic threats.

Conclusion

The idea that physical hardship, preventable poverty, and institutional neglect are automatic tickets to get God’s reward is a highly dangerous distortion that has crippled the Muslim world for centuries.

It has turned a faith that was originally built by brilliant engineers, wealthy traders, sharp statesmen, and scientific pioneers into a broken culture that celebrates helplessness, weakness, and passivity.

We cannot expect to build a dignified future if we continue to allow plain laziness to pretend to be piety. To break out of this medieval trap, there are several urgent and simple lessons we must implement in our communities right away:

1. Demand Accountability

We must stop treating the heads of traditional schools or religious communities as if they are holy figures who are above the laws of nature, science, and human decency.

When parents hand over their young children to an educational institution, that is a sacred trust (Amanah). Providing clean running water, nutritious food, safe and clean bedrooms, and professional modern medicine is not a luxury, it is a basic Islamic obligation.

We must actively call out and shame any leader who uses the name of God to cover up the physical abuse and neglect of youth.

2. Reclaim the True Spirit of Islamic Excellence

We need to completely shift our cultural stories away from the romanticization of poverty and move toward the pursuit of being the absolute best at what we do.

Poverty is not a virtue at all, it is a terrible social disease that the Prophet Muhammad actively prayed to God to save him from every single day, as we see in the shahih hadiths on Sunan Abi Dawud (5099), Sahih al-Bukhari (6376) and Sahih Muslim (589).

We must teach the next generation that the highest form of religious devotion is to become a true master of your craft. If you are a Muslim in the modern world, your duty is to be the absolute best engineer, the most ethical businessman, the smartest data analyst, or the most advanced medical doctor on the planet.

We need to build schools and institutions that combine deep, authentic spiritual values with cutting-edge technological infrastructure.

3. Stop Separating the Sacred from the Secular

We must completely destroy the false barrier between religious knowledge and modern worldly knowledge. Learning how to build a clean water system, how to manage a country's economy, or how to develop software is just as critical to the survival of the Muslim community as learning how to perform your daily prayers.

When we master the physical laws of cause and effect that God built into this universe, we are fulfilling our true role as active caretakers of this earth.

They tell people, "Look at how we suffer with no electricity or medicine, we are so humble and independent of the modern world." But as we now know, that is an illusion.

The world is not going to stop and wait for us to wake up. As long as we continue to look at simplistic media narratives that make passivity look beautiful, and as long as we allow lazy institutions to celebrate hardship instead of conquering it, we will remain completely left behind.