The Quran relates that when God created Adam, there were two other creatures present — the angels and the jinns. God ordered the angels and the jinns to bow down before Adam. The angels obeyed this commandment of God, but Satan, who was the head of the jinns, refused to obey this order. And so he became a rebel against God.
This was the first incident of revolt against authority in human history. This political revolt, or the ‘politics of opposition’, is undoubtedly the practice of Satan. To focus on one’s work without confronting the authorities is the method of the angels. And confronting the authorities and agitating and making a big hue and cry, fired by the ‘politics of opposition’, is the method of Satan.
Strangely, this negative politics of Satan has prevailed throughout almost the whole of human history. The direct result of this negative politics is that instead of becoming a history of construction, human history became a long tale of destruction.
The 'politics of patience' is not a politics of defeat.
Why is it that almost the whole of human history turned into a history of this sort of Satanic politics? The reason for this is that the Creator has given man an exceptional capability, and that is the ego. It is actually the ego that provides man a special status in the whole of the cosmos. There are two aspects of the ego — the positive and the negative. In collective life, be it within the family or in the wider society, it always happens that people face experiences that hurt their egos. On such occasions, if a person can control himself — if he can properly handle the issue of ‘ego management’ — he would have used his ego, as it were, in a positive or proper manner. But if when his ego is provoked he lets it affect his entire personality, he will create immense problems for himself, and for others, too. He will have failed in the art of ‘ego management’ by allowing negativity to overcome him.
This issue of managing the ego when one is faced with some provocation or the other is something that everyone has to deal with. When this problem occurs in the political sphere and one fails to manage one’s ego properly, it triggers off what is called the ‘politics of opposition’. This is what challenging the political authorities is about. Because most people fail in the examination of ‘ego management’, almost the whole of human history presents a picture of deadly political destruction.
Confronting the authorities and agitating, fired by the ‘politics of opposition’ is the method of Satan.
The solution to this problem is explained in the Quran and Hadith in terms of what can be called the 'politics of patience' or sabr. The 'politics of patience' is not politics of defeat. It is but another name for political status-quoism — that is to say, to accept, in practical terms, the status quo as far as the issue of political power is concerned, and without confronting the political authorities, to avail the opportunities present in the non-political sphere.
It is this formula that is expressed in a Hadith, according to which the Prophet indicated: God grants to non-violence what He does not grant to violence.
