also ignored or forgotten, is the intended goal: While the Qur'an commands us to work toward social justice, we are not responsible for the outcome of our efforts; in opposing injustice, we are accountable only for the struggle itself. For it is this struggle, and the knowledge that it is a trial from God, that allows our soul to be protected from dissolution, and from the spiritual entropy that reduces men to cynics who resent the world, surrender to its wrongs, or, worse, become participants in them. This knowledge also prevents those engaged in a genuine struggle from using means that betrays the ends, however tempting or efficacious those means may be. Too many activists or victims of oppression succumb to bitter resentment when this truth is not rooted in their hearts.
-from the introduction to The Prayer of the Oppressed of Imam Muhammad b. Nasir al-Dar'i. Translation & Introduction by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, pg. 9
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