Hikma › Topics › Quran verses about loneliness as a convert

Quran verses about loneliness as a convert

When the people around you did not come with you

God records the moment a person believes. The Qur'an describes people hearing what was sent down to the Messenger, their eyes filling at what they recognize in it, and asking for exactly that: "Our Lord, we believe — so write us down among the witnesses." Recognition of that kind is its own event, and it stands whatever the following months look like. What tends to follow is quieter than anyone warns you about: a family group chat you have stopped opening, old friends who have run out of things to say to you, a mosque where everyone already seems to know each other.

The Qur'an treats that cost as part of what happens, and it says so before you can ask. People are asked whether they expected to be "left alone to say, 'We believe,' without being tested". The testing arrives in ordinary form, mostly as absence: the empty seat beside you at iftar, the phone that stays quiet on the day you needed it.

The hardest version is usually family. Parents who read it as a verdict on them, siblings who call it a phase, a mother who cries every Eid. Guidance on this exact case is unusually specific, and it asks two things at once: hold your ground on what you believe, and "keep them honorable company in this world". Both are commanded together, so the strain of carrying both at once is not evidence you are handling it badly. What any particular decision in your own family should be belongs to someone who knows your life, not to a page.

A large part of the Qur'an belongs to people who lost a home for this and were given another. Its language is migration, and it reaches past geography to anyone who has walked out of a life they cannot walk back into. What is promised to them lands in this world as much as the next: places of refuge and abundance, being settled well after being wronged, and an earth described as vast for anyone who has run out of room where they are.

Friendship does arrive, and scripture puts its arrival in God's hands. Hearts are joined by him, and everything on earth spent on the task could not do it. That is worth knowing on the evenings when your own effort is plainly getting nowhere. A duty also sits on the room you are walking into: anyone who calls on their Lord morning and evening is not to be turned away, and a community that does it anyway has been told in advance what that makes them.

Take these a few at a time. If what you are carrying is a more general kind of alone, the verses on loneliness sit closer to it; if the difficulty is the people you love who did not come with you, there is friendship with non-Muslims.

  • 5:83 — And when they hear what has been sent down to the Messenger, you see their eyes overflow with tears at the truth they recognize. They say, 'Our Lord, we believe — so write us down among the witnesses.'
  • 28:53 — And when it is recited to them, they say, "We believe in it. It is the truth from our Lord. Even before it, we were among those who surrender."
  • 29:2 — Do people think they will be left alone to say, 'We believe,' without being tested?
  • 31:15 — But if they press you to associate with me what you have no knowledge of, do not obey them — yet keep them honorable company in this world, and follow the way of those who turn to me. Then to me is your return, and I will tell you what you used to do.
  • 4:100 — Whoever migrates in the way of God will find on the earth many places of refuge and abundance. And whoever leaves home, migrating to God and his Messenger, and is then overtaken by death — his reward rests with God. And God is ever forgiving, merciful.
  • 16:41 — As for those who migrated for the sake of God after being wronged, we will surely settle them well in this world — and the reward of the hereafter is greater still, if only they knew.
  • 29:56 — My servants who believe, my earth is vast, so worship me alone.
  • 8:63 — And he joined their hearts together. Had you spent everything on earth, you could not have joined their hearts, but God joined them. Indeed, he is mighty and wise.
  • 6:52 — Do not turn away those who call upon their Lord morning and evening, seeking his face. Their account is not your responsibility in any way, nor is yours theirs — so were you to turn them away, you would be among the wrongdoers.
  • 2:257 — God is the protector of those who believe; he brings them out of the depths of darkness into the light. As for those who deny, their protectors are false powers who drag them from the light into the depths of darkness. They are the companions of the fire, and there they will remain.

Browse all topics · Reflect with Hikma · Get the Hikma app