An intelligent and skillful person transforms losses into profits; whereas the unwise and the unskilled aggravates his own predicament, making two disasters out of one.
The Prophet (sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam) was compelled to quit Makkah and he stayed at Madeenah – the city that took its place in history with lightning speed.
Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal was imprisoned, severely tortured and flogged, yet he emerged triumphant, becoming the Imam of the Sunnah.
Imam ibn Taymiyah was put into prison; he came out an even more accomplished scholar. Imam As-Sarakhsi was kept as prisoner at the bottom of a deserted well and he managed therein to produce twenty volumes on Islamic jurisprudence. Ibn Atheer became crippled, and thereafter, he wrote Jamee` al-Usool wa an-Nihayah, one of the most famous books on the Science of Hadith. Imam ibn al-Jawzi was banished from Baghdad. He then mastered in the seven different ways of reading the Qur'an. Maalik ibn ar-Rayb was on his deathbed when he recited his most famous and beautiful poem competing the poetical works of the poets of the Abbasid period, and is appreciated until this day. When Abi Dhu'aib al-Hadhali's children died before him, he eulogized them with a poem that the world listened to and admired and became integral part of the history.
Therefore, if you are afflicted with a misfortune, look on the bright side. If someone were to hand you a glass full of squeezed lemons, add to it a handful of sugar. And if someone gives you a snake as a gift, keep its precious skin and leave the rest.
"And it may be that you dislike a thing that is good for you..." (Qur'an 2.-216)
Before its violent revolution, France imprisoned two brilliant poets: one an optimist, the other a pessimist. Both of them looked through the bars of their respective cell windows. The optimist stared at the stars and laughed, while the pessimist looked at the dirt of a neighbouring road and wept. Look at the other side of a tragedy - a circumstance of pure evil does not exist, and in all situations one can find goodness and victory and reward from Allah.
