Created Anxious

The Feeling

There is a specific kind of anxiety that comes the day after Ramadan. Not the grief of losing the month—that I understand. It is the uncertainty. Did my salah count? Was my fasting sincere? Did I read enough Quran, give enough charity, wake up enough nights?

And beneath that: can I keep going? The structure of Ramadan made everything easier—everyone around me was fasting, the masajid were full, the community was awake. Now what?

The discipline that came naturally for thirty days suddenly feels like it requires ten times the effort. And the voice in the back of my head whispers: maybe I am not cut out for this outside of Ramadan. Maybe I need the structure. Maybe without it, I will drift.

The Diagnosis

In Surah Al-Ma'arij, Allah makes a statement about human nature:

Khuli-qa halu'a. Created anxious. The verb is passive—we did not choose this. And the word halu'a (هَلُوعًا) is remarkable. It does not just mean “worried.” Classical scholars describe it as an intense inner agitation—a restlessness that swings between two poles. The next two verses define those poles:

Jazoo'a—when hardship touches us, we panic. We lose hope, we spiral, we act as if no good will ever come again. And manoo'a—when good comes our way, we hoard it. We cling, we withhold, we forget to share. These are the two faces of the same restlessness: one is scarcity thinking in pain, the other is scarcity thinking in comfort. Both come from the same place—a heart that is not anchored.

What strikes me is that Allah does not say this is a flaw. He does not say “mankind corrupted themselves into being anxious.” He says we were created this way. The restlessness is by design. Which means the cure must also be by design.

The Prophet ﷺ confirmed this. In a hadith narrated by Mutarrif ibn Abdullah:

The Prescription

Allah spends three verses on the diagnosis. Then sixteen on the cure. That ratio matters. The Quran is not interested in dwelling on the problem. It names it, then moves on to what to do about it.

Verses 70:22–35 list the people who are exempt from this anxiety. “Except the observers of prayer” (70:22). The exception clause. And it opens with salah.

Here is what caught my eye: the prescription opens with prayer (70:22–23) and closes with prayer (70:34). Salah bookends the entire list. Between those brackets, Allah names six other qualities. And some of them seem to pair together—belief in the Day of Judgment sits next to fear of accountability, trusts sit next to testimony. As if the inner remedies (faith, fear) and the outer remedies (trusts, testimony) are deliberately paired:

The scholarship data confirms this emphasis. I looked at how much scholarly attention each verse in this passage has received—measured by the number of hadiths linked to each ayah:

70:23 alone—“those who are constant in their prayer”—has 69 linked hadiths. The diagnosis verse (70:19) has 1. Scholars have always known: the Quran does not want us to sit with the anxiety. It wants us to move.

And the hadiths linked to these remedy verses are remarkably specific. On prayer, the Prophet ﷺ said:

“Constantly in prayer”—the exact language of 70:23. And on guarding chastity (70:29), one of the most famous guarantees in all of hadith literature:

A direct guarantee. Guard your tongue and your chastity—two of the eight remedies—and Paradise is the return. The prescription is not abstract. It comes with promises.

Noah — 950 Years of Practice

What happens right after this prescription? Surah 71. Nuh عليه السلام. The very next surah in the Quran tells the story of someone who practiced these remedies for 950 years. And the parallels are not subtle:

And his prayers. Look at how he spoke to Allah:

“My Lord, I seek refuge in You from asking that of which I have no knowledge.” After 950 years of calling people to Allah, he is still asking for protection from his own ignorance. This is not a man who became comfortable with certainty. He stayed anxious—but his anxiety was pointed in the right direction.

And here is what I cannot get over. After 950 years of preaching with almost no one listening. After losing his own son to the flood. After his wife rejected his message. The Quran gives Nuh عليه السلام a single epithet:

'Abdan shakoora. A grateful servant. Not a patient servant—though he was that too. Not a brave servant, or a persistent servant. Grateful.

I think the answer is in what Noah was measuring. If his metric was converts, he failed. If his metric was family harmony, he failed. If his metric was visible impact on his community, he failed spectacularly. But none of those were his metrics.

His metric was Allah. And by that measure, every single day of those 950 years was a success. Gratitude is what happens when the center holds. When the thing around which everything orbits is stable, the rest can shake without shattering. Noah's center was Allah. So he could lose everything else and still say: alhamdulillah.

The Same Prescription, Twice

While tracing the structure of 70:22–35, I found something I was not expecting. The same prescription appears almost identically in Surah Al-Mu'minun (23:1–11)—a different surah, different context, same remedies, same order, same bookends.

Both surahs are Meccan. Surah 23 was the 74th revealed; Surah 70 was the 79th—just five surahs apart in chronological order. This was the Mecca period, when the Muslim community was small, persecuted, and had no certainty about survival. Allah delivered the same prescription twice within a short window, at the point of maximum anxiety for the believers.

Ibn Kathir himself noted this parallel: “Allah begins with prayer and concludes with prayer. This proves its importance… just as what preceded at the beginning of Surat Al-Mu'minun. It is exactly the same discussion.”

The same list. The same bookends. The same reward at the end. And the hadith tradition confirms the connection: of the hundreds of hadiths scholars linked to these two passages, 45 appear in both—the same prophetic traditions mapped independently to the same remedies in two different surahs. Together, these two passages account for over 420 hadith connections.

And it does not stop at two. A third variation appears in Surah Al-Furqan (25:63–76)—the “Servants of Ar-Rahman” passage—with the same core ingredients: night prayer, moderate spending, guarding chastity, avoiding false testimony. And a condensed version in Surah Al-Ahzab (33:35) lists the qualities in masculine and feminine pairs. The prescription is not a one-time instruction. It is a refrain—repeated across the Quran because the need never goes away.

What strikes me most is the timing. Both Surah 23 and 70 were revealed in Mecca, during persecution. The believers had no political power, no safety, no certainty about whether they would survive. The cure for anxiety was not delivered during comfortable times in Medina. It was delivered at the point of maximum need. As if Allah was saying: this is exactly when you need to hear it most.

He Is Still Here

As humans, we fight anxiety with certainty. We want to know. Will this work out? Am I doing enough? Is this the right path? And the modern world sells us a particular kind of certainty: the kind we manufacture ourselves. Set goals. Track metrics. Measure progress. If the numbers go up, you are on track.

The Quran offers a different kind of certainty. Not certainty about outcomes—because we are never promised those. But certainty about who is in control. And that distinction is everything.

Ala bi dhikrillahi tatma'innu al-quloob. Unquestionably, by the remembrance of Allah, hearts find rest. Not by the resolution of problems. Not by the achievement of goals. Not by knowing what happens next. By dhikr—remembrance.

This is the mechanism behind the prescription in 70:22–35. Why does prayer cure anxiety? Because prayer is remembrance. Why does charity help? Because giving forces me to remember that I am not the source of what I have. Why does believing in the Day of Judgment reduce fear? Because it reminds me that justice belongs to Someone who is perfectly just.

The remedies in 70:22–35 are not seasonal. Prayer is not a Ramadan feature. Charity does not expire on Eid. Standing in testimony and honoring covenants are not tied to a month on the calendar.

Ramadan did not create these things. It just made them easier to see. The masajid were fuller, the nights were longer, the community was awake. But the One who made all of that possible—He did not leave when Ramadan ended.

Ramadan was the intensive—thirty days of the prescription at full volume. But the prescription was never meant to be seasonal. It just needs to be present. The dose can change. The practice stays.

The post-Ramadan anxiety, I am starting to think, is actually a gift. It is the halu'a doing its job. That restlessness I feel today? It is not a sign that I am failing. It is a sign that I care. It is the built-in alarm that says: do not drift. Come back. He is still here.

I am not Noah. I do not have his patience, his certainty, or his resolve. But I have the same prescription. The same eight remedies. The same God who created the anxiety and its cure. And the same invitation to turn the restlessness into remembrance.

So Ramadan ended. And the One who gave it to me is still here.