I Seek Refuge: Anger, Shaytan, and Controlling our Nafs

It starts in the most ordinary ways: the perceived rude tone of a message, a barely recognizable frown on someone’s face, an unintentional cold sigh. Many times, it is just a reflection of your own thoughts, sometimes it is not.

You know that moment- when the heartbeat gets louder and the thoughts speed up like someone has pressed fast-forward. This is the place where anger begins to narrate the story for us. We start asking questions like: ‘Why me?’, ‘Why now?’, ‘Why couldn’t they?’. When the rally of many seemingly small presumptions come together to form a storm of enraged emotions within us.

The tea cup in our hands shake, the door behind us bangs louder than usual, we drop on sofa feeling heavier than ever. One and one adds up to eleven, and if we’re not careful, we hand over an opening to someone who is waiting for an opening every moment of our life – Shayṭan. The clear foe of ours, whom Allah SWT warned us against, so many times in Quran.

Prophet ﷺ told us that Anger is from Shaytan and he ﷺ advised us to do wudu when we’re angry. Think about it- Shaytan is created from fire and water extinguishes fire, so doing wudu is like pouring water on the spark which can potentially escalate into a destructive flame.

But in the heat of the moment, if the feet feel heavy and the washroom sink looks far, there’s a sentence- short, familiar, powerful-meant to pull the plug on the fuse:

“Aʿūdhu billāhi mina sh-shayṭān ir-rajīm.”
I seek refuge in Allah from Satan, the accursed.

Say it loud or mumble it under your breath, it works, InshaAllah. Once the Prophet ﷺ saw a man turn red with anger, veins swelling on his neck, and he ﷺ said, “I know a phrase that, if he were to say it, what he feels would leave him: Aʿūdhu billāhi mina sh-shayṭān ir-rajīm” (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī). The hadith doesn’t pretend anger isn’t real. It just hands you a switch.

Here’s the thing about seeking refuge: it’s not magic words in a vacuum; it’s a turn. Like walking out of a hot room into cool air. When we say Aʿūdhu billāh, we’re admitting: “I can’t carry this heat alone. I need the One who can cool it.” The Quran teaches us to seek refuge, not only before reading Quran, but as a posture of heart: to turn away from the whisperer who fans sparks into wildfires. Because if Shaytan can’t make you commit a big sin, he’s thrilled to watch you leak dignity, one snarky sarcasm, one offensive eye roll, one scorched message at a time. He enjoys seeing you fall from grace and poise.

Back to the moment when the tea cup shakes in your hands, when hot and furious emotions claim your rational self and you feel the urge to let out your frustration, or raise your voice in agitation or type a furious reply to the email, somewhere between those overwhelming impulses, just mutter – Aʿūdhu billāh..Aʿūdhu billāh, and follow the Prophetic steps of taking the control back:

• Be silent. Wait. Just don’t say it right now. More often than not, a few moments of pause weakens down the whisper of Shaytan.
• Change posture. If you’re standing, sit. If you’re sitting, stand or lie down. The movement is likely to relax the sudden stiffness which you feel in anger.
• Make wudu. Do it mindfully. Focus on every step of the wudu. Feel the water on your face, feel it running down your arms. Imagine this water cooling down the fire.
• Delay. Give your future self something to be grateful for. Don’t react instantly!

There’s a tenderness to wuḍu when you’re angry. As water hits on your face, you realize that half of your anger isn’t about the incident; it might be fatigue, it might be boredom, it might be a small resentment from last days. Wuḍu doesn’t erase the issue but it restores you to a person who could face it.

The Quran describes the people Allah loves as those who restrain anger and pardon people and who aim for excellence (iḥsān) (3:134). That verb, restrain, is like the drawing of reins on a horse: the energy is there, but it is guided. Anger isn’t always wrong; sometimes it’s a moral signal that something needs attention. But the Sunnah insists that we address it with justice, mercy, and control. Replace the immediate blast with a measured response. And, when possible, let forgiveness be your closing act. The Prophet ﷺ promised: forgiveness raises your honor.

Seeking refuge isn’t just about pausing the tongue—it’s also about shutting down the whisper that says, “If you don’t explode, they’ll think they’re right.” That’s Shayṭan’s theater: he equates noise with strength. The Prophet ﷺ flipped that script: “The strong is not the one who overcomes the people by his strength, but the one who controls himself when angry” (Sahih Bukhari and Muslim).

Control is strength. Clarity is strength. Choosing Allah over our ego is the biggest strength. Anger is weakness, Revenge is weakness, Resentment is weakness.

What changes between the first burst of heat and the delayed-measured response? Not the situation. Not the other person. The change is a small surrender: “O Allah, shelter me from the whisperer and from my own nafs. Let my words serve truth, not my temper.” To live with Aʿūdhu billāh ready on the tongue is to admit we are not neutral; we are nudge-able creatures. If we don’t choose whom we stand with, Shayṭan chooses for us.

Imam al-Ghazali Rahimullah said that anger is like a dog guarding the house: useful when trained, dangerous when loose. Ibn al-Qayyim Rahimullah taught that patience shows up as obedience, restraint from sin, and trust in Allah’s decree. And Imam al-Nawawi Rahimullah insisted to adopt the causes that prevent sinful anger – humility, gentleness and slow judgment. So the advice is not to never feeling anger at all, it is not humanly possible. The advice is to train your heart, to handle the anger in a more reasonable way.

Sometimes seeking refuge won’t give you an instant moment of clear victory. You’ll still feel tight in the chest. You’ll still want to clap back. But you’ll have bought yourself those few moments which saved your marriage from a bruise, your child from a bad memory, your coworker from humiliation, your own heart from regret. You will have said to Shaytan, “Not today.”

May Allah make our tongues quick with seeking refuge, our nafs obedient to him, and our hearts spacious with patience and forgiveness. And when the tea cups in our hands shake again -as it will- may we remember that the first victory is not over them; it’s over the whisper that wants to turn us into someone we don’t want to be, someone we can’t afford to be.

Aʿūdhu billāhi mina sh-shayṭān ir-rajīm.