Thomas Jefferson, near the end of his life, wrote ten rules for a young namesake in 1825. Rule ten: “When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.” Two hundred years later, parents still say it to children, and still struggle to do it themselves.
Al-Ḥalīm is the Forbearing: the One who sees wrong done and is not provoked into haste, who gives time, and time again. It is not that He does not care. It is that His patience is not the strained kind we have. Even our patience at its best gives out somewhere.
Start with what we know
Start with something we know. Then take away everything it needs. What is left is not a bigger version of us: it is the Name.
Episode 1
In us
Counting to ten works because anger rises quickly and fades more slowly, and a short delay lets the thinking brain catch up. The best parents, teachers and carers learn forbearance: not ignoring wrong, but refusing to react in the heat of the moment. Joseph (peace be upon him), meeting the brothers who had sold him, forgave them on the spot (Qur'an 12:92). But for most of us, patience is a muscle that tires. A long day, a sleepless night or one more provocation, and the hundred becomes ten, and the ten becomes nothing.
Episode 2
In nature
High in the White Mountains of California grows a Great Basin bristlecone pine nicknamed Methuselah, more than 4,800 years old (US Forest Service). It was already old when the pyramids were built. In a harsh, dry place, it has survived by growing very slowly. Some years it adds a ring less than a millimetre wide, and it lets parts of itself die back so the rest can live. It is the most patient living thing we know. But its patience is not chosen. It is endurance, the slow survival of a tree that cannot move, not forbearance towards anyone.
Episode 3
At our best
After apartheid, South Africa set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. From 1996 people who had committed politically motivated crimes could apply for amnesty if they told the whole truth in public. Thousands applied; most were refused (Truth and Reconciliation Commission). It was an attempt to build forbearance into a nation's law, choosing truth and time over immediate revenge. But many victims felt justice had been traded away, and the process needed public hearings, rules and a deadline. Our best forbearance is organised, and it is never enough for everyone.
Episode 4
The Break
Leave behind the count to ten, the tiredness, the endurance that is only survival, the commission with its deadline. Every patience we know is strained, borrowed or limited. Al-Ḥalīm sees everything and is never provoked into haste. He gives time freely: not because wrong does not matter, but because He wants people to come back. “If Allah took mankind to task by that which they deserve, He would not leave a living creature on the surface of the earth; but He reprieveth them unto an appointed term, and when their term cometh - then verily (they will know that) Allah is ever Seer of His slaves.” (Qur'an 35:45, Pickthall).
Around the year 619, his uncle and his wife Khadījah had both died. Soon after, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him) walked to the town of Ṭāʾif, in the hills south-east of Mecca, hoping its people would listen. They did not. Its leaders mocked him and set the town's children and servants on him, throwing stones until his sandals were wet with blood.
He took shelter in an orchard and prayed. Later he told ʿĀʾishah it was the hardest day of his life. On the road home, he said, the angel Gabriel came to him with the angel of the mountains. That angel said: “If you wish, I will bring the two mountains together and crush them.”
The Prophet said: “No. I hope that God will bring from their descendants people who will worship God alone, and associate nothing with Him” (Bukhari 3231).
Within a generation, the people of Ṭāʾif had become Muslims.
Muslim teachers tell this story as a picture of ḥilm, the forbearance at the heart of the Name al-Ḥalīm. It is not weakness, and not indifference to the wrong done, but the strength to wait for good to come out of people who had shown none.
What each faith says
Read:
Judaism
“The LORD is full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always contend; neither will He keep His anger for ever.”
When God reveals His Name to Moses, He calls Himself erekh appayim, ‘long of nostrils’. It is a Hebrew idiom for slow to anger, because anger was pictured as heat in the nose. It is one of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, sung on festivals and fast days.
The book of Jonah is a whole story about God's patience, with a prophet who is unhappy that God has spared his enemies. It is read every Yom Kippur afternoon.
The Talmud's model of human patience is Hillel. A man once bet that he could make Hillel lose his temper, and kept calling him from his bath on a Friday afternoon with silly questions. Hillel answered every one kindly, and the man lost his money (Shabbat 31a).
Christianity
“The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some count slowness; but he is patient with us, not wishing that anyone should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
The New Testament explains God's apparent slowness as patience. Peter's second letter says God is not slow but is waiting, because He wants everyone to come to repentance.
Paul lists patience among the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), and Christians see God's forbearance in Christ, who prayed for those who crucified him: “Father, forgive them” (Luke 23:34).
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Anglican who chaired South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, wrote about what that patience cost a nation in No Future Without Forgiveness (1999).
Islam
“A kind word with forgiveness is better than almsgiving followed by injury. Allah is Absolute, Clement.”
Al-Ḥalīm appears about fifteen times in the Qur'an, often with al-Ghafūr, the All-Forgiving. Al-Ghazālī defined it as the One who sees disobedience and is not stirred to anger or hurried into punishment. The Qur'an adds that His forbearance has a term (35:45): it is time given, not indifference.
For people, ḥilm became one of the most praised virtues in Arab and Muslim culture. The Prophet told a man from the tribe of ʿAbd al-Qays: “You have two qualities God loves: forbearance and deliberation” (Muslim 17).
Same and different
The Hebrew ‘slow to anger’, the Christian ‘patient with us’ and the Arabic ḥilm describe the same quality. All three faiths insist it is not the same as not caring about wrong. Judaism reads Jonah on Yom Kippur. Christianity sees God's patience in Christ forgiving from the cross. Islam names God al-Ḥalīm and gives His forbearance an appointed term. All three ask believers to copy it: to wait, to give time, to refuse revenge in the heat of the moment.
A moment to reflect
When has someone been patient with you far longer than you deserved?
What is the difference between forbearance and letting someone get away with something?
Who in your life needs more time from you?
Watch
MinuteEarth on the three reasons a bristlecone pine can live 5,000 years: the ‘In nature’ rung.
A visit to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in California.
Do it together
families / schoolsCount to a hundred
Agree a family or class signal for ‘I need my count’. When anyone uses it, everyone stops and counts silently together before anyone speaks. Talk afterwards about what changed in those seconds.
faith groupsJonah and Ṭāʾif
Read the book of Jonah, chapter 4, alongside the story of Ṭāʾif (Bukhari 3231). Ask: why was Jonah angry at God's patience, and why did the Prophet choose patience instead?
faith groups / neighboursFather, forgive them
Read Luke 23:34, then a short account of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's hearings. Talk honestly: is there a difference between forbearance and letting someone off? Where would you draw the line?
families / schoolsHillel's bath
Act out the Talmud's story of the man who bet he could make Hillel angry with silly questions (Shabbat 31a). Then each think of the ‘silly question’ that most tries your patience at home.
Episode 1
