Maulana Wahiduddin Khan I The Sunday Guardian I August 31, 2014
Anger is a very common phenomenon. How to manage anger is a problem faced by every man and woman. The Prophet of Islam has given a wise formula in these words: "Wa iza ghaziba ahadukum falyaskut" (Bukhari). The meaning of this saying of the Prophet is: "When a person is angry, he should keep silence." Silence is not a state of vacuum.
When a person becomes silent, he is engaged in a great intellectual process. The fact is that anger is a time of high activity in the mind. Under natural process, mind releases an extraordinary amount of energy in the state of anger.
At this juncture, there are two options for every person, that is, to give it either a positive or a negative direction.
If anger is diverted to the negative side, the result would be revenge, intolerance and unsympathetic attitude towards others. On the contrary, if one is able to divert it to the positive side, it would result in such healthy qualities as tolerance, well-wishing and sympathy for others.
Silence has a great role to play in this process. If man is able to keep silence, automatically the energy released by anger will get diverted to the positive side. And then under the very law of nature, all healthy qualities will arise. This is the most appropriate explanation to the well-known saying: "Silence is golden."
If the energy released at the time of anger is turned to the negative side, then man is himself responsible for it.
However, when it is diverted to the positive side, it is totally on account of the natural process.
In this regard, the role of a person is only to keep silence at the time of anger and let nature perform its task.