Make Things Easy: The Prophet’s Way of Teaching Religion
Religion can be presented in a way that draws people towards it, or in a way that pushes them away. Long before there were classrooms, courses and curricula, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ fixed the method of everyone who would ever teach this religion after him — and he fixed it in a single, short command. He did not merely permit gentleness in teaching; he ordered it. Facilitation was to be the teacher’s default, glad tidings his tone, and driving people away the one outcome he must never produce.
What makes this command especially worth studying is that it has come down to us in three preserved wordings, all narrated by Anas ibn Malik (may Allah be pleased with him). Two are recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari and one in Sahih Muslim. The three are not identical, and this article will not blend them into one smoothed-out version. Each wording is presented in its own stored terms, because each one highlights something the others do not: the first names the subject — religious matters; the second speaks of calming people with glad tidings; the third uses the language of leniency and solace. Together they describe a complete way of teaching. Then the Quran states the principle behind the command from Allah Himself: He intends ease for His servants, not hardship — and He promises the God-fearing giver that He will facilitate his way to ease.
1. The First Wording: Facilitate Things in Religious Matters
Anas ibn Malik (may Allah be pleased with him) narrated that the Prophet ﷺ said:
“Facilitate things to people (concerning religious matters), and do not make it hard for them and give them good tidings and do not make them run away (from Islam).” (Sahih al-Bukhari 69 — Sahih)
Read the sentence as two pairs. The first pair governs the content of teaching: facilitate things to people, and do not make it hard for them. The parenthesis in the narration fixes the field — this is about religious matters. The teacher’s task is to open the religion to people, presenting its duties and rulings in the way that makes them reachable, not to pile difficulty upon difficulty until the student feels the door is too heavy to lift. Making things hard is not described here as a style choice; it is the prohibited opposite of the Prophet’s ﷺ own instruction.
The second pair governs the effect on the listener: give them good tidings, and do not make them run away from Islam. Teaching is measured by what it does to the heart of the one listening. Good tidings — the news of Allah’s mercy, His reward, His acceptance of small deeds and His forgiveness of great ones — pull a person closer. Harshness, grimness and a constant diet of threats push him in the other direction, until he runs from the very religion that was sent as a mercy to him. The Prophet ﷺ joined the two pairs in one breath: ease in the matter taught, and gladness in the manner of teaching it.
2. The Second Wording: Make Them Calm with Glad Tidings
Sahih al-Bukhari records the same command of the Prophet ﷺ a second time, again from Anas ibn Malik, and this wording adds a word the first does not have:
“Make things easy for the people, and do not make it difficult for them, and make them calm (with glad tidings) and do not repulse (them ).” (Sahih al-Bukhari 6125 — Sahih)
The opening is nearly the same — ease commanded, difficulty forbidden — but then the wording turns to the inner state of the listener: make them calm. A person who comes to learn his religion often comes carrying anxiety: fear that he has already failed, fear that the duties will be more than he can bear, fear that he will be shamed for how little he knows. The Prophet’s ﷺ instruction addresses exactly that state. The glad tidings are the instrument of the calm; they settle the heart so that it can receive the teaching. News that terrifies and repels produces the opposite state — a heart that closes, a listener who flees.
The closing words, “do not repulse”, name the failure this whole command exists to prevent. A teacher can be accurate in every fact he states and still fail by this measure, if the people leave his gathering repelled — resolved to keep their distance from religion and from those who teach it. In this wording, success is not counted only by what was said, but by whether the listeners were calmed and kept, rather than scattered.
3. The Third Wording: Leniency, Solace, and No Aversion
Sahih Muslim preserves the command in a third wording, also reported by Anas ibn Malik, and it is the most compact of the three:
“Show leniency; do not be hard; give solace and do not create aversion.” (Sahih Muslim 1734 — Sahih)
Two words in this version deserve slow reading. The first is leniency. Where the Bukhari wordings speak of facilitating things, Muslim’s wording speaks of showing leniency — a quality of the teacher himself, not only of his material. The one who teaches religion is to be a lenient person: patient with slow learners, gentle with beginners, unwilling to crush a questioner for asking. This is the same spirit that runs through the Prophet’s ﷺ teaching on gentleness in Islam, and it belongs to the core of good character in Islam: the manner of the messenger becomes part of the message people receive.
The second word is solace. Glad tidings, in the Bukhari wordings, announce good news; solace, in Muslim’s wording, comforts the one who hears it. Teaching that gives solace meets people where their worries are — the sinner who thinks his case is hopeless, the new worshipper who thinks he has started too late, the parent who fears for a child. And the forbidden counterpart is stated with precision: do not create aversion. Aversion is not merely disagreement; it is a settled dislike of the thing itself. The Prophet ﷺ forbade his teachers to manufacture that dislike by the way they handled people.
Three wordings, one command. Facilitate the matter. Calm the listener. Show leniency. Give solace. And on no account become the reason someone turns away from Islam.
4. Allah Intends Ease for You, Not Hardship
The Prophet’s ﷺ command to his teachers was not his personal preference; it reflects the declared intention of Allah in the religion itself. In Surah Al-Baqarah, in the very passage that legislates the fasts of Ramadan, Allah says:
شَهْرُ رَمَضَانَ ٱلَّذِىٓ أُنزِلَ فِيهِ ٱلْقُرْءَانُ هُدًى لِّلنَّاسِ وَبَيِّنَـٰتٍ مِّنَ ٱلْهُدَىٰ وَٱلْفُرْقَانِ ۚ فَمَن شَهِدَ مِنكُمُ ٱلشَّهْرَ فَلْيَصُمْهُ ۖ وَمَن كَانَ مَرِيضًا أَوْ عَلَىٰ سَفَرٍ فَعِدَّةٌ مِّنْ أَيَّامٍ أُخَرَ ۗ يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ بِكُمُ ٱلْيُسْرَ وَلَا يُرِيدُ بِكُمُ ٱلْعُسْرَ وَلِتُكْمِلُوا۟ ٱلْعِدَّةَ وَلِتُكَبِّرُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ مَا هَدَىٰكُمْ وَلَعَلَّكُمْ تَشْكُرُونَ
“Allah intends (to provide) ease for you and does not intend (to create) hardship for you.” (Quran 2:185)
The setting of the verse is itself the proof of its meaning. The obligation in the passage is real and weighty — a month of fasting. Yet wrapped inside the legislation is ease: “But the one who is sick, or is on a journey (should fast) as much from other days (as he missed).” The traveller and the sick person are not crushed under the duty, nor excused into nothing; the duty is lifted from the days they cannot bear and placed on days they can. Then Allah states the principle openly, so that no one mistakes the concessions for accidents: ease is what He intends, hardship is what He does not intend.
This is the foundation under the Prophet’s ﷺ teaching method. A teacher who makes religion hard for people is not being more faithful to it than the Prophet ﷺ was; he is working against the intention Allah announced in His own Book. The religion’s rulings come with their built-in measures of capacity, and presenting them whole — obligations together with the ease Allah placed inside them — is simply presenting the religion as it was revealed.
5. Ease Is Not Abandonment: The Number Is Still Completed
Lest anyone hear “ease” and think it means the duties dissolve, the same verse closes the door on that misunderstanding in its own words. The concessions of Ramadan are given, Allah says:
“All this is so that you may complete the number (of fasts as prescribed) and proclaim the Takbīr of Allah for having guided you, and (so) that you may be grateful.” (Quran 2:185)
The number is still completed. The sick person and the traveller make up the days; nothing is quietly dropped. Ease in this religion is a change of road, not a cancellation of the journey. The duty stands, the hardship is removed, and the servant arrives at the same obligation by a path he can actually walk. That distinction is exactly what the Prophet’s ﷺ command protects. Facilitating things for people never meant teaching them that the obligations are optional; it meant teaching the obligations truthfully, completely — and with the mercy Allah built into them left visible, rather than hidden behind a teacher’s severity.
So the two errors face each other across the verse. On one side stands the one who makes things hard: he presents the duty without its Allah-given ease and drives people away from it. On the other side stands the one who dissolves the duty in the name of kindness — and the verse answers him too, with the completed number and the Takbir proclaimed over guidance received. The Prophet’s ﷺ way stands between them, and it is the way of the verse: firm in the obligation, gentle in the presentation, grateful at the end.
6. The Promise: Allah Facilitates the Way to Ease
There is one more text, and it turns the whole subject from method into promise. In Surah Al-Layl, Allah addresses the one who gives and is God-fearing — the person who spends of what he has and guards himself against Allah’s displeasure — and says of him:
فَسَنُيَسِّرُهُۥ لِلْيُسْرَىٰ
“We will facilitate for him the way to extreme ease (i.e. the comforts of Paradise).” (Quran 92:7)
The word Allah uses is the word of the Prophet’s ﷺ command itself: facilitation. The one who fears Allah and gives is not left to force his own way through life; Allah undertakes to ease his path — and the verse names the destination of that easing as the ease of Paradise itself. Facilitation, in other words, is not only something the teacher does for the student. It is something Allah does for His servant. The religion that commands us to make things easy for others is governed by a Lord who makes things easy for those who obey Him.
This completes the picture. The teacher facilitates because his Prophet ﷺ commanded it and because his Lord declared that ease is His intention. The believer accepts the duties without dread because the same Lord who imposed them built ease into them and promised to smooth the road of the God-fearing. And the listener who is calmed, solaced and drawn in — rather than repelled — becomes, in his turn, someone who presents this religion to others the way it was presented to him: with glad tidings on his tongue and leniency in his hands. That is how the command of one short sentence has travelled through the centuries, carried by teachers who refused to make hard what Allah and His Messenger ﷺ made easy.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What exactly did the Prophet ﷺ command about teaching religion?
He commanded facilitation and forbade hardship, in the words narrated by Anas ibn Malik: “Facilitate things to people (concerning religious matters), and do not make it hard for them and give them good tidings and do not make them run away (from Islam).” (Sahih al-Bukhari 69). Ease in the matter, glad tidings in the manner — and never an outcome in which people run away from Islam because of how it was taught to them.
2. What does “make them calm” add in the second wording?
Bukhari’s second wording says: “Make things easy for the people, and do not make it difficult for them, and make them calm (with glad tidings) and do not repulse (them ).” (Sahih al-Bukhari 6125). It directs the teacher to the listener’s inner state: the glad tidings are meant to settle anxious hearts so they can receive the teaching, and the lesson is counted a failure if the listeners leave repelled, however correct the information was.
3. How does Muslim’s wording describe the teacher himself?
Muslim’s wording makes it a quality of character: “Show leniency; do not be hard; give solace and do not create aversion.” (Sahih Muslim 1734). The teacher is to be lenient in himself, comforting to those who come worried or burdened, and careful never to create in anyone an aversion — a settled dislike — towards the religion.
4. Does making things easy mean the obligations can be left?
No. In the very verse that declares Allah’s intention of ease, the Ramadan concession for the sick and the traveller still ends with the words: “All this is so that you may complete the number (of fasts as prescribed)” (Quran 2:185). The days are moved, not cancelled. Ease changes the path to the duty; it does not abolish the duty.
5. What does Allah promise the one who gives and is God-fearing?
He promises him divine facilitation itself: “We will facilitate for him the way to extreme ease (i.e. the comforts of Paradise).” (Quran 92:7). The servant who fears Allah and gives of what he has is carried by Allah towards ease — the same facilitation the Prophet ﷺ ordered his teachers to show people, returned to the believer from his Lord, with Paradise as its end.