keeps you from remembering Allah, then drive it away by whatever means you can, so that it does not become a cause for your neglect of Allah’s remembrance.

Anything that distracts one from the remembrance of Allah is pure loss, as the Exalted says: “O you who believe, let neither your wealth nor your children divert you from the remembrance of Allah; whoever does that—they are the losers” (Al-Munāfiqūn 63:9).

Kaʿb, may Allah be pleased with him, continues: “When forty nights had passed”—that is, a month and ten days—“revelation had still been withheld and had not come down during all that time.” Such delay is part of Allah’s wisdom in grave and weighty matters: He postpones the descent of revelation, just as He did in this story and in the incident of the slander, when revelation ceased for a time from the Messenger of Allah, ﷺ.

This delay is wise, for it makes people yearn for revelation and eagerly await it: What will the Lord of all worlds send down? Thus revelation was withheld for forty nights. When the fortieth night was complete, the Prophet ﷺ sent word to Kaʿb and his two companions—Hilāl ibn Umayyah and Murārah ibn al-Rabīʿ, may Allah be pleased with them—that they were to keep away from their wives.

Hilāl ibn Umayyah’s wife came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and told him that her husband needed her to serve him, as he had no servant. The Prophet ﷺ allowed her to care for him on the condition that he not approach her. She said, “By Allah, he has no inclination for anything at all,” meaning he felt no desire for women, and—Kaʿb relates—he had been weeping since the Prophet ﷺ ordered that they be shunned, forty days of tears, for he did not know how the matter would end.

Kaʿb goes on: “After ten more nights had elapsed, I was one morning performing the Fajr prayer on the roof of one of our houses—because, as has been mentioned, they…"