Is contentment with God's decree obligatory or recommended?

In al-Tuhfa al-'Iraqiyya, Ibn Taymiyya reports that the scholars and shaykhs of Imam Ahmad's school and others disputed over contentment with the decree – is it obligatory or recommended? – in two views: on the first it is a work of those who keep the middle way, on the second a work of those brought near. ¹

This follows Ibn Taymiyya's remarks on patience: for him it is the condition of right conduct as knowledge is the condition of guidance, and he quotes Ali that patience is to faith as the head to the body, and that there is no faith for one without patience. ¹ He then quotes Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz: "Contentment is rare, but patience is what the believer relies on" – the editor notes in the margin that one copy attributes it to al-Hasan al-Basri – and cites a hadith with the same meaning in the counsel to Ibn Abbas: if you can act for God with contentment and certainty, do so; if you cannot, there is much good in patience with what you dislike. ¹

Ibn Taymiyya divides the question by what one is content with:

• Contentment with the calamities the Lord brings on His servant, such as illness, poverty and upheaval: he says the Qur'an contains only praise of those who are content, not a requirement of it; he explains "hardship" as in wealth, "affliction" as in bodies and "shaking" as in hearts. ² Of this kind he cites the hadith of Sa'd: "Part of the happiness of the son of Adam is his asking God for the good choice and his contentment with what God has allotted him." ^{2 3}
• Contentment with what God commands: in its root it is obligatory and part of faith; he cites the hadith "He has tasted the sweetness of faith who is content with God as Lord, Islam as religion and Muhammad as prophet", and counts it as following from love. ²
• Contentment with forbidden things – unbelief, wickedness and disobedience: most scholars, he says, hold that contentment with them is not lawful, just as loving them is not, for God is not pleased with them and does not love them even though He decreed them. Another group says they are accepted insofar as they are related to God as His creation and resented insofar as they are related to the servant as his act and acquisition; Ibn Taymiyya holds that the two views come back to one root, since God decreed things for a wisdom, so that they are beloved with respect to that wisdom while possibly hateful in themselves. ³

He answers those who said "I am content with the decree, not with what is decreed" that the question is not contentment with the Lord's attributes and acts subsisting in Him, but with what He brings about. ^{3 4}

Ibn Taymiyya holds that contentment, though a work of the heart, finds its perfection in praise, so that some explained praise as contentment; he cites praising God in every state, and the hadith of the "House of Praise" for the one who praised God and said "To God we belong" at the death of his child. ⁴ He says that praise in hardship is called for by two contemplations, the first being the servant's knowledge that God deserves praise in Himself. ⁴

Ibn Taymiyya does not name the holders of each view in this passage. The positions of the other schools and the Sufis' own words on contentment from their books have not yet been added; for al-Ghazali see contentment with the decree.