By Waheedah Kosefobamu

On the lost art of assuming the best – and why your relationships depend on it.

“Find your brother seventy excuses. And if you cannot, say to yourself: perhaps he has an excuse I do not know of.”
              Umar ibn al-Khattab (R.A)

Let me paint you a picture. Your friend said they would call you at seven. It is now nine and your phone has not made a sound. What is the first thing that crosses your mind? Be honest. Is it – I hope they are okay? Or is it – they always do this. I knew I couldn’t count on them. They clearly don’t value my time.

If it was the second one, you are not a bad person. You are just human. And you are also in very good company, because almost all of us have been there. We jump to conclusions the way we jump out of bed in the morning – quickly, without thinking. The problem is that those conclusions carry real weight. They shape how we speak to people, how we treat them, whether we keep them in our lives or slowly push them out.

And most of the time – most of the time – we are wrong.

The Assumption Habit We Don’t Talk About

There is something deeply human about the need to make sense of people’s behaviour. When someone acts in a way that affects us, our brain immediately goes looking for a reason. And here is the uncomfortable truth: the brain almost always goes looking in the wrong direction first. Psychologists call it the Fundamental Attribution Error – our tendency to explain other people’s actions by their character rather than their circumstances.

So when someone is late, we think they are disrespectful – not that their car broke down. When someone doesn’t reply, we think they are ignoring us – not that they are drowning in something we cannot see. When someone seems cold, we think they don’t like us – not that they are carrying a weight that has nothing to do with us at all.

We read people’s worst moments and write their character from it. And then we wonder why our relationships feel so fragile, why trust is so hard to build, why people around us always seem to be disappointing us. The disappointment was written the moment we stopped giving room for an excuse. “Most of the time, people are not doing things to you. They are doing things because of what is happening in them.”

Seventy Excuses – An Islamic Standard That Will Stretch You

Umar ibn al-Khattab (R.A) – a man known for his sharpness, his firmness, his unapologetic standards – is the one who said to give your brother seventy excuses. Seventy. Not one. Not three. Seventy.

That number is not meant to be counted literally. It is meant to stretch you. It is meant to push you past the first excuse that feels convenient and the second one that feels generous and all the way to the place where you have genuinely exhausted every reasonable explanation before you land on the worst one. And even then – even if you cannot find a single excuse – the instruction is to say to yourself: perhaps there is one I simply do not know.

This is not weakness. This is wisdom. Because the alternative – assuming the worst immediately, acting on that assumption, poisoning the relationship, perhaps ending it – has consequences that last long after the moment has passed. How many friendships have ended over a misread message? How many family bonds have cracked over a silence that had an explanation nobody asked for?

“O you who have believed, avoid much negative assumption. Indeed, some assumption is sin.” – Qur’an 49:12 (Al-Hujurat)

Allah did not say all assumption is sin. He said much of it is. Because He knows we are human. He knows the brain jumps. But He is asking us – as an act of conscious worship – to slow that jump down. To examine it before we act on it. To give the benefit of the doubt not because the other person deserves it, but because our own soul deserves the peace that comes from not carrying unnecessary suspicion.

What Wrong Assumptions Actually Cost You

Let’s be very real about the damage. When you assume the worst about someone and you are wrong – which, again, is most of the time – you have already done something. You have withdrawn from them emotionally. You have perhaps said something sharp. You have posted something passive. You have gone cold in a way they felt but could not understand.

And now there is a distance between you that did not exist before, built entirely on something that was never true. And the person on the other side? They are confused. They are hurt. They are wondering what they did, replaying conversations, feeling the shift in your energy without knowing what caused it. All because they were stuck in traffic. All because their phone died. All because they were having the worst week of their life and could not show up the way they normally would.

Wrong assumptions do not just damage the other person. They damage you. They keep you in a state of low-level suspicion that is exhausting to live inside. They make you read everything as a slight, every silence as rejection, every change in tone as proof of something sinister. That is not a peaceful way to move through the world. And it is not who you have to be.

“Assuming the worst is free. But the cost of being wrong is always paid by the relationship.”

But What About When People Actually Mean It?

I hear you. Because this is always the question – and it is a fair one. Does giving excuses mean we become a doormat? Does husn al-dhann mean we ignore patterns, overlook consistent disrespect, and keep extending grace to people who have shown us, repeatedly and clearly, who they are?

No. And this is the nuance that matters. There is a difference between a single incident and a pattern. There is a difference between assuming the best about a moment and being blind to a behaviour. Giving someone seventy excuses does not mean you give the same person the same excuse seventy times. It means you do not convict them on the first offence without evidence, without a conversation, without asking.

Because the missing piece in so many of our conflicts is the simplest one: we never asked. We assumed, we decided, we withdrew – and we never sat down and said, I noticed this, and I want to understand. That conversation, as uncomfortable as it feels, is far less costly than the silent verdict we hand down in its place.

How to Actually Practise This

This is not something that happens by accident. It is a discipline. And like every discipline, it starts with a pause. The next time someone does something that bothers you, before you react – pause. Just one breath. And in that breath, ask yourself: what is the most generous explanation for what just happened?

Not the most naive one. Not a story you have to force yourself to believe. Just the most generous one that is still reasonable. Maybe they are tired. Maybe they are scared. Maybe they are dealing with something at home that has nothing to do with you. Maybe this is the version of them on a hard day, not the version that is the whole truth of who they are. Then, if it matters enough, ask. Not accusingly. Not with the verdict already written in your tone. Just – genuinely ask. You’d be surprised how often the explanation changes everything.

How often the person who felt like a villain in your head becomes a struggling human being the moment they speak. And in the moments where you cannot ask, or where asking would not change what needs to happen – practise making du’a for them. Pray for the person you are tempted to assume the worst about. It is almost impossible to hold a dark assumption and a sincere prayer for someone at the same time. One will always soften the other.

The Kind of Person You Become

Here is what I have noticed about people who carry this habit well – people who genuinely lead with excuses before conclusions. They are some of the most peaceful people in any room. Not because life has been easy on them. Not because people have never hurt them. But because they have decided that their inner world is not a courtroom, and they are not the judge of everyone who passes through it.

They are also, almost always, deeply loved. Because people feel safe around them. People know that one bad day will not become a case file. That a mistake will be met with a question before it is met with a verdict. That they are seen as full human beings and not just the sum of their worst moments. That kind of safety is rare. And it is built, one generous assumption at a time.

So before you decide they are wrong – before you send the message, withdraw the warmth, or write someone off entirely – pause. Breathe. And ask yourself honestly: have I given them an excuse? Have I even tried?
Because the seventy excuses are not just a gift to the other person. They are a gift to the version of you that gets to live without the weight of carrying wrong assumptions about people who never deserved them.

Find seventy excuses. And if you cannot – admit there may be one you simply do not know.