Adnan Rajeh – Patience and Self-Control 1
AI: Summary ©
the other way.
AI: Transcript ©
I'm going to start a new theme.
We recited a hadith from almost every chapter
from Imam al-Tirmidhi and inshallah we'll come
back to it again in another year.
But I want to go into some other
topics and the theme for the next week
is going to be a hadith that talks
about patience and self-control and I think
it's an important topic in general as you
should never be in a position where you
don't have control of what it is that
you are saying or doing.
Now you may run a surge of emotions
that bother you, that's a part of being
alive but you should not lose control over
your tongue or your limbs in terms of
what you do.
And the Prophet talked about this a lot
and he was obviously the epitome of self
-control and patience and I want to share
a few hadiths where he talked about this
topic and I think it's important and you'll
see why inshallah as we go along.
I'm going to start by narrating probably the
most famous of these hadiths.
So he said as far as Ibn Mas
'ud tells us in the collection of Imam
Muslim that the word Shadeed is a word
the Arab use for someone of strength.
I'll add you to us inshallah in the
usage of this word.
Every culture has a word where they use
to describe someone of strength, not strength of
muscle but inner strength.
And the Prophet is saying Shadeed, the word
Shadeed, the Arab used to word that word.
Fulan is Shadeed and Fulan is strong.
So he said that the one who is
strong, their strength is not that they are
capable of Musara'ah, of taking someone down,
meaning they are stronger than them physically and
they know how to flatten them on the
ground.
That's not what strength is.
He's saying true strength is not your ability
to beat someone physically.
It's what Musara'ah means.
He uses the word Innama and Innama is
to say exclusively, the strength is exclusively the
person who owns himself.
Someone who owns himself at the time of
anger.
Meaning he's in full control.
He's not losing control, he's not in partial
control, he's not mostly in control.
He owns himself at a moment of anger.
When he's being angered, he completely owns every
behavior, every action, every word.
That is true strength.
True strength is to control your behaviors and
your words and your actions when you are
being angered.
When something is happening that is worthy of
anger and maybe sometimes it's not worthy of
anger.
Regardless of whether it is or it isn't,
to have full control, to own yourself and
to own your actions and to own what
you say.
Not to allow someone to carry in their
hands a remote control and know what button
to press to make you behave in a
way that you would never otherwise behave.
That lacks strength.
If someone has the ability to do that,
you're not strong because they can control you.
Even if you flatten them, even if you
punch them so hard that they don't wake
up for a week, if they were able
to provoke you to do something that you
would never do, that doesn't represent you or
represent your ethics or values, that means they
are technically stronger than you and you are
weaker.
Even though you may be physically bigger and
you were able to beat them up, but
if they had that ability, meaning you wouldn't
behave that way in a normal situation, and
someone was able to provoke you and make
you say something and behave in a way
where you would never behave, that means you
are not stronger than them.
They are stronger than you, even though you
showed them what is what and you slammed
them into a wall.
If I asked you, do you do that?
Are you violent?
You'd say, no, I'm not violent.
Then why did you do this?
Well, they provoked me.
That means they control you and you don't
control you.
And that's not real strength.
And that's what he is teaching.
And I think it's a worthy lesson of
learning.
Understand what strength actually is, so that you
don't allow someone to do something to you.
And we are all guilty of this.
We all allow someone or something to get
the best of us at certain moments.
Just learn to reflect on that and to
change that so that it's not who you
are.
Because if you're strong, then that's real strength,
that ownership of your behavior.