Ali Albarghouthi – The Art of Silence
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
He said,
The one who is silent
will be saved.
The one who is silent
will be saved.
And here the prophet
was highlighting
an important path
for saving yourself
from shaitan,
from sin.
Saving yourself by adhering to what Allah
loves by simply doing one thing,
being silent.
And another hadith,
someone asked the prophet alaihis salatu was salam,
He said, oh messenger of Allah, advise me.
He said, do you have control of your
tongue?
He says, what do I have control of
if I fail to control my tongue?
He said then do not say with it
except what's good.
This question from the prophet alaihi salatu wa
sallam and the answer from that companion tells
us something important
about control.
Because when he wanted advice, the prophet asked
him a very simple question,
an organ that you have control of, do
you actually have control
of it?
And the answer of the Sahabi was also
very insightful because he is
saying, if I cannot control this small piece,
what other control do I have
in my entire life
over my actions,
over my thoughts, over what other people are
saying and doing. If I fail to control
my tongue,
what control do I actually have?
And then the prophet
when he
understood that that person understands
how important it is to restrain the tongue,
he said, only say what is good with
it. It's as simple as that.
Otherwise, you will be quiet.
And this idea of silence
as part of the good character,
the good choice that a person should pursue
is lost among non Muslims.
They have no notion of it or very
little.
But this idea is alive and well in
the Quran and in the sunnah, but its
practitioners
are few among Muslims.
For a person to value
silence
because we value speech.
We learn how to talk.
We wanna be more eloquent.
How to be most effective in an interview.
How to be the best public speaker. You
take courses. You pay money to learn all
of that.
You wanna impress.
And whenever you find an opportunity to speak,
you wanna speak and express what is in
your mind and in your heart, but we
have not learned
silence.
Even though
the prophet, alayhis salatu wa sallam, said in
the well known hadith, and the fact that
it is well known, testifies
to how far we are from the implementation
of that knowledge because we know.
But do we follow?
Whoever believes in Allah and in the last
day, let them say what is good or
otherwise
be quiet.
We know this hadith,
and we know in this hadith that the
prophet
had established
a permanent link
between your tongue and your iman.
So he's saying that if you have iman,
you have to think before you talk.
Otherwise, how will you know whether what you're
saying is beneficial or not?
So if you have
iman
in Allah
and in a day where you will meet
Allah, so he will ask you about what
you said,
then you have to wait before you talk
and consider the benefits and the harms that
are in it and then proceed to speak
or not.
And the scholars of Islam have said that
if something is more
harmful,
then of course you're not gonna supposed to
be engaged in it.
If something is equally beneficial and harmful, you're
not supposed to be engaged in it. If
something has no benefit and no harm, it
is safer
not to be engaged in it.
The only part that is left
is where there's more benefit, then you will
speak.
1 of the set of he was quiet
sitting among people
and then they asked him. He says, why
don't you talk?
He said, I saw speech to be of
several categories.
I saw something that brings benefit
and harm,
and prudence and wisdom dictates that you shouldn't
be engaged in it.
And I saw a speech
that brings no benefit and nor harm and
it is safer not to be engaged in
it.
And I saw a speech that has more
benefit.
That's the one that I choose.
And he didn't mention the speech that brings
more harm because it's a given that that
is not yours.
So they commented on that and they said,
I see that he had dismissed
75%
of human speech.
I see that he had dismissed
75%
of human speech and what is left is
only the beneficial.
So if you are a person of iman,
then you have to learn the art of
silence.
He said in a hadith alayhi salatu was
salam,
He says your iman is not gonna be
straight until your heart is straight,
and your heart will not be straight until
your tongue is straight.
This hadith is important for those who
engage in a an external action and speech
and yet say my heart is pure and
innocent.
The state of your heart is reflected in
your tongue.
If your tongue is corrupt,
what do you expect your heart to be?
It's not me saying this.
It's rasoolallahu alaihi salatu wassalam. He says you
cannot have a good heart if you don't
have a good
tongue. So in order to correct your iman
and correct your tongue correct your heart, you
have to correct your tongue. And you cannot
correct your tongue if you are saying things
that upset Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So you
wanna be good with Allah, you have to
be good
in what you say and also what you
leave.
And he said, alaihis salatu wa sallam, just
to point to the danger
of this small piece of meat
among the smallest that we have,
but most dangerous and devastating or beneficial depending
on how you use it.
Most of the sins of the child of
Adam is in his tongue.
Imagine,
most of the sins of the child of
Adam is in his tongue. That is you
may meet Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and when
you look at your book, most of the
things that gonna take you to hellfire are
in
and from
the tongue
because it was not
disciplined.
Some of the salaf have said,
It says your tongue is the pen of
the angel and your saliva is that ink.
Meaning
that angel is writing.
What is he writing with your tongue?
That's most of what you say and most
of what you do.
And the saliva is that what enables the
movement of the tongue. That is the ink
he's writing. Most what he's writing is what
you are saying.
So he, alayhis salatu was salam,
wanted us to know that if you wanna
be saved, you have to control this tongue
otherwise, even unknowingly.
You may meet Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala with
a sentence, with a word
that will ruin you.
And he said
that that a person may utter a word
or a sentence.
He doesn't pay attention to it, to how
severe it is, to how displeasing to Allah
that thing is.
He descends in * fire, falls in *
fire
70 years.
One word, one sentence, he says it.
The devastating the troubling thing is that
He doesn't pay attention to it.
Doesn't didn't think that it is that serious.
And how many people engage in this without
thought?
When they're angry
with Allah's decrees,
they reject them.
They blame Allah and they criticize them in
a moment of anger.
How many people
when they look at Allah's revelation, Allah's command,
dismiss it, reject it
as too hard, too severe, too harsh, too
irrelevant,
or they
make little
of the prohibitions of Allah
by demoting them from being an absolute haram
into something that is debatable,
something that is disagreeable, something that is simply
disliked.
So they tamper with Allah's religion,
and they invite people to sin simply because
they wanna feel about their good about their
own choices.
They speak against Allah's religion or they speak
against Allah's judgment, and a word like that
could devastate your iman. And because you do
not think that it is something serious, you
will never go back and say, you Allah,
forgive me for it. You'll never fix it.
How many people because of their
anger, men
ended their marriages
in a moment of lack of restraint?
How many women
have led their men to end their marriages
because of their speech?
How many people have said things that they
regretted
and couldn't take back and they ended relationships
because they couldn't restrain their speech?
Wisdom of a person wants to be wise
is
in silence.
They used to say that wisdom is made
of 10 parts.
9 of those is silence.
Because when you're silent,
you listen to what people are saying.
You consider, you evaluate,
you take the best of what they said
and leave the worst.
You add their wisdom to yours and dismiss
their foolishness.
And once you are ready to talk, then
you can talk.
And that's the essence of wisdom.
Thinking about
what you wanna say before saying it, not
letting your tongue run whenever you feel something.
Today, the danger of this
is evident.
You can stand in front of a camera
or you could write because writing is an
extension of your tongue, your speech. You can
stand in front of a camera
and let your mouth run with whatever you
feel
And that could cause riots.
That could kill people.
That could devastate societies.
That could attack reputations.
The effect of that is real.
And for the non Muslims,
I understand because they don't have that discipline
or that knowledge that they just simply wanna
talk.
And if they are not wiser and they
do not learn, that is gonna be their
undoing.
The undoing of their societies and the undoing
of their country isn't that.
When speech is not restrained,
I'm not talking about censorship.
I'm talking about self restraint.
I'm talking about wisdom.
Choosing what to say and what to say.
Asking yourself the question,
do I have enough knowledge to speak?
And being modest
being modest and say, no, I don't.
Asking yourself the question, is it beneficial even
if you know,
Will it benefit
people if I talk?
And being modest enough when it is not
beneficial to say, no, it's not gonna be
beneficial.
If something is gonna be divisive,
something is gonna be destructive.
We don't have to hear from you or
from me.
Restrain your tongue
and practice silence.
This is actually
how the prophet alaihi salatu wasalam was.
They describe him,
Alaihi Salaam, they said about him, he used
to be
lengthy
in his silence
and seldom in his laughter.
Now he used to smile a lot alayhi
salatu wa sallam. We are talking about laughter
versus smiling. He used to smile a lot
alayhi salatu wa sallam, but not laughter.
But when it came to silence, he was
lengthy in his silence.
When he would speak alayhis salatu was salam,
if you wanted, you could count
his words.
You could memorize it because he was not
verbose
That's the essence of wisdom.
And another hadith, he said
when somebody asked him to give him advice,
It says if you wanna meet Allah with
something precious,
nothing else is like them, meet Allah
with extended silence
and also good character.
Now, of course,
the silence that we talk about is not
the silence of previous nations.
Mariam
She said,
I have vowed that I will be silent
for Allah for Allah's sake or by Allah.
We do not vow that.
Silence like that, perpetual
silence is not Ibadah.
But silence away from haram,
away from harmful speech, away from what we
do not know is
Ibadah, especially when it's done in imitation of
the prophet alayhis salatu wassalam.
And the heart of the believer
or the tongue of the believer is behind
his heart,
as they say.
Meaning before
he speaks,
it passes through his heart and it evaluates
what it wants to say. And then only
does he speak, but the tongue of the
hypocrite is ahead of his heart.
It does not evaluate what he wants to
say. Whenever he feels like it, he speaks.
And that is devastating to a person's iman
and character.
Especially if a person is religious or they
want to be religious, they have to watch
out
for the ploys of shaitan,
of how he could try to corrupt their
speech and drag them into *
while thinking that what they're doing is pleasing
to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And we can
have those blind spots
as Muslims.
So when they asked the prophet, alayhis salatu
wa sallam, about a woman,
and they said, You Rasulullah,
o prophet of Allah, she prays during the
night and fast during the day, but then
after she insults and harms her neighbors or
her tongue. She has an abusive tongue. So
he said, alayhi salatu wa sallam, she's in
hellfire.
So I want you to remember this.
It's not enough to be imbalanced
For you to on the one hand, you
say, I'm okay with my neighbors but you
do not pray and you do not fast.
How are you gonna get Jannah?
And on the other hand, you pray and
you fast but you're abusive with your tongue.
You're nasty in your speech.
You hurt people with your tongue and what
you write.
How then do you expect to enter Jannah?
When you backbite,
every person that you're backbiting will be your
opponent.
I want you to imagine this,
you're bringing
greater claims against you on the day of
judgment when unnecessarily,
either because you're angry or you let your
guard down or other people are doing it
so you think it's fine to do, but
you're backed by this person and that person,
and you put down not only 1, you
put down nations
and people of different color and a person
or people in a different tribe, you put
all of them down, then you've all of
those people will come to you on the
day of judgment. Yeah, Allah. He said that
about us. You're bringing enemies on the day
of judgment.
How stupid are you when you do this?
This is backbiting.
Or when you spread a rumor
and you become you amplify it and you
become part of those who propagate and spread
falsehood,
spread obscenities,
vulgarity,
and you're happy with that.
Or when you weigh in into matters, you
contribute into you have to talk about matters
that are so complex
globally.
Complex, complicated
globally or religiously,
yet you must have an opinion.
In my opinion, it is this.
And you take sides and you become partisan
and you write about this and you push
this opinion and that opinion. And we and
you and I, we lack information,
enough information
to speak.
What gives us the right to speak when
we are not ready
in matters that if you were to bring
the sahaba, they would hesitate before they speak.
See, we know about the sahaba that if
they were sitting in the gathering after the
prophet alaihi salatu wassalam, and if they brought
someone a question, each person will push the
answer on to the next one. They don't
wanna answer it. They don't wanna be responsible.
Before Allah, I said this on that day.
Let somebody else speak. I'm gonna listen. Let
somebody else speak.
Until it comes back to the first person
who was asked. It makes a full turn.
Today, if you were to ask one of
us about some of these things, we will
have an answer ready.
Who says I do not know anymore?
Whether it's a religious matter or a political
complex matter, oh, those people are bad. Those
people are good. How do you know?
And safety is in silence until you actually
know.
And say to yourself, if Allah were to
ask me about this, do I have enough
evidence?
So silence has to be learned,
has to be acquired.
Some of
the
previous Ubaid worshipers of Allah, azzawajal,
in order to
teach him some self silence,
he would put a pebble
in his tongue
and would keep it there and he would
not take it out unless he is gonna
eat or sleep.
Now, of course, that's not sunnah
and no one will ask you to do
this,
but it does tell you about the necessity
of learning it because we learn how to
talk.
Now we have to learn how not to
talk.
Al Ma'mun Anan Ma'mun, Abdul Malik ibn marwan,
the Khalifa.
When he brought instructors
to teach his children,
he said
Quran.
He says, teach them honesty
as you are teaching them the Quran.
Meaning, as you are teaching them the Quran
to memorize how to say all of that,
you also teach them that when they speak,
they only speak the truth. Discipline them like
that.
Well, maybe we have
missed out on that when we were young,
but it's not too late.
And how you learn
silence
is first of all by growing your iman.
And part of that growth is to understand
that everything that you are saying is being
written for you or against you, so fill
your book with whatever you wanna meet Allah
Azzawajal with. You are the author.
See what kind of book you're writing.
So grow your iman and part of that
growth is to engage the tongue in what
pleases Allah.
So you do more of the Quran, you
do more of the dhikr because if the
tongue is disciplined and is occupied
with good, it is less likely to be
inclined towards falsehood.
So a lot of istighfar,
a
lot
of as much as you can, a lot
of salah and salaam upon the prophet alayhi
salatu wasalam. Let the tongue move like that
so we'll be less inclined to do evil.
And to remind yourself every now and then
of the necessity of the importance of watching
what you are saying.
And if you can, and this is reserved
for the best of us,
the elect among us,
is to come at the end of the
day
and ask yourself, why did I say such
and I did not say such?
What was the need for this and what
was the need for that?
Was this something that is pleasing to Allah
so I should praise him or displeasing
that I should ask his forgiveness?
And to continue to do this until you
have
full or near full control of your tongue
And get used to saying astaghfirullah
often because the tongue the sins of the
tongue are many.
And
to make dua
for Allah to give you power over it.
And, of course, to distance yourself,
especially
if you mix the outer society.
Distance yourself from their bad habits.
Vulgarity,
obscenity
should be unacceptable,
which gets inserted in common speech, everyday
speech for no reason at all. It should
be absolutely unacceptable,
distasteful for you to hear or to repeat.
You don't seek it. You're not around it.
You resist it.
And if they backbite, if they mock, if
they put people down,
you hate it and you reject it and
you'd never adopt it.
And maybe then if we try at least
to do this,
Allah a zawajal would save us.
Remember,
if you are religious, you're not immune.
And some people who are religious, they become
partisans in their practice of their religion. I
love this shaykh against that shaykh. This group
against that group. And they see beginning to
see it lawful to attack
that other group with what is real and
what is unreal, to misinterpret everything that they
say.
And they speak with very divisive
words.
So ask yourself, when I'm speaking, am I
pleasing Allah? Am I bringing the ummah Muhammad
together or fragmenting them?
May Allah
help us to speak the truth and avoid
evil.
May Allah
help us to say what will bring the
Ummah together and not divide it.
May he make our tongue a path and
a way for us to be saved, not
for a way for us to be doomed.
To make us of those who imitate
their prophet alayhis salatu wasalam. You, Allah, we
ask you to give us good character. We
ask you, you, Allah, to give us control
over our tongues and what we say and
what we do. We ask you, you, you,
to give aid and help and victory to
Muslims wherever they may be, And in particular,
to the people of Palestine
and the people of Hashem and to the
rest of Muslims wherever they may be.