Bilal Assad – Character #01 Cultivating Truth
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AI: Transcript ©
Welcome
to this amazing journey.
Let's talk about our faith and our beliefs.
You know, a lot of Muslims,
they ask
a lot of questions about beliefs and faith,
and that's amazing. That's where everything starts, just
like a building.
But one thing that we don't ask about
too often
is what about the character?
Because when you read the entire Quran, you
find that in the Quran,
no matter what belief is stated or whatever
act of worship is stated,
we find that Allah
he connects it to some kind of character
development in ourselves.
Everything has a purpose.
We don't just have faith without practice.
And one of the greatest things that our
prophet, peace be upon him, said
is that he has been sent to perfect
our character.
So
I want to take you with me on
a journey. A little series. Let's make it
a miniseries.
A series from Surat Al Hujarat.
Have you ever heard of Surat Al Hujarat?
It's a beautiful Surah,
and it focuses on our character and practices.
You know, I get a lot of non
Muslims who often ask me, Well, what about
you guys? Do you
walk the talk, or is it just about
faith and how amazing Islam is?
And sometimes I get a little bit embarrassed,
because
the truth to be told,
I find a lot of our brothers and
sisters sometimes
will unintentionally
neglect the practice part and character part.
But Alhamdulillah, we
always do advise one another because we love
one another.
So the Surah that I want to take
you on a journey with me with
is Surah Al Hujarat,
the verses from 6 onwards,
and you'll find about 8 different
characteristics that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala talks about.
The first one I want to go with
you today is
verse number 6.
Let's do it. Allah says,
So Allah says: Believers,
O believers,
when an impious person comes to you with
a news
about something
that is negative, especially if it's about someone
or a community,
clarify,
ascertain,
and make sure about the news correctly,
lest you should hurt a people unintentionally,
or unwittingly is probably the best word. Unwittingly
is without knowing the whole picture.
And then you become repentant and regretful over
what you did.
You know, brothers and sisters, this verse is
tremendous.
It can make or break a community. It
can make or break a person. It can
make or break a family.
It's everything.
Have you ever heard of people say bad
news about yourself?
And then you think to yourself, but I
didn't do it. These people are misconstruing. They're
taking things out of context.
A lot of it happens on social media
as well. A A lot of people just
watch a clip, or they hear something about
someone, and without
verifying,
or even
questioning themselves whether they should verify or not,
They immediately just make comments, make clips, spread
misinformation
about someone, or sometimes part
truth and part false, without really knowing exactly
what they're doing.
We've all fallen into that one time or
another in our life. And this verse of
the Quran is actually written in 2 different
ways. It's amazing because
some of the Qur'an, the words can
be worded in one way or another, and
they all came down from Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala. And I'll give you an example. There
is a word in that verse which I
just recited where it says, fatabeyanu,
which literally means, then clarify.
Clarifying means
to know and sift what is fact from
fiction, what is
truth from false. And you can also read
it as fatathbbetu.
Fatathubbetul
means
make sure
that it's factual.
So, make sure that it actually happens,
and clarify and understand the whole situation. I'll
give you an example.
Let's say I saw
a married brother,
where a woman
entered his car,
and he drove off.
And I know this brother has a wife,
and that didn't look like his wife.
The shaytan will come to me and say:
Okay, you just saw something,
and you're not lying. You really saw a
fact.
That's called tathabbatu.
Tathabbatu means there is a fact. I saw,
it's real. But that's not enough.
Allah says fatabeyanu,
which means
clarify
what actually happened. Maybe it is his wife.
Maybe you made a mistake.
Maybe
he's an Uber driver. Perhaps it's a neighbor
that needs to go to the hospital. Perhaps,
perhaps, perhaps.
And there are so many excuses and possibilities
that could have happened.
We don't know the full picture. But to
go and jump to conclusions, and say for
example, this person is committing adultery, God forbid,
or is being,
unfaithful to his wife, This is a tremendous
accusation.
And imagine what happens after that.
I don't think anybody is happy to
be accused of something without
having it clarified or verified.
You know, the next thing after this verse
is quite interesting, and it really intrigued me.
Allah also says:
And know that the Messenger of God is
with you. I'll tell you the context behind
this verse. This first came down about an
incident
at the time the Prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, where we don't know exactly what
his name was.
However, he went to a tribe called Banil
Mustaliq, and they had just converted to Islam.
And the prophet, peace be upon him, told
him to go and teach him about zakat,
and to collect the zakat money from them
for the community.
When he went there, it seemed like this
particular companion, this particular person had,
a problem with this tribe before Islam, so
he got a bit scared that they might
ambush him or something. He didn't tell anybody
about it.
So he decided to come back and not
visit the tribe, and make up a lie
about them out of fear. So he said
to the prophet, peace be upon him, they
don't want to pay the zakat.
The prophet, peace be upon him, took that
information,
and what happened is before he acted upon
it, a group of other Muslims
rounded themselves around the prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam
and started to give an emotional account saying,
Yeah, this man, he's telling the truth and
imagine if it's the truth and imagine
if we don't, go and take action. And
they started to fuel the Prophet
with emotions.
And I think we can all relate to
that. And even though he's the Messenger of
Allah, he believes his companions, and some of
them they abstained.
So before the Prophet
took action,
Allah sent down this verse and said:
And know that among you is the Messenger
of Allah. If he were to obey you,
he says, in yotiyahu konfika thirimin alamr If
he were to obey you in all the
matters that you present to him,
you would have fallen into a terrible catastrophe.
Sometimes we approach really good people, imams, sheiks,
and we tell them a story about someone.
Some clip that we saw online about another
imam, let's say, or a dawg, or just
a random person. And we may fuel our
sheiks, our imams. Let's say even in our
own household, you come up to your own
father or mother and say something about your
brother and sister. Maybe you have something in
for them, or maybe there's jealousy, or maybe
sometimes a shayton may give us some other
ideas about it, or maybe there's revenge. And
we
may get emotional about it, and sometimes we
may say the things that we don't really
want to say. Causing our father or mother
who is loving to assume the wrong thing,
and then we make them afraid, and they
take action. And after that we regret it.
Has that ever happened to you? Well, it
happened with the time of the Prophet, then
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala told him, verify and
clarify before you take action. The tribe then
came to him and, they told him that
this is not true, a Messenger of Allah.
And it was a good thing that they
abstained before they took a measure. Now, one
important thing about this verse that people misunderstand
is that it says: If an unpious person
or an ungodly person, a fasic, a corruptor
comes to you with news. A lot of
people think, well, if I know this person
to be truthful, then I'm just gonna take
action.
Something to Rabi'ah and then he said to
Rabi'ah, Say it back to me, I shouldn't
have said that word. And then Abu Bakr
goes to the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam to
complain about it because Rabi'ah refused to say
the word back to him. And the point
of this story is when Rabi'ah reached the
Prophet the Prophet had heard the news from
Abu Bakr, and he is an honest man.
He's not a corrupt or an un pious
person, but
then he said to Rabi'ah, What's between you
and Abu Bakr? He wanted the clarification between
them, and he said, Well, this and that
happened. And then the prophet said to him,
Did you say the word back to him?
And he said, No. He said, Good. Say,
may Allah forgive you, oh, buccal. The point
of that is that it's not just a
person who is unpious, but sometimes you do
need to clarify the situation if you're going
to take action. And one very, very important
aspect of this, brothers and sisters, is,
one very important aspect of this is,
you need to see whether you should take
action or not. Is the matter that serious?
Is there a consequence for someone's
reputation,
blood, life, property?
Before you take action, is it really necessary?
One very important thing that I find good
brothers and good sisters do, especially if they
really want to please Allah, is to defend
Islam and to defend the reputation of Islam.
So sometimes
they might unintentionally or even intentionally
with the wrong intentions maybe some of them
hold a bit of a group mentality or
a cult mentality
and then attack people based on a word
or a statement
or a video clip that someone shared with
them, and they don't have the full context.
They don't know what happened before, what happened
after, but they see something that's really concerning.
So what happens? They go and tell their
Sheikh or their Imam a story, they fuel
him with emotions, the Imam or Sheikh gives
them the right answer, but that's based on
what they've told them, you see. And I've
been in this situation before with my imam
or my teacher, I'd come up to them,
and depending on how I present the story
about that person, my imam will answer me.
You know, a great companion, I don't want
to misquote him, so I'm just going to
quote it over here and read it. Sheikh
al Islam Ibn Taymiyyah.
He talks about this aspect, and he says,
And it is not the right of anyone
to make takfir, for example. You know, some
people they say, Oh, that means they're a
kuffar. That means they're people of bidah. They're
innovators. They are deviant. And all these names
that get called up. So he says, And
it is not the right of anyone to
make takfir on any Muslim, even if he
had erred until the argument of truth has
been clarified and explained to him
first.
Then he says,
Whoever is known to be a Muslim with
certainty,
then it
cannot be removed from him by merely assumption
and speculation.
And it says, In fact his Islam cannot
be removed from him except after the truth
has been shown to him in clarity,
and any doubt,
any doubt and confusion is removed. This is
from his Majma'il Fata'wah, I've got it at
home, and, on my bookshelf, and it says
now chapter 12, number 466.
This is Ibn Taymiyyah, one of the greatest
scholars of all time, says, I'm not going
to judge a person no matter what I
see of them until I've sat with them.
You know, this is tremendous, tremendous, tremendous
character and advice from Allah
and his scholars, because if you love for
your brother, what you love for yourself, then
it means you love your Deen and you
love your Islam And you want things to
be better, not just to call out people
for something that they did ambiguously
and without verifying it. But, of course, if
some people are like that, we do have
to call them out. But be very, very
careful. I hope, insha'Allah,
we've learned something from this. I love you,
fisabilillah.
Wussalamu alaykum wa rahuka.