Character #02 Cultivating Compassion
Date:
Channel: Bilal Assad
Series: Bilal Assad - Character
File Size: 11.14MB
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AI Generated Summary ©
The importance of not being seen as brothers and sisters in Islam is discussed, with personal experiences of misunderstandings and mistakes made on social media. The speaker advises against seeking advice from others and stresses the importance of acknowledging and correcting mistakes. They also share a personal experience of being advised not to jump on anyone and encourage others to forgive each other.AI Generated Transcript ©
Last time we met, we talked about
the verses in Surat Al Hujurat,
one of the best verses about developing our
character.
And I was talking about
how Allah
tells us to be careful when we hear
news about someone, especially if it's got consequences.
And then moving on from there,
we said that
Allah
tells us
that while the Messenger of Allah is with
you,
if he were to obey everything you tell
him,
you guys will suffer a lot.
Then Allah Subhana Wa Ta'la tells us something
very interesting.
He says,
He says: But Allah made religion and your
Deen
beloved to your hearts,
and took away all the blemishes
and all the
ungodliness and all the disunities
and the hatred
and the enmity and grudges between you.
And then Allah says, These are the ones
who are truly rightly guided.
Then Allah says, Fuddlam min Allahi wa niamah,
wallahu a'liman hakeem, which literally means, By Allah's
favor and bounty.
Allah is all knowing, all wise.
The reason Allah says by Allah's bounty and
favor
Remember when I told you the story that
a man went and made up this news
about that tribe that didn't want to pay
zakat and so on, ended up being false?
Well, it wasn't everybody who came to the
Prophet, peace be upon him, and started to
fuel him with this information,
but rather only a small number. And Allah
says, but the rest of the community, there
are still good people among them. And Allah
says, as if he's telling us, in all
time and all
eras there are always large numbers
of good people
who will set things straight. And we have
to choose which group we're going to be
part of.
And that's why Allah says, He is all
knowing and He is all wise, meaning, He
knows
that there are still people who will uphold
the right
and fix and reconcile between the community.
Without the community, we are nobody, brothers and
sisters. And that's why Allah then immediately,
without the community, we who are we?
And
that's
why
Allah
then
says
That really touches my heart. Allah Subhana Wa
Ta'la tells us: Surely the believers
are none but brothers unto one another, so
set things between each other as brothers and
have fear of Allah that you may be
shown mercy.'
Wow.
Allah Subhana Wa Ta'la is likening and bringing
the word mercy into how we
address each other and love each other as
brothers and sisters. What does it mean to
love each other as brothers and sisters? Well,
look at the verses before. It talks a
lot about verifying, clarifying, not accusing, loving one
another, wanting the best between each other, and
reconciling between each other if you see members
of your community fighting, not fueling it.
And Allah says to us, and this is
something that the disbelievers at the time of
the Prophet
you know, they didn't have this word, brothers
and sisters. Allah brought this word, brothers and
sisters.
And he says, as a matter of fact,
you are actually brothers and sisters. Yeah, you
marry from each other, and you have relationships
and love one another in different ways, but
you're still brothers and sisters. Even the husband
and wife are brother and sister in Islam,
that is.
Your mother and father, your brother and sister
in Islam, that is. Which means treat each
other the way that you would love to
treat your own brother and sister. Imagine someone
talking about your brother and sister.
How would you deal with that?
Imagine your brother and sister have done something
wrong.
How would you deal with that? Our Prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him, said,
assist and support your brother or sister, whether
they are the perpetrators or whether they are
the victims.
Obviously, they all understood at the time, we
know how to support them if they are
the victims, but then they said, how do
we support them when they're the perpetrators?
The prophet, peace be upon him, told them
by stopping them from
their oppression. That's how you love one another.
So, if you know a brother or a
sister who is talking ill about someone else,
or probably hasn't clarified or verified,
then you should be advising them, not fueling
it.
We are not
cults or gangs in Islam. We are not
thugs off the street. No, no, we don't
hold onto that. Our deen and our brotherhood
and sisterhood is what holds us together. At
the end of the day, we all love
Allah, as Allah says,
hold ye all onto the rope of Allah
I want to share a few hadiths from
the Prophet
that really tie all of this together. I'll
give you one example. This hadith is in
Musnad Ahmed, jareer ibn Abdullah. He He said,
The Prophet
took a pledge from me,
and then he advised me of 3 things.
He said, that I will establish the prayer,
that I will continue to pay zakat,
and that I will remain a well wisher
of every Muslim.
That last part is the hard part for
a lot of people. To remain a well
wisher for all my brothers and sisters. What
does that mean? It means that no matter
what I've seen in them,
I only want the best for them,
their reputation,
their blood, their honour,
their property.
Even if they are astray, even if they
are obnoxious
and bad character, and rude, if if they
say the wrong thing, what do I do?
I go and I try to advise them.
And again, there are some people who really
want the best for religion, and sometimes they
get a little bit heated when they hear
somebody saying the wrong thing about Islam or
misinterpreting a verse,
and that's fine.
I mean, it's not fine to misinterpret the
verse, but we do understand that people make
mistakes. The companions make mistakes.
And
what we should be doing is going and
correcting them and helping them to be on
the right path with a smile and with
love.
This is how we, insha'Allah, hold together and
save their religion,
or save people from misunderstanding their religion. Another
hadith of the Prophet where
he said, The life, property, and honor of
every Muslim is forbidden to every other Muslim.
In another hadith, the Prophet
tells us,
a believer's relation to the community of the
believers is just like the head's relationship with
the body. He feels their afflictions as the
head feels the pain of every part of
the body.
Well,
if we were to be like that, imagine
the power,
imagine the strength, imagine love,
imagine the community, imagine where we'll be. This
is what Allah wants from us. And finally,
a beautiful hadith that I loved is, the
believers are with one another like the bricks
of a wall,
so that each is strengthened by the other.
The hadith is in bukhari. You cannot have
a building standing without each brick supporting the
other. You and I supporting each other, right
or wrong. We support each other by either
correcting each other, stopping each other from oppression,
or supporting each other if we're the victims.
You know, brothers and sisters,
there is, you know, there is
a great scholar, and I always love to
refer to him, Eben Tamia,
and he talks about this.
He says,
some people love to jump,
to call their brothers and sisters as innovators,
and so on and so forth. And he
says, we have known that in the predecessors,
the past great men and women,
they sometimes misinterpreted a verse, sometimes they misinterpret
a hadith, sometimes they took a verse, and
based on what they read or what information
they received, they went with it. He said,
we don't go jumping on them.
Says, everybody knows that I always sit with
the people and clarify for them and help
them.
And then if they fix their way and
they learn,
then there are brothers and sisters, and they're
calling to the proper way.
Brothers and sisters, part of being brothers and
sisters
in Islam,
part of being brothers and sisters in Islam,
means that you wish for your brother or
your sister to be right
and that you were wrong.
Now, that's not a lot of not a
lot of people can do that, especially when
you have an audience, especially on social media.
If everybody's listening,
everybody's reading, everybody's commenting,
The shaytan comes to me and says, You
don't want to look like you lost.
And so
he starts to fuel
my ego, starts to fuel my emotions, and
I start to think I'm not going to
lose this battle. And that's why advising one
another in public is really bad.
Becomes more of a debate. Me, I want
to win at any cost.
That is not a true believer. No matter
how many prayers I pray, no matter how
many months I fast, no many no matter
how many umras or Hajj I go to,
That's the ultimate thing.
And I do remember
one thing
between
the sahas, the companions, that always hits my
heart. I remember one time,
an authentic hadith about Abu Bakr and Umar
They've got different characteristics. Right? Umar is a
little bit more
He, well, we can say it in modern
terms, he wore his heart on his sleeves,
and Abu Qadhan was a bit more softer,
and he was a bit more compassionate.
They had a little bit of a quarrel,
a friendly quarrel
about something,
and Abu Bakr Dalanor said something which he
regretted. So he went to the Prophet, peace
be upon him, crying. He said, I said
this to Umar,
and
Umar replied something to Abu Bakr as well
that time,
and Umar Dan erased to the Prophet
really wanting the best for his friend Abu
Bakr
He was afraid that the Prophet
would say something, you know, that's hurtful or
not nice to his brother Abu Bakr, and
when he got there, Umrah said to the
prophet, peace be upon him, he said, You
RasulAllah,
please, it's not Abu Bakr's fault, it's my
fault. I provoked him. I'm the one that
made him do that, and he sat on
his knees and said, Forgive him, SubhanAllah.
And the Prophet, peace be upon him, he
was happy that did not reply or say
anything back too hurtful to
Abu
Bakr
And he said, Say,
Allah forgive you, Abu Bakr. Abu Bakr was
crying.
You know, we find these incidents throughout the
Sira and the biography of the prophet, peace
be upon him, where he only wanted them
to love one another, to forgive each other,
to reconcile and to correct one another.
If we love the messenger of Allah, we
have to take him as a great role
model. If we love his companions, we'll take
them as great role models as well. And
then did even with this.
You know, in one of the battles, I
forgot which one, one of the companions
was fighting, and the enemy fell on the
ground.
Then the enemy, out of fear, said,
He converted right there and then. And, yet
the companions still killed him in the battle.
When the news came to the prophet, peace
be upon him, the prophet, peace be upon
him, was displeased with that. In fact, he
was very angry, and he said, You Rasool
Allah.
I It's very clear he was afraid. He
just said it out of fear. He could
have gotten up and You know, in other
words, he could have gotten up and still
stabbed me if I had let my guards
down. But the prophet
continued to say to him, bashakta'ankalbe?
Didn't you open up his chest and look
inside to see his intention?
Wow.
Till the man regretted what he had done.
So, may Allah Subhana Wa Ta'la unite us
as brothers and sisters always,
and always say to each other, I love
you for the sake of Allah, and I
you forgive me for the sake of Allah.
you forgive me for the sake of Allah.