Character #03 Cultivating Noble Speech
Date:
Channel: Bilal Assad
Series: Bilal Assad - Character
File Size: 11.41MB
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AI Generated Summary ©
The history of Islam is discussed, including the use of PhoneQuad and the use of PhoneQuad to portray men and women separately. The negative impact of self esteem, reputation, and desire for attention is emphasized, along with the importance of finding one's own character and not criticizing others. The speaker gives advice on being a high value person and not a full-time person, emphasizing the importance of learning to be a confident person and not showing one's true feelings. listeners are encouraged to humble themselves and listen to the verses.AI Generated Transcript ©
Today I decided to be a little bit
sweeter, so I made some muffins.
And I felt a little bit bluey.
How are you brother?
How's everything?
Moving on from our last talk,
we look at Surat Al Hujurat in this
mini series,
and we reach the part where Allah says:
which means,
oh believers,
let not a group of men scoff at
another group. I'm just reading it from here
so I don't get it wrong.
It may well be that the latter at
whom they scoff are better than they,
nor let a group of women scoff at
another group. It may well be that the
latter are better than they.
This is very interesting
because
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala addresses both the men
by themselves and then the women,
and I wonder why? I think there's two
reasons
From what I read in the tafsir,
it means that at the time of the
Prophet
men didn't often mix with women,
and women didn't often mix with men. That
was just their culture.
Of course, they did go out to the
markets. They did talk to each other. There
was crossovers. Even in the Masjid, there was
that thing. Now
as time went on, obviously,
times change. Men and women interact a little
bit more in different places like the workforce.
There's nothing wrong with that so long as
they adhere to the Islamic guidelines.
But that's probably one of the reasons why
they're mentioned separately.
Another reason is to say, well, men have
a way of scoffing at each other and
women have their own way of scoffing at
each other.
Each one has their way,
and I think that when Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala says this, some of us say, well,
Allah wanted to address the men in the
way they put each other down, and the
women in their ways and how they put
each other down.
We know the psychology of these different two
genders.
When Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala talks about
scoffing each other, he means
to us,
slandering each other,
mocking each other,
putting each other down in a passive aggressive
manner. You know that passive aggressive manner that
people sometimes use? They don't really say it,
but they're saying it.
You know, it's like saying, say I'm stupid
without saying I'm stupid.
Passive aggressive is one of the worst types
of mockeries.
Another way is online. I
write something
or I put an emoji
in a certain way
or I put a common social
lingo that we know to put each other
down.
You know, I'm a teacher, and
one of the things we've learned from youngsters
is that when they bully each other in
the classroom, they have these special sounds. When
you walk into the room, especially when that
new student comes in,
someone coughs or someone does an animal sound,
for example, or someone does this little look.
All of this is bullying and haram in
Islam.
And when we do that, we're putting each
other down. And you know what that really
means? I'll tell you what psychologically.
It means that if I do it,
that shows that I have low self esteem.
It means that I'm not proud about myself.
It means I've got to put someone else
down in order for me to feel amazing.
That's an ego problem.
That type of a person is gonna have
problems as they grow up. They're gonna have
problems at their workplace, they're gonna have problems
with their family. If they're single and they
get married, man or woman,
they're gonna create problems in their family, and
worse than that, the children are going to
imitate them. I've seen it as a teacher
happen a lot of times.
I go into a school
and I observe. We don't say anything. But
then you can tell
some of the students, some of the children,
and you can tell that maybe they took
or from their parents' bad character.
So we've gotta be very careful how we
present ourselves to our children, very importantly, whether
you're a teacher, a parent, an imam,
an older brother, an older sister, an uncle,
aunt, doesn't matter who you are.
Children watch and observe.
One friend of mine, he said,
where is that man who smiles a lot?
His daughter. His daughter was about 7 years
old. He says to me, where's that man
who smiles a lot?
Children
look for character. They look for
how
we conduct ourselves,
and they remember it.
Allah
SWANNAH when he tells us to not scoff
at each other and slander each other and
put each other down,
he then says, maybe that other group is
better than you.
Allah tells us in another verse in the
Quran,
Never praise yourselves in piety.
You see people with low self esteem,
if
it's not religion, it's money. If it's not
money, it's property. If it's not property, it's
looks. If it's not that, it's reputation.
People have a problem with their self esteem,
and they don't work on it or take
advice. They'll use anything to put other people
down, And there are some people who go
into the religion to put other people down,
to use the religion
to try and rise above others. And that's
why Allah says, falaatuzakku
anfusakumuwa'alamu
bi'malitaka. Don't praise yourselves in piety. Don't say,
I'm religious, I pray.
Even if it's just passively, such as when
someone says,
you know, last
morning I woke up for fajr. And then
they emphasize it.
And then they tell you some other story
that's not related to that.
Well, people say that, and of course we
cannot talk about their intentions, and we shouldn't.
But let's look at our own selves. If
we do that all the time, it's as
if we're praising ourselves to be above someone
else. Another situation is when, let's say someone's
getting the attention, whether they've got a nice
voice in the Qur'an,
or they've got some knowledge, or they're up
on stage,
or everyone calls them to pray imam, or
let's say someone praises the hijab of a
particular sister, or the looks, or something like
that from a religious aspect, and then they
want the attention to come to them, so
they either put them down, or they scoff
them, or they say something about their faults
that they know about, which makes the situation
even worse.
The whole
thing that they're after is just to bring
the attention
to myself, me, myself, and I. This, brother,
this this this this is actually a disease,
a disease of the heart when I need
all the attention on myself.
And I think we live in a modern
era where
that's what it's all about. It's all about
me, myself, and I.
I've seen number plates on cars, all eyes
on me.
Well, it doesn't fit at all. I think
I saw it then on a windscreen, but
something similar to that on a number plate
that meant look at me.
In the end of the shaitan,
Iblis, that's exactly what he said to Allah.
He said I'm going to lead them all
astray and I'm going to climb on top
of them like the way you climb on
a horse and grab their reins and steer
them and make them think that
make them ungrateful.
You will find most of them not grateful,
meaning they're not grateful for the blessings you've
given them. They've always got to put someone
else down as if they've got no blessings.
Instead of thanking Allah for the blessings they
have and feeling happy for the blessings of
other people,
they don't do that. That's called being ungrateful.
We should say, alhamdulillah, for everything we have.
The prophet, peace be upon him, used to
tell us,
in the Sahih Hadith, we all know it.
He said,
never look at those who are above you
and more blessed than you,
but look at those
who are below you in fortune and blessings,
because then if you have the habit of
always looking who's got more,
then you're going to forget
and not realize how many blessings you have.
Every one of us has those blessings, and
we should thank Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala for
it, but not show it off.
One hadith that comes to mind
is where the Prophet, peace be upon him,
says,
Whoever humbles themselves,
Allah
will lift them and honor them. And you
can see it. People will accept you, but
love you at the same time. Some people
may accept you because of some gain they
want from you, to use you and abuse
you, but the people that Allah makes people
accept them in this life, they're the ones
whom the angels have accepted them in the
heavens, and the lost, punhu, ta'ala, has accepted
them.
And they're the people who not only do
others,
give them attention, but they also love them
genuinely. You can tell.
I'll give you a little
piece of
advice, if you like, from what experts have
said, and I want to merge it with
what Islam teaches us about self esteem and
confidence.
If you want to be a high value
person, really, and you want a lot to
be pleased with you, and you want to
be, you know, someone important, but without falling
into the problem of putting others down,
They know what confidence means, and there's 4
types of confidence that we've learned. The first
one
is
where you know that you can do something
and you feel you can do something,
then
that's good confidence,
But don't show it off.
The second type is called the confidence where
you know you can do something,
but you feel you cannot do it, and
that's lack of confidence.
The third one is when a person
knows they cannot do it,
and they feel they can do it.
That's an ego problem, and you're gonna fall
into big problems like that.
And the last one is where a person
knows they cannot do it and feel they
cannot do it, and it's called maturity.
A Muslim should not appear, in fact, any
person should not appear
more than their reality. Don't try to be
someone you're not.
A Muslim or a person,
a healthy person,
should appear a little bit below their reality.
And that way they can connect with others
and Allah
will lift them. That's how the Prophet
was. If you were to go back in
time 1400 years and you wanted to look
for the messenger sallallahu alaihi wasallam, guess where
you should look? You don't go to the
Masjid, first of all. I mean, you can.
You can go looking for the the famous
companions that you always heard about. But if
you really wanna find him quick and efficiently,
go look for a group of people who
look poor and destitute.
And most likely, you'll find the prophet, peace
be upon him, sitting among them.
I remember a beautiful
story
about
a lady who used
to clean the Masjid,
the mosque of the prophet
back in his time, and she was not
really known by any name or lineage.
Nobody really
cared too much about her. I mean, they
loved her as a sister, but nobody really
talked about her much. But to Allah, she
was important.
She used to clean the masjid. That's the
best skill that she had, and she obviously
she was pious and she had athkar and
she had remembrance of Allah and she was
all that stuff. But in the eyes of
the people, that's all she did.
One day she died,
and the prophet, peace be upon him, was
asleep at fajr time. He asked immediately about
her.
They said, she
died. He said, why didn't she tell me?
They said, we don't wanna
disturb you or asleep.
So the prophet, peace be upon him, went
and said, show me where her grave is.
He went there and prayed for her,
and he said, my du'a
reaches
these beautiful people, these believers in their graves,
and fills it with light
after darkness.
The prophet, peace be upon him, always made
everybody feel important.
And when you met him,
even he did not appear that he's superior
to you. Used to always say,
I am,
in fact the slave of God
and his messenger.
Amazing if we can take that role modeling
from our prophet, peace be upon him,
and you'll be something huge not only in
this world, but not only in hereafter, but
also in this world as well.
Just gotta humble yourself and listen to those
Till next time.
Till next time.