Character #06 Cultivating Trust
Date:
Channel: Bilal Assad
Series: Bilal Assad - Character
File Size: 10.13MB
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AI Generated Summary ©
The speakers discuss Muslim's conservative clothing, avoiding many assumptions and suspicions, and focusing on negative emotions rather than good ones. They advise against actions on assumptions and caution about small behavior. The speaker emphasizes the importance of avoiding assumptions and not giving false accusations, and cautious about small behavior.Transcript ©
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Oh, yeah. If you realized I'm wearing this
Moroccan outfit,
I'm not really Moroccan myself. I'm Lebanese background.
But I thought I'll wear a Moroccan outfit
because number 1, I think it looks cool.
And secondly,
we're talking about an amazing topic,
the character of a Muslim in Surat Al
Hujurat.
I wanted to show that as Muslims, we're
all brothers and sisters, we share each other's
culture. Why not?
And praise each other, and be proud of
each other's cultures, and
just get closer. Bismillah.
Moving on from our verses,
today I want to look at the next
verse in Surah Al Hujurat,
which is quite interesting to me, it needs
your attention.
Allah says,
Allah begins the verse by addressing the believers
again,
Because the believers,
they're ready to listen to Allah's words.
And Allah really wants you to lead the
way
as a believer. He says,
avoid
much
suspicion.
Indeed,
much of your suspicions, much of suspicions,
are sinful.
Let's analyze it a little bit.
Is it natural to suspect
to make assumptions about someone?
Yeah, it's natural.
Allah is not saying,
don't be natural,
don't assume, don't be speculative.
That's very natural. As soon as you look
at someone, you're already judging them. There's no
such thing as,
not judging anyone. We all judge. As soon
as you look at someone, we're judging. That's
very natural, and you can't help it because
the brain keeps going.
However, Allah is not saying don't be suspicious,
he said avoid
much suspicion. There's 2 things to understand here.
Number 1, the word much, and number 2,
to avoid. What are you avoiding?
You're avoiding the majority of speculations and suspicions
that come to your head in a negative
way,
even even in the positive way to a
certain extent.
What's the positive way? When you assume
something about a person a little bit more
than what they possibly are, let's say you're
going to get into a business deal with
someone and you trust every person that you
do a business deal with. Well, you're gonna
fail. People are going to throw you under
the bus with that.
So a Muslim is not the type that
is just submissive to everything and just nice
nice nice everywhere. No. A Muslim does have
a strong character.
But
it does focus mostly on the negative suspicions,
because human nature is we tend to be
more negative than positive, aren't we, in our
suspicions, unless you're raised
really right, and, you're used to it as
a habit.
Allah does say avoid.
Avoid means don't act
on much of your suspicions.
Be careful. Take a step back. Think about
it. Analyze it before you take any action,
and think whether you should take any action.
So
to paraphrase,
in other words,
do not act
on
the majority of your suspicions. The majority of
your suspicions
are sinful if you were to act on
them, meaning you will do sinful things.
Otherwise, thinking
or formulating an opinion about someone is natural
and normal and sometimes actually good. And there
are 4 ways that we look at suspicion
in the Qur'an. Obviously we understand this from
the sunnah of the Prophet
The first one
is a good suspicion.
The good suspicion is when you know somebody
who loves Allah and His Messenger, got amazing
character, even if they're not Muslim, but they're
known for their good character, their honesty.
You have a neighbor who,
you've lived next to and grown to see,
through evidence that they are honest people. When
you travel, they look after your belongings. You
may have cats and you say, can you
look after my cats? You come back, and
they're very healthy and fit and they've been
fed. Well, that's a trustworthy neighbor.
And you may have formulated a negative opinion
in the beginning, that's possible, nothing wrong with
that. You never showed it though. And then
after dealing with them,
you formulated
a good opinion of them. That's something which
Allah rewards you for, because you give people
the credit that they deserve.
And a Muslim should give the credit to
people that they deserve based on goodly suspicion.
The only thing is that if you're the
type of person who doesn't trust anyone until
they've proved themselves, then that's fine. Just don't
act on the initial suspicion, because you can
get it really wrong.
Especially if somebody
who is known for their pride and their
righteousness, their honesty, or in general, they may
have some flaws, some
weaknesses in their character, but it but majority
of their
character is good and trustworthy, honest,
then we formulate a good suspicion about that
person and give them the benefit of the
doubt, especially between husband and wife, because they're
the closest thing to each other, and they're
going to see a lot from each other's
flaws and ups and downs. And Allah
says, assume well of each other.
Now, brothers and sisters, that's the first point,
and that's generally what a Muslim should be.
Give people the benefit of the doubt. So
for example, a man came to Umar Bil
Khattab
and said to him,
there's this man who I trust, and he's
amazing, and I think we can work with
him in business and and and and give
him a position, and so on and so
forth. Amr al B'alayna said to him, how
do you know him? Have you traveled with
him? He said, no. He said, have you
dealt in business with him to try him
out? He said, no. He said, have you
been through any hardships with him and seen
how he is? He said, no. He said,
perhaps you might have seen him praying a
lot in the Masjid, going up and down
reading Quran very nicely. He said, yes. He
said, you don't know him?
So, Islam is quite practical as well.
Again, just don't be hasty
in formulating
a judgement and then acting upon it, writing
about that person and telling other people about
it.
The second type of suspicion
is also
okay. In fact, it's called the necessary suspicion,
which you cannot avoid. And that's usually people
in power who need to make judgements, for
example, and they have to take,
decisions, such as a teacher or a,
a coordinator or or a head of a
of of a school, to decide whether a
student deserves to stay at school, or expelled,
or put on a suspension, or demerit, or
whatever. Or a judge in the court, where
not all the evidence is presented, but they
have to give a probability
weighing them out and make
a suspicion or a probability of judgement. But
in this there is caution.
Don't take the extreme approach.
But this is also a non sinful suspicion
when you have to make a decision in
authority. The 3rd type of suspicion
is also okay, and but it's a little
bit tricky. It requires a little bit of
emotional intelligence, you have to be socially smart,
you would have had some experience with people,
and that's when somebody you've hung around with
a lot,
or you know them, could be a family
member, a friend, a colleague at work or
at school, and you've seen much of their
character, and their character has already shown you
that there is a lot of dishonesty in
their life. Or they might be 2 faced,
or they might be backbiters, or they might
be on and on.
That type of suspicion is permissible.
And you can also act on that suspicion,
but you've got to take caution with that
one. How does a Muslim act on suspicion
of a person when factually
they are not good in certain ways? Well,
you've got to separate. You've got to look
at their good side and their bad side.
And then that bad side which has now
become factual to you and you've experienced
it, then you can act upon it in
a way that you don't harm yourself, in
a way that it won't harm other people,
but not to increase the harm on that
person. So for example, a person wants to
do business with you, and you've already,
dealt with them before and found that they're
dishonest, or they're lazy, or they're not they
don't have good management. You don't have to
do business with that person anymore. You don't
have to lend them money anymore. You don't
have to do certain things. So,
balance it out. See the good in a
person and the bad in a person.
And that leaves us with the 4th suspicion,
the 4th conjecture, and that is the true
sin. This is what we have to be
careful about. What is it? To assume or
speculate about someone when there is no grounds
to speculate about them. Or based on doubts,
based on suspicion.
That's what Allah is saying. Avoid much of
your suspicion, and that's the majority of our
time.
Example.
You might see a person at the mosque,
get up and go to the shoe rack,
and grab someone else's shoes.
You might have also known about them, that
they've had some issues together or some quarrels,
and then you see that person taking the
other person's shoe.
The automatic suspicion
is that this person is deliberately stealing that
other person's shoe or to make his life
hard, especially the fact that we just witnessed
a quarrel between them or they have some
issues.
That does not have grounds,
no matter what your suspicions are. Some people
think that they are so good at telling
and and and reading minds, or, you know,
have you ever heard someone say, see, I've
got a really good eye for things.
I'm a good judge. I knew it.
Don't do that. The shaitan makes you feel
that's vanity.
Only
knows the intentions. Only knows the secrets. Don't
ever say that. That is a way to
destroy your own self.
So, this person,
there are a 100 possibilities of why, or
maybe I'm exaggerating, maybe at least 5 that
you can name, maybe the person
has a sight problem.
Maybe that person was
occupied with something in his mind and accidentally
took the wrong shoe. Maybe the person has
the same shoe and mistaken for for for
his own shoe. Maybe the person thought, you
know what? I've asked that person permission because
my shoes are wrecked, and I'm just going
to borrow them, and I'll bring them back.
Maybe he bought the shoes off him, and
you just didn't know. There are many possibilities,
as you can see. And the Prophet
used to tell us,
Give your brother the benefit of the doubt
in these types of situations. That's the majority
time. So brothers and sisters, I've seen people's
families break up.
People's lives are ruined
based on acting on suspicion
with no clear grounds.
Remember the first verse of the Quran in
Surat Al Horatul it says,
clarify,
verify. And
very importantly, is it your business really to
get involved? People's secrets, people's personal affairs?
If not, then don't even go there. Just
leave it between them 2.
Unless you wanna reconcile
a problem between them and you're able to
and you're welcome to, then go ahead and
you'll be rewarded.
time.
time.