Bilal Assad – Character #07 Cultivating Boundaries
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the negative impact of spying on people's political and personal finances, citing quotes from the Prophet peace be upon them. They warn against spying on anyone at any particular time, and suggest that it is best to be mindful of privacy and privacy rules when it comes to spying. The speaker also warns against relying on practical advice to avoid such harm and that spying should only be used when it is a serious matter.
AI: Summary ©
Assalamu alaikum.
Thank you for joining me once again in
our mini series where we're talking about Surat
Al Hujurat,
and in those beautiful verses about a Muslim's
character. Without them, you cannot develop yourself.
And we've reached the part where Allah says
Get ready for it. This one's a little
bit tough to talk about.
Walla tajasasoo.
Walla tajasasoo.
Do not spy.
What's very interesting about quoting that verse is
that Allah did not specify
anything
more than just saying do not spy. It's
a very general statement.
Don't spy on anyone. Just don't spy.
No ands, ifs, or buts.
Spying in Islam is one of those terrible
sins
which all the scholars agree
you shouldn't do.
In fact, spying is what can cause mental
illnesses in people, cause them paranoia, obsessiveness,
and can destroy families.
I've heard of a lot of families
spying on one another
until it's become a chronic type of illness
against one another where nobody trusts anyone else.
Spying only leads to terrible outcomes.
When
Allah says,
Do not spy,
obviously he's the one who created us and
knows the ramifications of things.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, I was
actually reading
this beautiful hadith,
and I'll share it with
you. He says:
O people
who have professed belief
verbally with their tongues,
But faith has not yet entered your heart.
Do not pry into the affairs of the
Muslims,
or anyone else for that matter.
For he who will pry into the affairs
of the Muslims,
Allah will pry into his affairs,
and he whom Allah follows inquisitively
is disgraced by him in his own house.
The hadith isn't by Abu Dawood. Now I
add in that little bit about anyone for
that matter, because it's a very bad habit.
Don't pry on anybody. But at the time,
the Prophet, peace be upon him, was talking
to the Muslims, of course, and it was
a Muslim community
living around anybody, even non Muslims. Prying is
a disease. I came across another amazing hadith
I also want to share with you, and
that the Prophet, peace be upon him, also
said: If you start prying into the secret
affairs of the people,
you will pervert them,
or at least drive them very near.
Perversion
and the hadith is in Abu Dawud means,
you take people out of the fold of
goodness.
Yet another hadith says, when you happen to
form an evil opinion about somebody, do not
pry
about it.
And this one really hit me hard. The
prophet, peace be upon him, said,
The one who saw a secret
affair of somebody and then concealed it
is as though he saved a girl
who had
been buried alive.
The hadith
is authentic.
In those days, they used to bury
girls alive,
some of them buried little boys,
of fear of disgrace, they said, until Islam
came in and said,
the baby girl shall be questioned on a
day of judgment for what crime was she
killed.
Can you imagine how the prophet, peace be
upon him, is equating,
concealing other people's
private affairs
to saving a girl from being buried alive?
That means
abstaining from prying on people's secret affairs
is a tremendous
reward in the community for yourself, for your
family and your hereafter, like saving a life.
Because spying does lead to murder.
Spying leads to death.
Spying has led to what we call honour
killings, although Islam does not
believe in honour killings, although Islam does not
teach that.
Spying
has led to divorces,
spying has led
to families breaking apart, children running away,
spying has led to cousins and relatives
being split apart.
Spying leads neighbors
to not trust one another and build high
walls and great security because they live in
fear.
Spying is terrible and horrible.
But I can hear.
A lot of us are saying, well, hold
on a minute. Sometimes we do need to
spy. Isn't there a situation where we spy,
Islam allows it, where we're not sinned?
Islam is a practical religion,
but you gotta be very careful in doing
that. You gotta you're treading on very thin
ice.
So only in very, very, very,
rare circumstances
a person can spy,
but only when the benefit outweighs the harm,
and the benefit is very worthy, and you're
obliged.
An example of that
is, say,
you know someone
who is
factually
and really about to seriously harm someone else,
and
there's a life at stake, there's families at
stake, there's property at stake, there's serious harm
at stake, and the only way to go
about it is to spy on that person.
But why are you spying? In order to
stop them.
So, spying
is in order only when it's halal, only
to save lives or to protect other people
when there's no other way.
The second way the scholars spoke about and
I think it's Imam and Noah who spoke
about it,
and al Mawardhi, many scholars of the past,
they said that when you have
a well founded and factual reason with evidence
that
you have
a real reason to suspect someone near to
you,
and there's going to be some harm happening,
such
as infidelity,
such as
cheating on one another,
then you can spy
if it means that it's going to stop
it and save
a marriage,
save a family,
save people from
all sorts of harm, and if that's the
only way, then do it. However,
great experts have told us that even spying
on your, say,
husband's phone, or your wife's phone for example,
or their secret
technology,
is not advisable at all,
even if you can justify it. And the
reasons they said is
a person can hide that information,
a person can use another device,
And sometimes
the shaitan may come to us and make
us suspect someone
on unreasonable grounds.
We spy on their devices and find nothing.
And then if we're caught, it could create
a problem with the trust between the husband
and wife, between parents and children,
and so on. So it's always advisable
that spying should not be the
resort,
and it should be the absolute last resort,
and only
if it is a serious matter, and it
most likely will save a terrible
outcome.
Did you know that even
with parents and their children,
parents are forbidden from spying on their children?
If a child has a private room, you
should knock.
But you're probably asking at what age.
Well, children who have reached puberty already. Teenagers,
adult children.
Of course, it's common sense that when your
child is really small and and depending on
you and don't know any better,
you're permitted to spy.
But we don't really call it spying, we
just call caring
and watching out for them, such as to
look at their devices, their iPad, or who
they're talking to because they're at risk of
harm, and they don't know any better, and
they don't know how to defend themselves. That's
okay, and that's fine. What we're talking about
is when your children
reach puberty,
then you've got to give them some space.
You've got to respect their privacy.
You might say, well, what if they're up
to something? How am I going to save
them? You'll never save them and protect them
through spying.
The only way that you will protect them
is through communication.
Even between husband and wife, if you suspect
each other, then communicate. That is the best
thing.
Another thing that we have to look at
is that in Islam, spying is so bad
that, believe it or not, there is a
rule that if somebody
peeks into someone else's house,
through a hole for example,
and in the Islamic law that person's eye
got poked out by the
ramification on the owner of the house. It's
that serious.
Why? Because the outcome and the consequence is
much worse, spying on people's honour and spying
on people's private affairs.
So, my brothers,
so this verse again, walatajasasil,
is another way of a character of a
believer,
and something that will save you
from harm
and can only be used in
absolute serious circumstances.
May Allah
protect us all from harm
and always assist us in guiding us to
keeping
our community, families and affairs together,
and grant us the best in this world
and in the next.