Love For Humanity What You Love For Yourself

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the giver of mercy. Muslims must be committed to the well being of other people. Muslims must have this authentic, sincere and genuine commitment

to the well being of others. Muslims must love for others, but they love for themselves. They must be sincere in loving goodness for other people, and loving guidance for other people. This is a foundational principle in Islam. This should be a Muslim state of being, how they relate to others, and fundamentally how they relate to themselves. Because if you don't love yourself, how can you love anyone else? So what I mean by self love here is not egocentrism, or some kind of egotistic narcissistic thing, but rather, it's a mature self love. echoed by Al ghazali, and even echoed by Erich Fromm. You could read his book, The Art of loving, which is a type of self love that is

mature, which basically means that you want goodness for yourself, you love goodness for yourself. So if you don't love yourself, how can you love anybody else? So this is a foundational principle. It's the state of being of a Muslim, it is the state of being of a Muslim, the way they relate to themselves and others must be loving, they must be genuine and authentic and sincere in the well being of other people and fundamentally themselves.

And this stems from the Islamic tradition, the Prophet Muhammad, may God's peace and blessings be upon him said in a prophetic tradition, which is also known as a Hadeeth. Plural ahaadeeth. He said, in a hadith that is authentic, that's narrated by Al Bukhari, you won't truly believe unless you love for your brother, what you love for yourself. And interestingly, the word brotherhood or brother is used in Arabic, it he your brother? Now many people misunderstand this prophetic tradition, and they think it only means Muslim brother, Muslim sister, or religious brotherhood and sisterhood. No, it does include that. But it also includes insignia humanity, in actual fact, the

famous classical scholar, and now we who took it took this hadith took this prophetic tradition, and he put it in his arbaeen he put it in, in his 40

Hadith collection, he comments and says, this means humanity and to love for humanity. What you love for yourself means that you love goodness for them, and you love guidance for them. So from this point of view, Muslims must be committed to the well being of other people. They must love goodness for people and love guidance for people. And by the way, this is echoed by other prophetic traditions. For example, you can find a prophetic tradition in Muslim Ahmed, and you can find something very specific that echoes what we're seeing here in Tareq al Kabir and is narrated by Al Bukhari. And it is an authentic tradition, but it's not very well known, where the Prophet Mohammed

upon whom BP said, love for humanity, what you love yourself, love for the people. Right? That Arabic here is Lynette, the people for humanity. So love for humanity, what you love for yourself. So be genuine and authentic and sincere in being committed to the well being of others that you love goodness for people and you love guidance for all people. This is what it means to be a Muslim. This is the state of being of a Muslim, how they relate to themselves fundamentally, and how they relate to other people. And by the way, this is echoed by our classical scholarship. It's not only only unknowably, the classical scholar, but there's other scholars, for example, the Maliki scholar from

the Maliki School of jurisprudence, his name was, let me get this right. Even topic aid. He echoes similar sentiments that we must love for humanity, what we love for ourselves. This is what a Muslim is about. These are the kinds of spiritual lenses that we must put on our hearts in order to relate to ourselves and to relate to other people. And once you do that, everything changes so be sincere, be authentic and be genuine and committed to the well being of other people that you that you love goodness for them. And you love guidance for them. Do it and see what happens. Everything changes