Husain Sattar – Picking the Positive
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AI: Transcript ©
It's in the nature of every human being
that they need to be
encouraged
and that they need to see signs of
progress in their life.
It's interesting. There's a lot of studies done
about this, what keeps people happy.
You know, there's these discussions. People write books
about what makes you happy, and people do
studies on what makes human beings happy. And
they say that one of the things one
of the theories about what makes a person
happy is that
they can see things getting done that makes
people happy. So, for example, if you gave
a a person a very, very long task
and it was a big task and it
lasted for many, many months,
that person tends to be very depressed throughout
the entire task. But if you take that
same task and you break it up into
a bunch of tiny milestones that people can
reach, then they tend to get very happy
over that period of time because they reach
one milestone, then they reach the next milestone,
then they reach the next milestone, then they
reach the next milestone.
So this is human nature that human beings,
they have this tendency to
basically, they require feedback.
They require some kind of positive feedback, and
when they get that positive feedback, then that
encourages them. It that's what happiness is in
in in the end. It's an way of
encouraging 1 a person.
So
that makes human beings happy. That encourages human
beings.
So this exists in the life of this
world,
and,
it's an important principle in the life of
this world, and it's an important way by
which we have to interact with one another
in the life of this world. And it's
an important way that
those Rasool Allah sallahu alaihi wa sallam interacted
with his companions.
He was very positive.
Prophet alaihi wasalam
was very positive in the way he dealt
with his companions.
And it's interesting that as I've interacted with
our masha'ikh and our teachers, they have the
same characteristic.
They're very positive.
You sit with Sheikh Zofekar, for example.
You no matter what you tell him, he
pulls something positive out of it. You tell
him I'm the worst of your students and
this and this. You give you know, you
sit in front of him and you have
all these complaints, and he'll find some positive
thing and say
So it's human nature. This is what we
require. And you you look at the,
you look at the case of Rasulullah
and the way he treated his companions, and
we know that each of them thought that
they were you know, I mean, we know
that there was a famous example where one
of the companions thought that he was as
good as Abu Bakr
or as good as Omar
and that was because the prophet treated him
that way. So that's very positive feedback. You
know, if your companion is feeling
that the prophet
is treating me the same way with the
same attention, with the same love that he
treats Hazrat Umar
and Hazrat Abu Bakr,
then you can just imagine what kind of
positive
feedback there must have been coming from the
prophet alaihi sallam.
And we know from other narrations that the
prophet that the companions,
they felt that when they were sitting with
those, each
one felt that they were the most special
in the gathering.
Each one felt that they were the most
special in the gathering because he for some
reason, the prophet had such positivity
coming from him,
such a positive attitude coming from him that
it would each it it would it would
just emanate on each person, and they would
feel like, you know, he's exactly speaking to
me and he's if he's smiling, he must
have smiled at me. If he looked, he
must have looked at me.
And this is this was a a very
unique characteristic of,
and it's also present in our teachers. It's
also present in our.
I've seen it with Sheikh Zulfikar, how many
times he pulls something positive. I remember one
time someone came to him. I was sitting
with him, and someone came and complained. This
was a student of knowledge.
Student of knowledge came, and they began complaining
that,
you know, I'm studying, but I don't do
my lessons,
and
I don't do my I don't do my
worship on time, and I don't do my
on time, and I don't there was not
one positive thing that person said. The only
thing they said in the very beginning, they
said that I'm a I'm a student of
knowledge. I'm trying to I'm trying to be
a student of knowledge. And then they it
was a list of 20 bad things. I
don't study. I don't I had missed my
prayers sometimes. I missed my dhikr. I barely
read Quran.
And 1 by 1 by 1 by 1,
they listed all these problems.
So I'm sitting there, and I'm I was
just quiet, and I happened to just be
in the room. Actually, they weren't speaking to
me. They were speaking to him. And I'm
listening, listening, listening, and I'm thinking, you know,
what is he gonna say back?
And finally, he turns to them when they're
all done. First thing he says when they're
all done, he says,
have you said everything you need to say?
You know, like, go ahead and just tell
me everything. Put it all on one plate
so when I clean it, I clean it
good. You know? It's not gonna be that
we're gonna wash this dish 10 times. So
he puts so he says, you know, is
there anything else you have to say? So
the person says, you know, just thinking quietly
and then reflects and says, you know, no,
I don't have anything more to say. So
he says then he turns to them and
he says that, you know,
when the general gets sick,
then
the army gets very concerned.
When the general gets sick, then the army
gets very concerned.
But if the soldier gets sick, it's okay.
They're replaceable.
Just that simple statement.
When the general gets sick His car is
blocking. His car is blocking.
Car is blocking if you have to leave.
Solar PT Cruiser. Solar PT Cruiser. If you're
blocking, please move it. Solar PT Cruiser.
So what I was saying was he said
that when the general gets sick
when the general gets sick, then the army
becomes very concerned.
And when the soldier gets sick, it's not
such a big deal.
Alright? He just made that simple statement,
and and the person was quiet.
And then he could see that the person
didn't understand, you know, the the moshayah. They
say a few words, and then they see
that the person get what I was saying
or not. And then they add to that
if they need to. I myself was confused.
What was he trying to say? And then
he basically went on to explain that, look.
By becoming a student of the dean, by
putting yourself in that situation,
you have you are training yourself to be
a general,
I e, you're going to lead the community.
And you if you're making an effort to
lead the community when you're sick, the whole
community is dependent on you because you're the
general. So the whole battalion is dependent on
you. So if you become sick, Allah
will make your cure much more,
will make your cure very rapid and will
make sure that you're cured because of the
fact that there's so many other people dependent
on you.
So his final advice was despite the fact
that all the negative things that you told
me, let's take the one positive thing
and let's expound on that positive thing and
make it a means of encouraging you. Basically,
that was what was happening.
So he encouraged the person, encouraged the person,
and,
that person went on. They completed their studies,
and they improved themselves, and they benefit the
community, and that's a positive thing. Now I
know we're human beings. We all have deficiencies.
And if we sat here and we began
to elucidate those deficiencies, no one would survive.
But this is, the this the positive is
what the dean emphasizes.
The positive is what the Deen emphasizes. Now
what's gonna happen on the day of judgment?
There's a Sahih Hadith Sahih Hadith, very famous
Hadith. In fact, it happened to be recited
here just a few days ago at Fajr
prayer,
when Mufti Husayn I mean, he can expound
on hadith much better than I, but he
he read this hadith to us,
and it's come up in the past as
well, especially during our tafsir session where the
Allah
on the day of judgment
will draw one of his servants very near.
And this servant will have committed, you know,
many mistakes
many mistakes.
And,
then he will be asked, did you commit
this mistake? Did you commit this mistake? A
to b to c to d to z,
etcetera. Each mistake will be elucidated.
Now this will this will be in between
a private conversation between Allah and this person,
meaning Allah will draw the person near. So
everybody's watching. It's the day of judgment. You
know, all of judgment's occurring. It's a it's
a public exposition. So
he brings this person near to him and
begins to whisper. Allah is whispering to this
person. Did you do this? Did you do
this? So nobody else can hear. Just this
person can hear. And the person begins to,
in shame, recognize
how many mistakes he's made. He's already know
knows it in his mind, but it's becoming
very clear to him and evident to him
that there's no escape on this day. And
at the very end of that interaction,
Allah
pulls something positive out of it. What does
Allah pull out of it? He says that
he says to the servant that I kept
your sins hidden in that in this life,
so they won't be revealed today,
and that person gets put into jannah. So
this is the way by which this deen
works. Allah
on the day of judgment
will scan the human being will scan the
human being and will find some iota of
good in that person, and based on the
iota of good, we'll reward them.
Based on the iota of good, we'll reward
them. So isn't that a sign of positivity?
Isn't it a sign of positivity that Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala says, okay, spend you know,
you spend the whole day how you spend
it, but once you pray, it washes away
everything else.
It could have been said that if you
pray for 5 minutes, it washes away 5
minutes,
but nowhere does it is that stated. If
you pray a prayer, it washes away the
time between the prayer so that the 5
minute prayer washes away 5 hours of mistake.
You know, the 1 month of Ramadan washes
away 11 months of mistake.
You know, the one Hajj for a week
and a half, which is not even that
long, technically speaking, you know, less than a
week, washes away a whole lifetime worth of
mistake. But look at the look at the
way that Allah
picks out the positive,
picks out the positive in a human being
and says, okay. Fine. Let's pick out this
let's find some excuse. This one human being
did this one Hajj. Let's use it as
an excuse to wipe everything away.
That's that's the nature of this deed. I
mean, look at the story of the famous
woman. You know, how many stories do we
have of the predecessors that came prior to
Rasulullah sallaihi wa sallam? Very few. You know,
we have the history, but we don't have
it stamped by the hadith.
But the prophet alaihi wasalam, he narrated some
incidents, some some circumstances that occurred prior to
his coming. And one of those famous narrations
in which he took an event from the
past and drew it into the present by
making it, by codifying it within hadith was
the famous story in which there was a
woman. She saw a dog. She saw the
dog was thirsty, and she got water out
of the well and gave it to the
dog despite the fact that she was busy,
it was difficult, whatever it might be. And
it so happened
that she happened to be somebody that was
prostituting herself.
Now what happens
based on her giving water to the dog,
Allah
forgives her and grants her Jannah.
So what's happening?
Essentially, Allah
takes the person's life and scans. You know,
it's like a scanner. You know, how you
sometimes have a scanner, you scan of something
you're you're interested in. You're scanning scanning scanning
finds one positive excuse
to lay a person in jannah
and then takes the excuse and uses it
as a mechanism to wash away all of
the mistakes.
That's the nature of this deed.
Now our deepest desire
is that we be dealt with positively.
I mean, that's really what we want on
the day of judgment. We want that Allah
to overlook the the numerous
the the the
the incomprehensible
substantial mistakes that we make. You know, they're
so numerous we can't even count them, but
we want Allah to look over those. We
don't want him to pick those. We don't
want him to pick those out and tease
those out. We want him to find the
positive within us, albeit
very, very minimal, albeit limited, albeit difficult to
find. We want Allah
to pick out some positive deed and based
on that one positive deed, place us into
jannah. And there are many examples of this
where Allah
selects a positive deed of an individual and
uses it as a mechanism to enter them
into jannah.
And that's our desire.
Now and not only is that our desire,
it's our dependency.
I shouldn't even say it's our desire. It's
our need.
It's our need. Because on the day of
judgment, none of us is going to stand
before Allah with something worthy of getting into
Jannah. Which person's gonna be able to say,
I spent my whole life
worshiping you the way you deserve to be
worshiped,
so now I should deserve Jannah. That would
have been a fair exchange. In fact, that's
not even a fair exchange because you spent
60 years worshiping, and Allah is going to
give you infinite time in Jannah.
But none of us have that. There is
no human being with rare exception
who were blessed by Allah
to have that type of faith and that
type of strength. I mean, that's the strength
of the prophets.
So we are in deep desire and deep
need that we
that Allah deals with us positively
on the day of judgment.
Now the one single premise that you have
to recognize, if you want if you first,
you have to recognize the need for us
to be dealt with positively,
the dependency that we have on this positive
treatment of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. But we
have to take it one step further. And
then you have to recognize that if you
desire to be dealt with in this positive
manner, then the mechanism by which you attract
that is to deal with others positively as
well.
If you don't deal with others positively,
then you're you're gone.
You're gone. And what's the proof of that?
The proof of that is look at the
example of the people who Allah banished to
hellfire.
You know? Abu Lahab, for example. Right? What
was his story? I mean, basically, he had
some good in him. There must have been
some good deeds that he did. He he
gave water to the pilgrims. He gave some
charity. He must have done some good deeds,
but when it came to being positive towards
Rasulullah
he was so negative so negative that he
banished himself.
So because he wasn't ready to deal positive
positively, although the others, they were they had
some positive in them, but because he openly
dealt negatively with Rasulullah sallahu alaihi wa sallam,
that sealed his faith.
Sealed his faith.
So our demand
is to our our
mechanism of having Allah
deal with us that way is for us
to deal with others that way.
Anytime we deal with anyone,
you should always pick the positive out of
the situation.
When we're dealing with our spouses, the secret
to marriage
the secret to marriage is what? It's to
accept the deficiency of a human being and
to find something positive within that person.
That's what marriage is.
Every marriage is imperfect because you're
inherently, the nature of marriage is that you
take 2 people who are deficient
and and imperfect and put them together. Now
when you put 2 people that are imperfect,
you multiply the imperfection.
It it's a compounding factor.
These 2 imperfect people, when they get together
in a room, they are going to compound
each other's imperfections
because they will be mirrors for one another.
They will reveal to each other exactly what's
wrong with them.
Alright? So then what's the solution to marriage?
Is it the marriage is just supposed to
be, you know,
it's supposed to create a hellfire in the
house?
No. The perp the whole idea behind marriage
is you overlook the mistakes of the other
person, you find the positive within those peep
within another person, and you learn to expound
on the positive. You magnify the positive, and
it's under the magnifying lens of that positivity
that the rest dissipates.
And that's a happy marriage.
That's a happy relationship between husband and wife,
and the same relationship has to exist between
father and son.
You know, if the son spends his whole
life saying, my father isn't this, my father
isn't this, my father isn't this, my father
isn't that, they will never have a positive
relationship.
Never. And if this father is looking at
the son and remembering everything that the son
isn't, I wanted you to be a medical
doctor. You're not a medical doctor. You know,
look at all these people. How come he
you know, your friend this went to did
this, and your friend that did that. That
type of negativity
is so crushing to a child.
It's so crushing to a child that they
lost their child. They don't realize that their
child may stand in front of them and
call them dad,
but they lost their child.
And a little bit of positive reinforcement,
it creates such a bond between mother between
mother and son or mother and daughter, etcetera,
that it takes the relationship
far, far, far along its path of development.
So we have to be people of positivity.
Now when we deal with people in the
outside world, we can complain about them,
or we can be positive. And, look, you
know, people are just looking for a little
bit of positive reinforcement. I will tell you
more the best dua
the best isn't to go and tell people
about Islam. You can tell people about Islam.
It becomes an academic discussion.
The best is to be is to deal
positively with people
and to make them feel special because there's
nobody in their life that makes them feel
special.
Certainly, most people in the world don't make
other people feel special.
But if you are positive with them and
you encourage them and you pick out the
good within them and you highlight that, they
become very closely drawn to you.
They'll become very close to you. And then
for them to accept Islam is a very
simple step forward. There's no leap there. It's
just a natural second step.
So we have to be people of positivity.
If we want happiness in our lives, we
should be positive.
If we want happiness in our homes, we
should be positive.
If we want happiness in our communities, we
should be positive. And if we want happiness
among the in the effort that we make,
we have to be positive.
Human beings, they need positive
interaction. They're designed that way.
They're designed that when you give them something
positive, they turn towards you know, it's like
you see certain animals, you see a cat.
When you scratch the cat on the back
of the neck, the cat comes right back
to you.
The cat comes and does exactly what you
want. That by the time you're done, if
you give the cats 3 3 scratches on
the back of the neck, the cat will
follow you everywhere you go.
The cat will follow you everywhere you go.
And it's funny because this is what the
masha'ik are trying to do to begin with.
All they're trying to do is make the
muridin little cats, you know, that those people
follow the sunnah and follow Rasulullah
wherever he goes.
So what did Rasulullah
do with his companions? He gave them a
couple scratches,
each one a smile, each one a handshake,
each one a positive word.
Those few scratches, they make that tingle go
down your spine. And those people were sold.
Wherever he went, they went. Whatever he commanded,
they did. Whatever the demands were, they met
them
because of that positive interaction.
That positive interaction drove them so he was
such
a master of this because he was a
reflection of the dean and the dean masters
this. The person of the dean masters this.
So you see that he had the he
had a happy household. He had happy family,
happy relatives, etcetera.
Yes. They underwent difficulty, but they were always
happy in that difficulty. They even though they
were starving, even though they were having these
in immense difficulties,
they were happy.
They were happy because they had that they
understood the prophet understood human beings. Of course,
he did because he was a teacher of
human beings. He was the guide to all
of humanity.
So, of course, he understands human beings.
Do we have to learn from that? We
have to learn to you know, you don't
kick a cat and make it come back
to you. You scratch the cat on the
back of the neck, and then it comes
back to you. So it's the same thing.
When we deal with people, when we deal
with our spouses, you deal with a little
bit of a scratch. A little bit of
a scratch on the back takes you a
long way,
long way. When you deal with your children,
when you deal with your loved ones, when
you deal with your parents, etcetera,
this is the mechanism by which you progress
people in the deed.
So we should be people of positivity. I
cannot tell you how many times how many
times,
Sheikh Zulfikar has taught this simple message.
Simple message that we should be positive.
You know, you should have some positivity in
there. I told you the story that he
asked me to write an email once, then
I started writing the email. And after I
wrote the email, he looked at it, and
he got very upset at me. He said,
how come you didn't say dear so and
so? And how come you didn't say how
are you doing? How are things? And I
just wrote a very business like email and
just sent I was about to send it.
And he looked at it and he said,
no. This is not how you write an
email. You write dear so and so. I'm
doing how are you doing? I hope things
are well.
I'm doing fine. You have to say a
few things, and then you have to say
what you wanna say. So he stopped me,
and he he rectified that. Again, what was
he teaching? A little bit of positivity goes
a very long way. Yet he wanted to
achieve something in that email. It was a
business email. He had a goal of achieving
something. But by getting a couple positive lines
in in the beginning,
he was much more likely to get what
he needed.
And it had something to do with about
seeds and getting information on how to grow
different seeds in some particular soil, and he
wanted this person's expert opinion.
But, of course, if you want something, you
have to give a little bit of positive
feedback, and people will be much more likely
to write you back and say, you know,
yes. I do this and I do this,
and then you write them back and you
thank them, and that's how you continue to
build these types of relationships.
So we have to be people of positivity.
We're dependent on it. We are dependent on
it for our own needs because we want
Allah to deal with us positively,
and we are dependent on it for our
happiness in this life.
So it behooves us to be very careful
about this issue
very careful about this issue. This is the
way our masha'a were. They were very particular.
They they took the time out. And, again,
it's a reflection of Rasoolallah, sunnah,
dealing with people. And in essence, that's a
reflection of the way that Allah will deal
with people on the day of judgment. So
just as we seek to be dealt with
positively,
we should also deal positively with others as
well.