Ismail Kamdar – The character of a Muslim Justin Parrott
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So I want to come with a how to lock you gotta catch up everybody
joining me and shape use Magneto Kandar from South Africa. I'm really happy to talk to him today. And he's got a lot of great things to say to us. So Sheikh, would you introduce yourself? So I'm really lucky Barakatuh firstly, thanks for having me on, Justin. It's a pleasure to finally see you face to face, even though it's online. Inshallah we meet in person soon.
But yeah, a little bit about myself. I've been involved in Islamic work my entire life, started studying the audio program when I was 13. I started doing Dawa, and lecturing when I was 15. And yeah, I've been involved in Islamic work my entire life. So I graduated the Alinea program at age 20. Identity, the bachelors in Islamic Studies. Currently, I'm working with Yaqeen Institute heading the book publication department. So I'm the product manager of getting books. And I also had the Islamic self help and recently launched this academy. And I've written a humbler over 20 books at this point on various topics related to Islam and personal development. And yeah, I think that's
about it. Mashallah, thank you.
So today, we decided that we were going to talk about a Deb and a flop in Islam. And that is manners and a flap is character. So it's the good deeds to do on the outside, and the good deeds that come from the inside, in the heart. So all of that is wrapped together. And all of that is extremely important in Islam, and sometimes think we don't emphasize it enough, not only preaching it, but practicing it ourselves. So with that said, Sheriff, why don't you just go ahead and get us started? What is a flop? And why is it important? Why do you want to talk about it today?
Sure, so the words are the clock, which often used interchangeably refer to two different types of our social relationships, right? A clock, as you mentioned, is the internal. So a clock is like our,
our humility, our piety, our sincerity, generosity is the internal qualities of the heart, that we are supposed to develop and nurture to purification of the soul. Other or manners is the external manifestation of that. So generosity is the o'clock, charity is the madness, right? Humility is the o'clock.
being humbled in your speech and actions is your manners. So for every internal quality, there are external actions that complemented and these, this field of other club, it is one of the four main subjects of Islam that every Muslim is supposed to study. So we know the many fields in Islamic Studies, right, and some are very deep is not meant for everybody. Like not everybody has to study the various recitations of the Quran, or the Sunnah, the methodology of fitna, everybody has to study that. But there are four fields that I feel every Muslim should have a basic understanding. The first is our Aqeedah. Our beliefs, every Muslim should know the Six Pillars of faith, and what
that entails, they should firmly believe in it. The second is our faith, which is our legal rulings. So every Muslim should at least know the basic facts of the local madhhab of the school of thought of the community.
The third is purification of the soul. So every Muslim should know how to advance spiritually and get closer to God through various good deeds. And the fourth is UCLA, every Muslim should know how to behave like a Muslim. I think that's the best way to describe other than UCLA, how to behave like a Muslim. And I feel like nowadays, one of the problems we have is that when we educate people, or the binnacle out is often left out. It's not a topic that we that we discuss. And that's very different from the early Muslims, because the early Muslims had to sing, study other before you study Arabic. So you learn the manners first, and later on, you learn the deeper sciences. But what
we have today is many people who have unrefined banners, or who have very vulgar ways of speaking, whose hearts may be filled with arrogance or hypocrisy are the spiritual diseases are not focusing on improving their hearts, they're not focusing on improving their manners. Instead, they are learning advanced sciences and then they are using those sciences in the wrong manner because they don't have the spiritual development needed to to use the sciences in a way that is pleasing to Allah subhanho wa taala. So this study of other one o'clock it should come first and I really believe it should come when when we are too
Children when we are really, really young, it should be something that stay at every stage of our life journey. From the time you are a little child, your parents should be emphasizing good manners they should be emphasizing good character. When you go to school, your teacher should be emphasizing the same at the masjid, the Imam should be emphasizing the same. When you become an adult, your mentors, your teachers, that university, everyone should have this emphasis on manners and character. Because this is a core part of being a believer. It is such an important part of being a believer that in one of the Hadith, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that the deen that
is heaviest on the Day of Judgment is good manners, from all of the good deeds that we can do the extra good deeds, the secondary good deeds, the one that carries the most weight or the Day of Judgment is just having good manners just being being good to people, and being refined in your character is amongst the greatest good deeds that we could do. So this this is why it's an important topic, that this is one of the four most fundamental fields of Islamic studies that every Muslim should study and should not
do. Is that the law fair? Yeah, that's absolutely correct. I, myself noticed this even long ago, in a lot of the curriculum, Islamic Studies, curriculum, from the song point of view, that a thought was kind of like tagged on at the end, or it wasn't there at all. And like you said, that's backwards, because we have many statements from the earliest Muslims who they would study at the lab, many years before their study, and in here means the technical knowledge, like this scientific knowledge, the science of had these sciences, like that. So they had to have this like pre moral wreck, or I'm sorry, prerequisite, which is sort of, to have more character, to be able to advance
and succeed in studying the sciences. And a couple of things off top, my head that while you were talking is
I've studied bizarrely a lot. And he has this
parable where he explains the sources of knowledge, because obviously, you get knowledge from books and scholars and teachers and everything like that. But there's an internal source of knowledge and this is modified, which is distinct from and write and is the knowledge you get outwardly from the scholar and mattify is knowledge that you get inwardly and he compares a heart to a well, you know, how do you get water in a well, well, you, you would first you can just like
divert the rivers to go into the well and the well filled with water. And that's like the outward knowledge, that's the him that's one way to em gets into the heart. But if you dig deep enough into the earth, you'll you'll start seeing water coming up from underneath the earth, right? So he compares your heart in this manner, so there's knowledge you can gain from the outside and then there's knowledge that you can gain from the inside, they are called, and my respectively. Because once you have this basic knowledge of Allah Subhana Allah and you see his attributes, you know, his attributes, and you see them in the in, in everyday life, you know, these things are reminding me of
Allah subhanho wa Taala Oh, that reminds me of the Name of Allah Subhana Allah Allah. And that accumulation of those experiences is mapnik flapper contributed to Matt Richter. So it's kind of like students need to have to know Allah Subhana Allah knows something about Allah Subhana Allah data, have some a little bit of magic, but first, isn't that requires a character, then they can go study the technical?
The technical sciences, as you said?
That's correct. Yeah.
So
how would How would a Muslim like study that today say you're a young Muslim?
You know, and I, you know, ideally, we would sit we would study the manners and the character of our teacher, our living teacher, or the man who we were living near side and that we would see every day and he would model all of our behaviors that we're supposed to have. And then not a lot of Muslims don't have that opportunity today because they might they might live where there's a masjid, but there's not a dedicated Imam there.
There might not be anybody in the masjid who could be a good model for that for
transferring this type of character to them. And then it's not something that you can just really get from books. I mean, you can learn character, what it is from books, but actually acquiring character.
usually that involves like,
imitating somebody who has good character. But modeling somebody, yeah. Yeah. So, so this young Muslim, you know, he's he's not got a lot of good role models around him or her. What do they do? How do you think they should
go about acquiring good character? Good? This is a excellent question. So, you know, ideally, character would be something you learn from your man from your parents, and from your teachers. But now, if someone is, for example, in a community, where they cannot find anyone who has the model character for believer, right, who's willing to teach them. So the primary way of learning this is modeling, which is you see how others behave, and you imitate them, which is really how all of us have picked up our basic manners, that character, like, our personalities are made up of the personalities of our parents, our friends, our teachers, we don't even realize how much of each of
them is within us, because that's how we pick up these things. If someone does not have access to the right people to learn as well. Again, of course, books do help books to help certain books to help so for example, books of Hadith focusing on good character definitely helps like Imam Al Bukhari, or they were moved from right or him and now he's Riyadh, Saudi, he these books definitely help. Because they give you at least the foundation, you need to let you know what you need to do, even if you don't have a model of how to do it. Another way to do it, if you don't have people around you to learn from is to study the biographies of the pious, right. So you may not have
someone in front of you to watch and learn from. But the more biographies you read of the prophets of the Sahaba, of the classical scholars of the of the righteous people of the past, the more their character becomes a part of you. So if you've read the biographies of 10, different righteous people, and all 10 of them, their biographies, show how to be humble. Their biographies, show how to be generous, how to be honest, right, then this will have an impact on your heart, you now have a model of how to do these things. So biographies are a good place to start for this. Of course, the ideal is to have a mentor and to model your mentor directly. And this is why the classical programs
for studying Islam are very effective in the character department, because what people do is they spend four to six years, living in an Islamic University or madrasa living with the teachers. They get to see how the teachers eat, how they sleep, how to interact with people, how they behave, when they angry, how they behave, when they're feeling weak, they get to have this lived experience with the teachers. And that's where they learn the clap from. Now, for those of us who are isolated, those of us who are studying online, those of us who don't have places that communities or we may be too old to be to go to such places, we're not going to have that experience. So for us studying
biographies, and reading books of Hadith, I think is the best starting place for learning o'clock and other.
Yeah, very good. I'm just thinking about my experience, you know, I convert to Islam when I was 20 years old. And my parents are Christians. And they, you know, they taught me pretty good manners.
Just with dealing with people and I good values and everything, and I treat others the way I wanted to be treated.
And then unconverted sun. And I lived in an area where we didn't really have a an imam that stuck around very long. And I was learning my Islamic knowledge on the internet like we do now. But it wasn't zoom back then it was PowerTOP. Those that's even still around, we took our classes on how to talk. So it's so it was kind of hard to do that. But yeah, you want to find that role model and handle, I did find a role model doctor to St. Awad, who came to be our man, the man for a few months and even though I was with him for a very short period of time, I learned so much and not not in I learned more from his manners than I did from the technical knowledge that he taught me.
But this is a problem for a lot of converts, you know, because their parents can't teach them Islamic manners. You know, they might have gotten good manners from their parents, but the parents can teach them Islamic manners, like all of the etiquette of the Sunnah, and send in etiquette and eating, sleeping, going up making job throughout the day, all of those things. So, converts have to pick that up on their own, which is a challenge.
And so it's super converts. If you're a convert, always trying to find a good
A righteous Muslim brother or sister, your sister
who can teach you these types of things? Yeah.
And another this another point that stuck out to me of what you said, and you talked about
reading the biographies of the righteous. And this is a great idea. It's a great points. I believe I was reading and even though Josie A while ago, and he answers this app, exact questions, what do you do if you can't find a shave?
And what if you do if you can't find a righteous friend, well, then, you know, the shacks are the ones that are have already died, and you read about their lives, you're in and you're in the in and want to find lonely, you know, I don't have any friends who said, well, the Companions, the prophets of Allah Highness and his companions, and their righteous predecessors are always with you, and you can read about their lives
and learn from them. And that's a great way to use your time because it's better to have no friends and to have bad friends. So if there actually, there are just no good friends around at all. Then you got to make friends with the, with our predecessors in the books.
And one in one thing I want to mention about Al Ghazali. And I do read up his alley quite a bit, but he his works take a little bit of a filter.
Because sometimes he
mentions pious person did something
incredible. Or, you know, for example,
there was a pious person who went out into the desert and fasted for eight or 10 days and didn't bring anything with it. Because he wanted to test this to look cool. And then he came back, and he was alive. And, you know, Hamdulillah, that's great.
But that, but that's what that story tells us is that it was really an exceptional situation, really, he had built up his faith to that point. And that was almost a kind of math, it was almost a miracle that Allah subhanho wa Taala had given this righteous person.
So I would say that there are stories like that, that are descriptive of the states of those people. And they're not necessarily prescriptive, and that we can't,
generally can't, like,
do exactly as they did, you know, if you went into the for, if you went into the forest to the desert, without any without anything, for eight or 10 days, you know, and you didn't know how to live out there, you probably probably die out there. Right. And so email Joe, Josie, he just when he was a, he warns about reading some of those
stories, because they have this descriptive
flavor, and they're not prescriptive, and that, you know, if people don't make that distinction, and they try to do something very extreme, they could hurt themselves.
But you know, those are, those are just some of the stories of find out there. But the, the big focus for us should be the Sahaba, because they didn't do
extreme acts of asceticism or anything like that, you know, they were always trying to follow the promise and that to the best of their ability. So I would say, read the life of the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam and read about the Sahaba starting with Rebecca, our men and ally, and then the 10, who went to Paradise, and then the rest of the Sahaba there's good books out the Sahaba like there's men and women around men and men and women are on the messenger. That's an English language. Good book.
But yeah, those types of personal stories, those are always good, especially especially if you are a people person. Right? So if if, you know I'm not a people person in the sense that I don't read very many br biographies. I read more technical, doctrinal type stuff, it just this I'm strong at that and that's my strong suits. I'm weaker on the biography side. I got to start reading more biographies, but other people if that's their strength, they should go for it and read all those stories and get as much as you can from them.
That is great advice. Thank you Shane.
Okay, so about
Adam and a flat so
in no plan were says in Medina just said a king. He says that a dean is
right, the dean is that
Add to
the men's yada
amends sciatica epidemic Z Attica. Dean. I'm live I'm saying that right he says the dean is manners, good manners and whoever has more better or better good manners and you is better than you in the deep. Right. And so if you think about Edom as something that's very comprehensive, you know, it's not just, you know, we think about etiquette Oh, I wash my hands I, I step into the masjid with my right foot, I make the job, you know, those are all important things.
But adept in this very comprehensive so as meaning which would include a flag, the inward head, it really it really does cover everything and it's not you know, I have my dad with a loss of Hannah Montana and have my dad with the messenger of allah sallallahu Sallam and his companions. I have my them with the other believers.
Him I them with my wife and children.
I have them with my parents, you know, there's just a loss of Hannah with Allah has told us given us guidance of how to behave with all of the people that we come across in our life, right? So it's very comprehensive, like idea, right?
What do you think?
Yeah. So when we look at the concept, manners and character in Islam, again, the mistake we made is we think only of the small things, right, and by small things that don't mean in terms of the virtues. But I mean, in terms of them, just being day to day practices, you know, that
that will fall under booster hub actions, recommended actions, but the word or the man is Islam, it's, it's comprehensive in that you have your manager ALLAH SubhanA, Allah to Allah so we should think well of Allah have listeners on below, that is part of our manager, Allah subhanho wa Taala we should be optimistic about the future that is part of our good manners towards Allah subhanho wa taala. We do not tolerate people, insulting Allah or insulting his messenger. sallallahu alayhi wasallam this is part of our manners towards Allah and His Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. A lot of people from outside Islam, they, this is one of the points they don't understand about
Muslims, right? Why are we so sensitive? When people insult the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, it's part of our other towards the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam, that we not only respect him, but we will not tolerate others disrespecting like to give it as an example that they would understand. Part of your good manners towards your mother is that you will not tolerate somebody disrespecting their mother. Now Muslims love the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam more than our own parents. So similarly, we will not tolerate people being disrespectful towards our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam. So we have this type of manage towards people who are under like, you know, managing Islam
is so comprehensive, that we have managed towards books we have managed towards,
towards everything, it was the environment, what animals do, what plants, if you look at our books, for example, you know, from the Manage of our books is that we put our Quran on the highest shelf, right? We do not put secular books on top of our Islamic books. We try to be in a state of voodoo when we are touching Islamic books. None of this is compulsory. None of this is from the deen per se, but it's all part of good manners. It's all a part of respecting the sources of knowledge. And so in that way, it's a good thing. We have our manners with the environment. So the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told us not to waste water, even if we are doing voodoo at the river,
that we have this respectful water we have respect for grass, we have respect for the earth, that these are all Allah's creation. All of Allah's creation needs to be treated with respect. So in that sense, the concept of manners in Islam is comprehensive. It includes everything from the husband, wife relationship, to the parent child relationship, to how you deal with your neighbors, how you deal with your community, to how you interact with animals in the environment, to your spiritual relationship with Allah subhanho wa Taala and the prophets of Allah Azza wa sallam, he does a very, very comprehensive package. And this is why I believe it's so crucial that every Muslim understands
what is good manners, what is good character, and that we learn to live by it because it really is as you said, it is the religion right in one of the Hadith the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said what is truly multimodal Syrah club, I was sent to perfect good character. So the perfection of good character is the perfection of one's fate. If you perfect your sincerity, you have perfected your faith. If you are perfect if you if you perfect your sincerity, your honesty, your courage, your humility, your piety, all of these matters of o'clock if you perfect all of this, you have perfected your faith. So
Oh o'clock and adopt form the very foundation of our spiritual core and they are necessary for us to to represent Islam properly and to practice Islam in a way that inshallah we will be rewarded for it in the afterlife.
I mean
very good I agree. I'm just looking for this you're reminded me of this hadith
as an AS, excuse me
important Hadith on manners, actually.
I should have brought it with me hereness Okay, yeah. So there's this hadith. This is the on the authority of Anisha DeMarco and who is nearly by
moustache man, that the messenger of allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, lays the theme of the manual Abdon hat as the theme of kaliba He said that the faith of a servant will not be upright until his heart is upright. While is the theme of Paul Bucha who had Darius the theme yesterday, Hema, the sound and his heart will not be bright until his
tongue is upright.
So the face is not a bright until the heart is upright. And the heart is not upright until the tongue is upright. So we know, we know. And we were studying character and manners. And there's all kinds of sins that are on the tongue. There are all kinds of bad things that we can say, you know, people lie people mock people, slander all that stuff, you know, and it's one of the main reasons that people go into hellfire is because they're not controlling their tongue, right.
But what's interesting about this hadith is that it shows the direct relationship between the tongue and the heart. Right? So
yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. The inward and outward, right? So the heart is not going to be sound until the tongue is sound. And that's because if there's something evil that is in your heart, you're gonna let it out on your tongue. Right? And if somebody's letting evil out on their tongue, it's because there's evil in their heart, right? Well, the cure for that is to do the opposite like, so. It because it's mutually exclusive. So say you have a bad problem like
cursing or whatever, cussing, pretending
that there's something evil in your heart that's making me to do that. So stop that habit of person. And then that urges that evil part out of your heart. So there's this relationship between the inward and the outward. So they're not like, it's not mutually exclusive. It's all kind of tied together. And Al Ghazali, when he's discussing the creation of good character traits,
he uses this formula, right? Or that that
the outward effects the inward, right, the inward expresses outwardly and then the outward.
effects that in relief, so. So for example, say somebody who is very stingy, very miserly person. And he doesn't like this about himself. He doesn't want to have those characters, but they're kind of rooted in his heart. He's stingy, he's miserly. And it's very hard for him to give him charity. Right. So what does he do? What do you how do you how do you get rid of that?
Because true generosity is when you're giving away your wealth, without any effort without any care. I mean, not not like spending a spendthrift fifth way, but but in a way, that the loss of your wealth is not disturbing your heart, right? That's true generosity, that's, that's what it means at the highest level. So this man who's a miser, and He's greedy, and he knows it, and he wants to change it wasn't going to do.
Well, he has to force himself to give charity and he has to do it again and again and again.
And you keep doing that over and over and over and it takes a while, you know, but a little bit less than a little bit. Yeah. Evil comes out that evil comes out every time you give it away. And then you purify that your heart finally agreed and my agenda list, miserliness, and then it's replaced with generosity, because your heart is like a garden, right? If you want to have beautiful plants, fruitful plants in your garden, you have to get rid of all the weeds first, right? So you can't become a generous person. And so you've gotten rid of greed out of your heart.
And then
following up on this point is
that we
as well as give me another example, Elvis Ali also says, What about an envious person? Right? That person has envy right towards another person. And the definition of envy and Islam is that he sees somebody else who's blessed and who's enjoying themselves. And he's angry about that. And he wants that blessing to be taken away from that person. Right? It's a type of hatred, right? So let's see, you know, you if you're a Muslim, right, and I'm just burning with envy towards this other person, and I don't think they deserve what Allah has decreed for them. Right? It's to contradict the decree, right? Because a lot of decrease his blessings wherever he left. So what do you do when your
hearts burning with envy? Well, you have to do the opposite of what envy wants you to do. So you make dua for that person that you're envying, right, for them to keep retain that blessing and make it good for them in this life and in the Hereafter, and to increase that bus. Right. And, and again, the art is resistant to that type of thing. You know, just as we wouldn't be resistant to any kind of bitter medicine that we had to take, you keep doing it over and over again, and that envy will vanish. And it will be replaced by the love of good for that person and love the love for the sake of love for that person. Right? Because envy is the opposite of that. And then, one more point I
just wanted to mention, since we're talking about inward and outward and how they're related is that, you know, we talked about the tongue, its outward speech, but it affects the heart, right? If you speak evil, evil, evil, it's going to strengthen the evil in your heart. If you start speaking good, or at least being silent, it's going to weaken that evil in your heart. And the same thing goes with our gaze, right, lowering the gaze, right? So
I think the hadith is weak. But even though playing uses the same imagery, that the glance, when you're glancing at something that you're not supposed to be looking at, is like a poison arrow from Shaytaan to your heart, right. So you know, if you're walking by, say, say you're walking by in the store, and I don't know if they have * magazines in the store in the US, but I wouldn't be surprised they do. But if you're walking by the store, and you happen to like see that and you gotta like,
put it out of your mind, right? And it's kind of just move on, and don't look at it again. Because if you go back and look at it, at it,
that's a big, that can be a huge temptation for a lot of men who were not able to control that because then all the passions get stirred up. And then you might do something unlawful with another with another woman, right? So the glance can be very powerful, right. And again, the glance
the heart follows the glance. So if we're looking at evil things, and the heart is going to be attracted to evil things. If we stop looking at those things, and we look at right, just things we're sitting in the company of the righteous reading books and knowledge reading Quran, well, you know, we're sitting in the masjid and our eyes are always around, like good things for us to see, the heart follows that, and we'll take all of that in, right. And so
a
something for Muslims centerstand is that your your eyes, sorry, your eyes, your ears, and your tongue are doorways for shaytaan to enter. Right? So choose wisely what you're listening to choose wisely. And what you're looking at Choose wisely, what you're saying is all those things go into the heart, and they're governed by these outward etiquette, right, but then they're directly related to the character because then it affects the character by how we choose to use our eyes, and our tongues and our ears and so on. So
that's just part of I am doing deep research on the, the this type of material so I have to I have to
work it in there whenever I can. So
that was beautiful. I'm not good. Yeah, it's on the island or the point of the tongue that that's, that's like the most important right? Because we know the Hadith where the Prophet sallallahu sallam said that the main organ that leads people to the Hellfire is that I didn't have to live in Masuda Raja Asti but people held accountable for what they say. And the prophets lawyers have said that's the That's it. That's like the main thing, right? That's that you're held accountable for. And nowadays, some of us make this mistake that we don't realize what we type is the same thing as what we say in terms of accountability. You may be using your fingers instead of your tongue, but you're
still accountable for the same things. So if you type profanity, it's the same sin as as a sin profanity. If you type out slander or backbiting or accusations
According a Muslim, a disbeliever, or anything like this is the same as saying it your tongue, it's equally sinful. It's not like this more sinful doing with your tongue and listen for doing it with your fingers, because the impact is the same. Right and the sins of the tongue, the reason why they are considered the worst of sets, is for two reasons. Number one, if it's against Allah and His Prophet, sallAllahu, alayhi wasallam, then it's going to be blasphemous. If someone is being disrespectful towards Allah and His Messenger, sallAllahu, alayhi, wasallam. That's blasphemy. That's, that's something that take a person out to the fold of Islam. But if you're being ill
mannered with your tongue towards a fellow human being, this is the primary cause of breaking relationships between people. If we look at any, any relationship in the world, where two people are no longer talking to each other, where two provinces they have broken family ties, or whatever it is, it almost always starts with the tongue. Somebody said something they shouldn't have said somebody use languages shouldn't have used somebody spread slander, they backbiting they
carry tails, they lied, all of these things. And so doing these things, is detrimental to a person's EMR. Because your tongue, it piles up in this way that you lie to somebody. Right? And that causes a fight. And in the fight, you use profanity, and that causes a bigger fight. And then you tell the person I'm I'm no longer your brother. That's an even bigger set. So it's sin is leading to a bigger and bigger sin and you all start with controlling the town. And that that's another Hadith that comes to mind related to that is that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that the person who would speak the truth so often, that they will be written amongst the truthful, and the person
who would lie so often, that they will be considered a liar. Meaning that what you do with your speech, it becomes your habits. So if your habits are speaking the truth, then you become an honest person. If your habit is to lie, you become a habitual liar. And when you become a habitual, habitual liar, people don't trust you. Right, people will want nothing to do, people won't hire you, they won't marry you, they won't work with you, they won't be your friends, because you can't trust a habitual liar in any field of life. So it all begins with truthfulness, it all begins with controlling the tongue. And I want to flip this around and look at the other side, right, we're
looking at the negative quite a bit, we're looking at avoiding the Haram of the tongue, avoiding the Haram of the eyes, avoiding the Haram of ears, but there's the other side of cultivating the garden of the heart as well. And that is doing good deeds with your tongue, doing good deeds, with your eyes, doing good deeds with your ears, and we sometimes forget that these organs can also be used for good, and that we need to do that as well. So doing good deeds with your tongue, for example, is learning to replace your vulgar speech with the righteous speech. So some people, for example, have this bad habit that if they, if they're walking and they stubbed their toe, they will let out, you
know, an FYI, you know, they'll they'll use vulgar language, part of purification of the soul and gaining good manners if you replace that with righteous speech. So, you know, if you walk in and you and you hit your toe on the wall or something like stuff with Allah, or Allahu Akbar, right, and something like this, so you replacing the bad habits with good habits, you learn to use your tongue in a way that is righteous. So for example, even just something like this, you and I sitting together and talking about the deen, this is using that same town that could be used for evil but using it in a way that is pleasing to Allah subhanho wa Taala if he accepts this from us, learning
to say the words of God. So when you see something beautiful to say, Subhan Allah, when you are feeling grateful to say Alhamdulillah, right, when you feel in order to say Allahu Akbar, all of this is learning to use the tongue for righteousness instead of using it for evil. It's the same with the eyes, when you spend your days reading Islamic books, and reading Quran and looking at at Islamic videos, and you are using it for that which is righteous, the same eyes that could be the window for shaytan to the heart. And now the window for image the heart as you're using the eyes to image to see with the ears. You're listening to Quranic recitation, if you're listening to Islamic
lectures, if you're sitting with righteous company and listening to them talk, then this is making your ears now a gateway for Imam to into your heart. And so all of this is how we can use the same, the same limbs that we worry about being the path of shaytan to enter our hearts. We use the same limbs to cultivate the garden of our heart and to make it into a garden of righteousness by focusing on these outward acts, actions of good manners that we speak only that which is pleasing to Allah subhanho wa Taala we look at only that which is pleasing to Allah subhanho wa Taala we listen to only that which is pleasing to Allah subhanaw taala and when we slip up a stock very low, we see a
stock that Allah and we pull ourselves back on track.
So and indeed, yes. I mean, our
ends were in fact created by Allah Subhana Allah for that very purpose. So we need to be used using our organs for good. And that's part of gratitude. Because gratitude isn't just I feel fuzzy and I, you know, I'm happy that I have all these things and gratitude is using the eyes of Allah subhanaw taala made for you to do what pleases Him, and all of the organs and so on. So correct shake, that's absolutely, very good point, something that stuck out, because you said that
you're talking about the keyboard, and it being an extension of the tongue. Right? I, I highlight, I was running through the database looking for different things the other day, and I came across a passage from scholar who said that the column is a tongue. He said, The pen is a tongue. And I yeah, I wish I had wrote that down, I have to go back and find it. But that's, that's really true. I mean, if you write something harmful to somebody and give it to them, it's just you know, it's just like,
Yeah, in fact, one of the Maxim's of failure is that written speech is equal to verbal speech. Like if a man writes a letter to his wife, saying that she's divorced, it counts as a divorce might because they have the same value. So people shouldn't take for granted anything that they type or write, it has that same value as a sin or good deed, you know, in the sight of Allah subhana wa, Allah. So we are responsible also, for whatever we post on social media, we are responsible for what we post on our blogs, are responsible for the messages, we send people privately, I some people forget about this. So for example, part of the banners of the believer is not to be Hallward, not to
be alone with a non Muslim. But how many people today are alone with non Muslims on on the internet zero in in the DMS in the private messages, nothing, they think, you know, I'm not alone. I'm on the internet now. But if only you can see the messages, they only she can see the messages. This is Hallward. This is violating the boundaries that Allah has established for us. And we have to be careful with this. And many, many times in the online, we forget those boundaries, we think they only apply in the real world, they apply online as well. And so it's very important that even in the online world, we carry ourselves with other and o'clock. And this is very, very crucial to our
personal relationships, we are talking about our personal relationships, I think this is
this is one area where we are failing today as a community. I see this online.
I'm talking about marriage if you find that you and the importance of other beneficial values. So the other day I posted on Twitter, that you cannot build a marriage around fake. It has to be built on compassion, and kindness. And some people didn't understand what they meant by that. So I just want to explain what you buy that you see fit when it comes to personal relationships, establishes the pm when it establishes what you can take the person to court for he didn't do this. She didn't do that. It doesn't establish how do you build a beautiful relationship that doesn't come from fear that comes from other than o'clock. Right? Being a gentleman towards your wife, being submissive
towards your husband, having that good character, being kind, being compassionate, being just being merciful being forgiving. That's how you build in a marriage, just how you build a relationship. And that doesn't just apply to the husband wife relationship with your children with your parents, you nowadays we have so many people who are focused only on the adding this may be a problem with our education system, that unfortunately, in many parts of the Western world, the madrasa only teachers so we think of Islam only terms of rulings. So like I have
the other day a man came to me and he's like, do I have to take my wife out to a restaurant? I mean, there's nothing in the Quran Hadith that says I have to do that, right? Well, there's nothing in the Quran or Hadith that says a lot of things. That's not how you build a relationship, you build a relationship based on on being kind to each other. If this is something that makes your wife love you more, and makes her want to be with you more and increase it increases the marhaba between you and you can afford it, there are hamdulillah go ahead and do it. Because technically the Hadith does say the best money is the money you spend on your family. This is the Hadith. So you can use that
hadith over here and say that yes, this is spending money on your family in a way that increases love. And so so often these days we get caught up in the technicalities. You know, what's the definition of this? Is it what is it? Is it mockery? Is it haram?
My advice is as long as it falls within the broad category of Halal focus on doing what would make the relationship struggle. And this is really having good character manners and again, the Hadith comes to mind.
The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam when he advised woman to look for a husband what two qualities that she that he asked women to look for him as he said, When a man comes to you with a proposal, who is pious and has good character, except the proposal. Notice he didn't just say
piety, he said piety and good character, because you cannot build a marriage without good character. Right if you look at the role of a man in a marriage number one is to provide provide. We spoke earlier about miserliness versus generosity. A miserly man is not going to provide for his wife and children in a way that brings about love, he's going to be miserly towards him. So generosity is part of the good character, the husband has to have. He needs to be generous to his wives and to be generous to his children. He needs to be generous towards his community. Part of good character is courage. A man needs to protect his family, you can't protect your family without courage. Part of
good character is being trustworthy and honest, you can't build a relationship without trust and honesty. So a lot forms the foundation of our relationship. And when we understand this,
things like marriage, parenting, the relationship with our siblings, the relationship with our neighbors, all of these things become so much easier when we look at it not from the lens of fake or from the lens of other bannerflow that you want to be a refined gentleman. In your dealings with everybody, you want to be someone of impeccable character, somebody who your character makes people love you, and they make people love Allah and Arabic people love this religion. Right, this is the type of character we need to aim for our son in our character perfection in our character, we may not get there. But that's what we aim for, we continuously try to improve, so we can get to that
level. And when you build your relationships on a clock will adapt when you build upon having good character, and having good manners, then you will build a beautiful fabric, you will build a beautiful community, you will build a beautiful aroma. But it starts with how we deal with each other. It starts with wanting best for each other, and having these good manners towards each other. That is the foundation of every relationship.
So a lot. Yeah, I totally agree. And I feel like this is a misconception, and maybe how some Muslims have learned but you know, I'm always big on analogies and parables and things that make I think it makes it easy to understand. So I view FIP as a vessel, right, it stabilizes the vessel. And then what you got to put in is all of the beautiful character and the manners and everything like that, right? So if you just have a vessel, and there's nothing in it, then it's okay. It's a good vessel. I mean, it's in terms of its sturdiness, but it's not really, you know, there needs to be more to it, right. So that's like fifth that establishes the limits, the rules, the boundaries. And then
within that, there are things that go along with that, like love, we have, like having love for your wife, and in love, even if not in the sense of affection, but loved the the good of your wife, your concern for the welfare of your wife, in this life and in the Hereafter, and your merciful to your wife or genossen, generous to your wife and so on. Those aren't studied in fifth, because they're, those are inward qualities, right? And they can't be measured. Fifth is like things that you can measure, you know, like, this is the dowry, this is the
steps when there's divorce, and this is how the divorce is initiated, and so on. And there's all the rules, right?
But like, how nice Are you supposed to be to your wife, you mean you can't like measure that it's a qualitative, it qualitative quality.
So, you know, that doesn't do that and fair,
very diverse of interest that Allah Subhana Allah knows that human beings are diverse and unique. Not every two humans are the same. So Allah revealed to us a Sharia, where the boundaries are clear. But within the boundaries, there's lots of rooms for different personalities. So you may have one couple, where they're more romantic with each other. And that works for them. And you have another couple that's more professional with each other. You can see they're both doctors, they both have this professional mindset. They don't as romantic but they love each other they do for each other and that works for them. And both of those relationships will be perfectly Halal because they fit
within this boundary. This is the beauty of factor increases this large boundary and whatever is within it becomes halal, right. And people often what we see now these people are trying to find a one size fits all solution that all men must be like this, all women must be like this. Every management's look like this. But that's not how the real world is. Every family is unique, every individual is unique. And Allah caters for this with the miracle of the Sharia in that it is built in a way that no matter what your personality is, like, you know if you and your and your spouse work together to find how to make things work for you, as long as he falls within that category of
Halal if your business is entirely yours as long as he falls within the category of halal and what the frick does
To me is it, it establishes, you know, the no goes up, it establishes when you can take someone to court establishes when you can say, okay, this person has crossed the line. But as long as they within that line, it's their own business how they do things, right. And I've seen this in my in my own life that so many families I know are so different in their lifestyles, and in the way that their families work. But as long as they're doing it within the boundaries of allow, it's nobody else's business, it's all a matter of being compassionate to each other, being kind to each other, being understanding towards each other. All of this is, is part of imagined Allah made our religion
was tricky. Imagine if Allah revealed, you have to have, you know, this amount of romance in your marriage, and you have to have that amount of money that you spend on your wife, and you have to buy her XYZ, you have to have a certain amount of money, you know, before you get married. Imagine if our religion was that strict, nobody would be able to practice it. It is part of Allah's mercy that he left all of this open. If all of this open for people to use a common sense, the man is in the character to build relationships, and the fifth is there to make sure that there's no abuse. That's what the fifth is therefore jailed. So we have these no go zones, and what's beyond that would be
considered abusive on either side, and anything in between hamdulillah and do what works best for your family. handler for the show. Yeah, we it's such a nice atma from Allah subhanaw taala. When I tend to do well, I tend to be
home.
Well, I tend to be where leadin Allah, Allah. And Allah warns us that He gave us just Shreya. And he told us not to follow the whims of those who have no knowledge, right? We have no knowledge of history. So we ask Allah Subhana Allah data to keep us on the straight path in that regard. So I saved this point for the end, because I have to work it in. And it's related to what we're talking about. But I want to talk about backbiting of the heart.
This isn't concept you can find this if in Imam and no always book as car. And the book of is different applications in that car, that remembrances that he compiled. And in the end, in the back, he talks about backbiting of the heart. Because, as we said earlier, you know, your heart follows your tongue, your heart follows your eyes. So you know, be careful there. But your heart also has its own tongue. And these are not thoughts that are whispered to you, this isn't a thought from Shaytaan shaytaan might whisper to you, and then you say it to yourself in your heart. But you said it to yourself in your heart. And I think we all know that we have an inner monologue. These are
things that we say to ourselves, that
that are not that are different from when the neffs whispers at you or the shavasana whispers at you. So we have this inner heart is inner heart with sorry, inner tongue that's connected to our heart as well. And that can commit backbiting. Now, it's important, you know, one of the reasons I saved this for the end is because
when you know when we're preaching to all kinds of people, and they're already having a hard time, controlling their regular tongue, and then you tell them to control their inner tongue, you know, that's, that's a, that's the next level and they're not quite there yet, you know, when you got to control your regular tongue before you start really controlling your inward tongue. So it's not something that I would want to preach widely or anything, but I it is true. So there's an example of this. So there is an imam as Junaid from Baghdad.
He was he was an ascetic, and he was a scholar of FIP. But his school died out, or the school that he had near to died out. He was well known for his piety. And he was waiting in front of the Masjid. Somebody had died, they were going to bring the brother into the messenger, they were going to pray.
And he saw somebody begging in the street, which is typical, right people begging in front of the question. And he thought to himself, it would be better if he went to the market and got a job. He just thought that himself, right. So he didn't think anything of it and then you know, he then later that night he he's gonna do his gamelan. So he would do his prayers at night. He's very
regular with that. And then he would always have his intimacy with the loss of Hannah like to Allah and that's why he did it. He loved it and enjoyed it. Something was wrong that particular night. And like his prayers, just like weren't going through like they just weren't affecting him in the normal way. And he was overcome by sleep and he fell asleep.
So then he saw me while he was asleep, he had a dream. And this big table of food came out there and then some people
came out and through the, the man who was begging on the table. And then they said to him eat the dead flesh of your brother. Right? Because that Allah subhanaw taala compares backbiting,
to eating the dead flesh of your brother, right? It's grotesque, it's evil, it's It's hideous. And so Janae was kind of taken aback and he said, Matt of the top two,
in the map called the PFC, che, he said, I didn't backbite him, all I did was say something in myself. All I did was say something in myself. And they told him that it was not appropriate because he's a big man, you shouldn't be doing that. So then he woke up, and then he went out and he found the man who was begging somewhere else. And then he asked for his forgiveness, and the man did forgive him. So that's an interesting story. And there's discussion like in elbows, alleys book, it's like, at what point does a thought become voluntary? Because you know, ALLAH SubhanA, Allah forgives us for
involuntary thoughts, you know, shaytaan whispers to us, we don't act on it, we're not punished for that. Or our next was this recess, we ignore it. And that's, there's nothing wrong with that. But when we get these thoughts, and then we start talking to ourselves, right, and we start saying so
things to ourselves that affects our heart, right? So controlling that inner monologue, it's really a step up, right? Like, it's like, once, once you've really gotten your outer etiquette, you know, in order and you're like, do mostly doing good on a daily basis, then the next step up. And
spiritual development towards san is being able to control that inner tongue and not talking about backbiting people within yourself not saying you know, harboring suspicion against others, and doing all the sins of the tongue that you can just do in your own heart.
So I bring that up. Because I think it's fascinating and I think it's something that we all need to know especially if you're you're
trying to get to that higher level of sound. But then I always again, caution like not to burden ordinary people who are like just learning the basics and are just struggling with other things like
you know, don't worry about that right now worry about like, you know, doing your etiquette now worrying about stop using profanity, worrying about not like cussing and other people and you know, other bad things that you've done, and you can get rid of all that kind of stuff first, right? Then you can start doing these higher things in your heart. That would be even closer to Allah subhana wa at that
point to help. Oh, well, people don't realize this, but the closer you get to Allah subhanho wa taala, the more severe minus sins become, right. So something that will be considered a mindless sin for the average Muslim would be considered a major sin for a righteous person. Right? So for example, if the average Muslim took a glance at someone they weren't supposed to look at,
and he says suck federal law as a minus in earnings forgive, but when a righteous person stares at a woman in lust, that will be considered a biggest sin on him because he's supposed to have reached a higher level of self control. And he's a role model for others. So these stories of great scholars like a glucometer, Jelani and Junaid, Baghdadi, David on that higher level of cancer, and so the higher level of piety is expected. And this concept that you mentioned in the Quran, there's two stories in the Quran. I would like everyone to read the translation of if they want to study a HELOC and adopt Surah Noor and Surah Whoa, Gerald surah. No. Teaches you not to slander his lower your
gaze to cover your aura to knock before entering someone's house not to look into people's homes. All of this is in surah. No, right? The morality Surah hoogenraad focuses on many different aspects of managing piety and one verse directly linked to what you mentioned now. Verse number 12, Allah subhanaw taala says you Khaled in our manage Danny Baca Thea Ramadan in others don't. Oh, you who believe stay away from thinking bad about others? Because sometimes these thoughts are sinful. Look at the wording of the Quran again, the perfection of Allah's word. He doesn't say thoughts are sinful, it is badass. Sometimes the thoughts are something you're always held accountable, right? If
you're walking down the street, and you see someone acting shady, and you think that guy might be a thief, and you carry on with your day, you know, held accountable for that because that that thought was based on circumstances, right when you see someone trying to sneak over somebody's wall and
You assume they are thieves that might be circumstantial, but just thinking it won't be sinful, saying it out loud, loud, right? Slander, right? But when you allow these thoughts to become beliefs, when you think that so and so is a hypocrite, or no proof, do you think so and so is a sellout. So in so is the enemy of Islam. And these thoughts become something that's in your heart, something that festers in your heart builds in your heart hatred towards others. Now the thought becomes helpful, even if you don't see it, because it's affecting the state of your mind is affecting your relationship with other people. So thoughts, and not always, it depends on how long
the dog stays if God comes and goes not sinful, if the dog comes in this justification for it, and you don't use it to do anything wrong, still not sinful by the thought becomes a belief or it affects your relationship with other people. Now the thought itself becomes sinful, right? So again, the beauty of the Quran, Allah uses the most perfect of words, that he says sometimes thoughts can be sinful. And then he tells us how to avoid these thoughts with two steps while Digester. So whether you have to go back, don't spy and don't.
Don't look into other people's private affairs, don't talk about other people. If you mind your own business, that's if you mind your own business, you don't look into other people's private affairs in the private sense. And you don't talk bad about other people, you will have no reason to think bad about other people. Right? It all works together. This, this verse to verse 12, of tsunami Girard, gives you a holistic formula for avoiding battles. Don't backbite don't look into other people's privacy don't don't spy on right spy on them means for example,
I'll give you two examples of what to count as the justice warriors verse. One example is looking into somebody's house. Looking into somebody's house is a sin in Islam. Without the permission, you look into someone's window or door, and you see them doing things in their house that you're not supposed to be seeing. This is sinful. Right? This is the justice This is fine. The other example of spying is when you go to somebody's phone or the internet history without the permission. This is also the justice. So this is fine. This is going into somebody's personal business, or that that's not your business. This is haram. It's haram to look into somebody else's private affairs, their
private lives in between them and Allah. So you focus on your own private life. If someone is doing something wrong, publicly, you get, you can take them aside and talk to them. But you don't think what is this person doing private? What's that person's private sector? What's his secrets? That's not your business? Let the Justice show whether you're on top of bada don't spy or backbite at the end, the better for you. You just mentioned it's there in the same verse. Are you Hebrew I had to go a year ago, he made dents are correctable with any of you love to eat the flesh of his dead brother? No, you would hate it. For the Cova what taco lots of fear Allah in the Lord. Allah accepts your
repentance or Allah is Most Merciful. Beautiful, beautiful, comprehensive verse, I highly recommend anyone who wants to study other than o'clock study that have zero of Surah puja rock, because this teaches you both the inner and the outer, it teaches you how to purify your thoughts and how to prove how to behave properly, how to live with others. And so you cover both the other one o'clock it just 18 short, beautiful verses one of the most important students of the Quran for any of us to study. Mashallah, that's, that's correct. And that's also one of my favorite stories. And I love listening it to listening to being recited by shade sad and abandoned. And, ah, check this. Sorry,
is this i? It's just, it's beautiful. It just will move you. And
thank you for mentioning that.
So what you were saying about, you know, yeah, there's different levels like this is correct, right. And is one of the reasons we need to be non judgmental, you know,
because the scholars who studied like the spiritual states, like even claim, for example, he wrote his book, as a commentary on Manasa said, even by email, I mean, how do we remember how do we Manasa like levels? Right? So you progress through the spiritual levels? Right. And so the people are up at the top, Allah subhanaw taala is holding them to a very high standard. Yeah. Then from the people that are at the bottom, right. And as you get closer to the top, you're more forgiving, and you're more merciful to the people below you. It's not like, and they're more humble. Right? Yeah. So because you just become a better Muslim, the more the higher you get. In fact, I would say if
somebody thinks to getting more pious but wouldn't they be getting more judgmental and arrogant, and they fall into the traps of Shingon. They're not getting more pious, they actually falling deeper and deeper into the major sin of GIBBO. And she had just wrapped it in
A cup of piety, because real piety is where you don't take anything of yourself. That's real piety where you have the humility, and you're so worried about your own sins that you don't have time to to be looking at everybody else with judgmental eyes. You too worried about your own relationship with Allah subhanho wa Taala that's, that's the real piety of the Catholic morality is of such a level that you do not think you're better than anybody else. Right? Absolutely. Kibera is a is a is a is a big topic. But I want to we're gonna get we're gonna wrap it up here.
The on this issue of levels. So yeah, so think about it, maybe the audience. You guys have heard the Hadith where this Bedouin comes into the masjid and he just starts urinating right there in the masjid. Right, but the people pray. And obviously, the Sahaba were pretty upset about that. And they rushed around, and maybe they're going to be to beat him up and throw him out. But the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam intervened, and he actually didn't scold the man and he didn't stop him from urinating. And when he was done, they threw some water over it, and he talked the man. And then he was also teaching his companions as well. Right? So very, very gentle behavior. Very, very kind
behavior from the messenger of a law. So the law highly was 70. So on that Bedouin, you know, because he was living a rough life out in the desert, he didn't he wasn't able to read you know, so he was he was at a lower level and therefore deserved not eventually actually many many stories like this in the life of the prophet Salah yourself. So for example, another Bedouin came to the Prophet soil and said that if I just believe and pray five times a day across the Ramadan, and avoid the mages, would I go to general? And the Prophet solution said, Yes, you go to Jenna, even if you just do that much. But on the other hand, we're dealing with a righteous a hobby like Abdullah even
o'mara the prophets voice, I'm told him, You need to pray 200. And you need to create that because you want that level of piety. Right? So he didn't tell the Bedouin that you need to pray to her. But he was a lot stricter with Abdullah Omar why? Because He's showing us that these are different levels, someone who's new to Islam, you give them this the basics, right? You want them to learn the basics, you don't want to overwhelm them, let them work their way slowly up to Allah subhana wa taala, someone who is pious, you want them to reach a higher level of piety. So you're going to be a bit more strict in terms of what your expectations of them are. It's the same like at school, you're
the teacher, when the student is like not doing too well in school. The teachers like encouraging the software Don't worry, you got to you got to do well done are proud of you, you pass the stuff, but the student who they know is very intelligent, and all these and they come home with a beat. You know, the parents, the teachers are like, oh, like, we know, you could have done better, because there's different expectations based on their levels, right. And it's the same with our piety. And we see this in how Rasulullah saw like I've dealt with different Sahaba and his advice, when you would send the Sahaba to do dower to others the most beautiful advice that every scholar and every
person involved in Dawa has to follow the advice of Yasujiro Allah to assume, make things easy for the people don't make it difficult for them. This should be the golden rule of doubt that when someone is new to the religion, give them just the basics, teach them just the basics, let them work their way up, so you don't overwhelm them on day one. And because we all on a journey towards Allah subhanho wa Taala we all have different levels. You cannot expect someone who's on day one, to be on the same level of piety, as someone who's been doing this their whole life. And this is something that's from the wisdom of the Dawa of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that we all cannot
know, indeed, and so much hikma and wisdom from the life of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and his Sahaba and how they dealt with people. It really is something we need to devote our lives to studying all of the intricacies and nuances. And, you know, there's a tendency of people to have black and white thinking, you know, there are black and white issues in the world. And you know, things are clearly wrong, things are clearly, right. But the world on whole, on the whole is, is full of great stuff. It's full of gray areas, and everybody's at a different level. Everybody starts at a different level. And, you know, it's really easy to get the feeling of arrogance creeping into
your heart when you start judging people and looking down on people and I'm so much better. I'm not like that person that you don't know. If that person grew up with an alcoholic father who beat them and did horrible things to them, and you know, they're at a disadvantage and you're not aware of that and you think you're better. But you didn't have as a disadvantages. There's just endless number of scenarios like that, right. So we need to be more humble. We need to be more focused on our own faults and improving ourselves rather than seeking out other people's faults in
And then putting them down.
Bus how la che i really really like talking to you. I think this is a great conversation.
Masha Allah, my first conversation with us has been so wonderful lesson from the lab. So
let me give you the last word, what do you want to end with?
Okay, I'm Dayla firstly, I also have to say that I enjoyed talking to you and inshallah This is the first of many, many conversations we will have together, shall we Alexei from us. My final words to everyone is we need to revive is one aspect of Grenada that we need to revive on social media, it's Kushner, thinking the best of the next person, too often, we get angry with people and fight to them and argue with them. And very often, the whole thing is just a misunderstanding. It's just projecting our own ideas of what somebody else said. Right there. Somebody may say something entirely innocent. But because our hearts are full of malice and jealousy and anger and bad
thoughts, we read what they said in a wrong way, we must understand it, we assume the worst of them. And we end up fighting and hating our Muslim brothers and sisters for no reason whatsoever. So it is one part of other business logic that want us to revive online. It is Kushinagar try to make excuses for your Muslim brothers and sisters try to understand their perspective. Try to find a way to read what they think positive. And I see this too often somebody would say something positive, sincerely wholehearted and 1000. Muslims will take it in five different negative ways. Like one is accusing them of one extreme or excuse me, or the opposite extreme with the exact same statement. So it's
really projecting our own ideas on other people's thoughts, pushing those on we spoke earlier about the ocean and one Villa that we have good thoughts of Allah. Right. That's part of UCLA, but also Houston is one of each other. Thinking the best of each other is also an important part of us not to make excuses for your brothers and sisters in Islam. Maybe they don't know. Maybe they worded it wrong, maybe they meant something else. Maybe they think something and I misunderstood there's so many excuses you could make before jumping the gun in assuming this person is a sellout at this person's a coffin, or this person had bad intentions or this person is this or that. Control the
town, control the thoughts, learn to see the good in others learn to be forgiving. Learn to try and be a means of bringing people closer to Allah not pushing people away from Allah. This is all part of the other inoculum that is necessary from the believer. And again, thank you so much for having me today. What's your complaint? My pleasure. And I'm sure that the audience and myself have benefited from from your and beautiful insights and you are always welcome to come back. We can go in depth on a particular thing. We could talk all day about arrogance, you know,
or,
let's put a positive spin on it. We could talk all day about humility, right? Yes, about the positive side of that coin. But anyway, you're always welcome back I really, really, really enjoyed this
conversation. And I asked Allah subhana wa to Allah to reward you and to bless us and as your audience for the wisdom that you shared with us today.
And make a huge on your scale.
Okay.
From us, I mean, until next time, so I want to go more comments a lot. Hey, we've got a Catholic