Reminders Branding Confidence

hamdulillah alameen wa salatu salam, ala, Colombia, Chile, Allah, Allah, he was happy as mean

about.

We were talking over the last so many days about the issue of

branding of the sign of being a Muslim.

And we talked about many issues.

Today I want to talk about one of the most important ones, which is the issue of courage.

Muslim is somebody who has courage.

So, like I said, there

was known for his courage.

Courage is of two kinds.

There is obviously, physical courage,

which is seen in the field of battle, let's see in

places of conflict,

physical courage, but even more

other signs of physical courage, not necessarily in the field of battle, but also physical courage is the courage to be

visibly confidently Muslim,

to display the Shire of Islam to display the signs of Islam.

Today we live in a country where many Muslims especially the so called educated people, and if they are in good jobs or if they are in the in the government and various places, they will not even return your salon. If they sell a Polycom they will say goodbye.

They do not they feel afraid, even to return salon.

They do not obviously show any signs of being Muslim. You know, they don't have a beard, they don't have anything. There is no sign that they are Muslim visible sign, and even Salaam they don't return.

That is a sign of cowardice, sign of lack of courage, lack of confidence.

So that is one aspect of physical courage. Another aspect of physical courage is the willingness and ability to pray. When the time for prayer comes, no matter where you are. Obviously, we look for a Masjid. But if you don't have a budget, then if there is a time to pray, then we pray. Allah subhanaw taala made the whole earth images for the Muslim.

But there are Muslims who are afraid to do that, because they feel that you know, people will,

will not look at them positively, or I don't know what they're afraid of. But anyway. So that's one aspect of physical courage. But there's another aspect of courage, which has to do with

your mind and your emotions, mental and emotional courage.

And in some ways, that's even more important than physical courage.

One of the signs of mental and emotional courage is the willingness to

accept that you are wrong.

Many people have a big problem with that,

for example, they might have been brought up in a particular tradition, they might have been brought up to believe certain things in terms of their archive in terms of their beliefs. And then later on in life, when they come across.

something other than what they were brought up with, for example, if they have been brought up to follow. In our country, for example, there are lots of

be that and lots of wrong practices

are in the name of religion, all in the name of worship, people worshipping at graves people,

for example, and people having

guests gatherings of my village road, where they all stand in a circle and they keep an empty chair. And they have this belief that asaram is sitting in this chair, right? It's open ship, it is absolutely clear and open ship, but they do this and then they consider that to be valid, right?

And so on as I was in for example, no fault of yours, you were brought up in that tradition. And you grew up in a household which did all these practices, you also did them thinking that they were correct practices, but then you come across somebody who tells you why the practice is wrong, gives you his DeLisle for that and the proofs of that, what is your reaction to it?

Now in some cases, people The eyes are open, thank you for showing me the right way. And inshallah we will not do this again. That is a sign of courage, the ability to accept that you are wrong. But for a lot of other people, they will not accept that. And instead they are now get angry with the person who showed them the right thing. The reality of life is that you get angry doesn't change anything. If somebody

It tells you that there is a fire in this in this room, or there is a poisonous gas leak in this room. So leaves room and you say no, I don't like your face. I don't like you. I don't like the way you tell me or something. I will not leave the room. So don't leave the room die. Who cares? You know, the guy is giving you advice. You don't want to follow it, don't follow it.

This is exactly what the people who oppose the sola Salam did, Allah subhanaw taala mentioned is in opera, Allah said that you do not accept what he is saying not because what he's saying is wrong. He said, You know what he's saying is the truth. But you don't want to accept it from him. Because you don't like him.

And this is a very major issue with a lot of people. We don't like to take things from somebody who individually we will not like. And this is a sign of cowardice is a sign of lack of courage. It's a sign of lack of integrity. Because, as I said, it doesn't change anything. If what you are doing is wrong, it's wrong. I mean, if

somebody tells you and you say, right, I won't accept it from you.

How does it change anything? So don't accept. But you know, if something is harmful, why would you want to have you. So mental and emotional courage, the willingness to accept

mistakes, the willingness to accept faults. And that is how personal growth happens. personal growth happens only when we are willing to accept adverse feedback.

And then we build on that.

If you get offended, and if you don't want to accept adverse feedback, then your growth is stopped, there is no growth, you remain in that static state.

So courage must be displayed in terms of a Muslim in terms of physical courage, the ability to stand up to opposition, the ability to take the unpopular stance, the ability to support somebody who is weak.

The ability and again, when I say somebody who is not only a Muslim, a Muslim is supposed to support anyone who was the was the oppressor was our environmental worker, is not restricted to Muslims, it's for the whole world. So if a Muslim finds a non Muslim who is being oppressed, then the job of the Muslim is to go ahead and get him out of his difficulty. This is one of our problems today, which sometimes people even point a finger and maybe a lot, maybe they are right. This is that Muslims complain only when something happens to Muslims.

And if something is happening to non Muslims, Muslims don't get.

For example, I mean, we complain when Muslims are being killed in Assam, or Gujarat or Burma or somewhere. But when that leads, for example, I killed in Bihar.

How many Muslims complain about that?

Have you ever seen a single letter written to a newspaper? Have you ever seen any statement that is made in Parliament? Have you ever seen any, any procession or to say that these delegates were killed? And this is wrong? It should not have been done? And who's saying that the Muslims are saying it? Have you ever seen this?

No.

Why not?

Why not, it is our job.

It is our job to support

those who are being oppressed, it is our job to stand up against those who are oppressing no matter who it is.

So lies lies in the famous Hadith, where he used a proverb that was there was an old proverb in the in the Arab culture, where they said, support your brother,

whether he is the oppressor or the oppressed. And this was in the old way, in the old Arabic culture. This was a proverb relating to a Sabbath really relating to tribal loyalty. So they said I, we must support our tribal brother, whether he's right or wrong, doesn't matter. As long as he's from my tribe, I support him whether he is right or wrong is immaterial.

I've used the same thing. The beauty of the teaching methodology was, he was the same problem for the Sahaba. And he said to them, what they support your brother, whether he is the oppressed or the oppressor, so that they were very surprised to get the same statement progress is the opposite of how we can understand if you say, support your brother if he is the oppressed, but how can we support him if he is the oppressor? He said, support him by stopping his operation. Because if you don't stop his oppression, Allah subhanaw taala will punish him and that is worse for him.

The beauty of how he talks people use the same exactly the same power, but the way he used it. He is supportive when he is opposite. How do we say what it is that he was awarded by stopping him actually stopping his operation is supporting him because you are saving him from the punishment of Allah subhanaw taala.

Now who is this who is saying stop home your brother, meaning that the the principle of Islam is that if a Muslim is oppressing another person

Other other person is a Muslim or non Muslim, the Muslim must stand up against that operation.

Even if he has to go against his own brother, he said, No, you cannot do that, sorry, Allah subhanaw taala has not given us the right to do this, you cannot do that I will fight you, even if you are oppressing somebody who is not a Muslim, I will support that one and I will not support you because you are doing something which is wrong. And that is that is the standard. Imagine if Muslims do this, then when our time our turn comes, then the rest of the world will come to our support. Because people will say these people are fair, when something wrong happens, they stand up for that, irrespective of who it is. So, now people are oppressing them, we are further. On the contrary. Now,

what's happened is we will say though, they only say when something is

you know, somebody is doing something to them, they only cry when it happens to them, they don't they don't bother about anybody else. So courage is to stand up against oppression, courage is to accept mistakes. Courage is to learn courage is also to have control on our anger and on our tongues.

The courageous person is the one who controls his anger, not the man who lets go.

It takes a lot of courage to control your anger. And remember, anger is a legitimate emotion. Nothing wrong about anger. If somebody is doing something, which is, you know, which makes you angry, obviously, you get angry when somebody is doing something stupid, or you don't expect to be happy about that, right? So you get angry. The issue is what do you do with the anger?

It's not whether you get angry or you don't get that you do you get angry anger. Anger is a sign of intelligence, it means that you are recognizing something is going on. But then what do you do after that?

The term that we use in English, you lose your temper, right? Now, it's a nice term because it shows that you have lost it. So you lost your temper if you lose your temper, and it does all sorts of nasty things. Because now you have no control of yourself. So maybe you use some bad language or you say something in a bad way. And now the result of that is worse than the original problem.

So having control on your anger, is a very, very critical element of courage. And along with that is control on the time that we don't just say whatever comes to the mouth, we control our time we use the right kinds of words.

So that the effect is positive. The key thing to ask ourselves when we get angry, is what is what do I really want to do? Do I want to change that person? Or do I want to just lash out? Which one is it? You want to just lash out the lash out bend? And then there are consequences of lashing out. So you know, there's not much point in that. But he will say that no, no, I really want to change that person is doing something very stupid, I want to change it. If you want to change him, then it cannot be done by national.

Never, Not in a million years. So you have to do something other than lashing out.

And that's what takes courage to keep control of the anger. So this physical courage and mental courage consisting of accepting mistakes can be consisting of controlling anger, standing up against the people who are against anyone who is oppressed. We ask Allah subhanaw taala to make it easy for us, and to give us the joy of representing Islam fully and completely in our lives not purely in one piece of or the other piece, but purely, not not exclusively in one way or other especially not not just by that and so on, but in every aspect of our life so that we become living models of the way of Muhammad Rasulullah sallallahu wasallam Allah will carry him while he was away.