Mufti Menk – Dealing with Difficulty #20 Personal Insecurities
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the temporary nature of the world and how people will eventually be separated from their bodies. They stress the importance of loving oneself and not being obsessed with one's appearance. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of testing people and finding one's challenged or disabled. The speaker advises against making permanent tattoos and not plaster oneself to be loved, and stresses the importance of knowing one's identity and surrounding people to avoid being criticized.
AI: Summary ©
Some people do not like the way they
look.
And some people
look so much into the mirror that they
begin to find fault with everything
and anything.
So remember,
Allah Almighty
has not created us on earth in a
perfect way because
he's kept perfection for the hereafter.
On earth, he's made us human beings.
Humans are actually flawed.
The thinking is limited. The capacity is limited.
We only have 5 senses.
Whereas in the hereafter, we can have unlimited
senses.
We would be able to hear and see
things that we cannot hear and see with
the limited senses we have right now. There
are frequencies in the air, and there are
things that are flying around that we cannot
see. We would either need microscopes or so
many other apparatuses,
but
what is definitely clear is even with all
of that,
there are things that we still are unable
to see. So imagine
Allah Almighty
wants us to just look at ourselves
and love ourselves the way he made us.
He chose our skin tone. He chose the
type of hair we're going to have. In
fact, the race, the ethnicity chosen by Allah
and each race or ethnicity is known
in a certain way. Allah says,
all people.
We created you from a male and a
female, Adam and Eve.
And We made you into different peoples
and tribes in order for you to know
one another, to recognize one another. You can
recognize a person coming from this continent or
that race or this ethnicity because that's how
Allah made them. You have to love yourself
if your eyes are a certain way. Alhamdulillah,
if your hair or your height or your
complexion is a certain way.
Praise Allah.
The world is temporary.
70 years,
60 years, 80 years.
Not really much more than that.
In fact, in many cases, much less than
that.
And in this short time, we begin
to dislike ourselves to the degree that we
don't realize this body
is something temporary that was given to us
to go through a phase of our existence
known as life on earth, which is a
few decades, perhaps, on average.
And after that, we're going to separate the
soul soul and the body is going to
be separated.
That body is going to go back into
the earth,
And the soul
goes back to its maker and is dealt
with
preparation for the day of judgement and thereafter
going in, insha'Allah,
into paradise by the will of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
Nonetheless,
we should realize that in the process,
when people forget that they
have this temporary body that doesn't actually belong
to them permanently,
When people forget that
they begin to do things to it that
really
will bother them long term.
So you don't like your lips. You're gonna
put huge fillers. It's not going to look
normal. You're going you don't like, for example,
your nose. You're going to change it and
shape it. And many people have been depressed
as a result of it. In fact, I
know of people who've committed suicide as a
result of what's called a nose job that
went wrong and many of them do go
wrong.
Yes. If there is a necessity,
then you should do it. If it is
something abnormal, you have an option of doing
it and correcting it or bringing it back
to normal.
But playing with something that is generally normal
is not part
of your connection with Allah.
It does not depict a proper connection with
your maker. You haven't understood why Allah has
created us on Earth. There is no perfection.
You will find flaws in every single thing.
Because
your eyes, if you look every day into
the mirror, nobody's ever noticed what you noticed.
Because you're looking too much. You're looking too
hard. Perhaps you're not saying the prayer, oh,
Allah, I thank you for what you've given
me. Oh, Allah, in the same way you've
beautified me externally, beautify me internally.
That's the dua of the prophet Muhammad, peace
be upon him.
So your hair,
thank Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Your teeth.
If yes, there is something wrong, you want
to straighten them by all means.
But if there's nothing wrong with them and
you just want to tamper with it, you
may end up regretting more than anything else.
So it's not a good sign to become
obsessed
with the way you look like
in a way that you now cannot even
appear or come out because you don't like
yourself.
You dislike yourself. You don't like your appearance.
One of the most powerful teachings of this
deen is that identity is given by Allah.
Allah
Allah put you together in whatever
shape he decided to put you together for
a reason as a test for you and
as a test for those who gave birth
to you and a test for those around
you who are going to interact with you.
If someone
is challenged, what we would say disabled in
one way or another, or,
maybe having some
physical or mental challenges. It's a test for
those who gave birth to them. Are they
going to bear patience? Are they going to
love their child still?
Unconditionally
given what may, meaning come what may.
And those who interact with them later on,
are they going to treat them fairly in
an appropriate,
proper, befitting manner?
Or are they going to laugh and scoff
at them? If they're going to laugh and
scoff, then obviously you're losing the plot. If
you see someone who's
abnormal, or should I say challenged or disabled,
there are so many ways of actually,
referring to them.
Whatever it may be, if you see someone
of that nature,
it's the sunnah to say
All praise is due to Allah who has
given me virtue over those whom he has
created on different levels of virtue. So Allah
has blessed them in a different way and
Allah has blessed you in a different way
and he has raised you in a certain
way. So and Allah may have raised them
in another way. So this dua is thanking
Allah for what he has bestowed upon you,
but don't belittle and don't laugh at them
because Allah can actually test you or someone
close to you with something like that or
worse.
So always go out of your way
to to look out for those who might
be tested and challenged
in a different way. But
don't pick on yourself and think I'm not
normal. This is not normal. That's not normal.
People don't notice these things.
You need to liberate yourself by loving yourself
the way you are made by the will
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
People are different sizes. People are different shapes.
People have different skin tones, different
textures, whatever it may be. For as long
as it was not caused by you and
your own hands doing,
you'd always
love yourself. If you did it yourself,
then you may share or you have to
share
part of or most of that particular blame.
Allah disallows us to mutilate our bodies.
Allah disallows us to cause any harm to
our bodies because ultimately they're not our bodies.
They are Allah.
They belong to Allah. These bodies. He's temporarily
loaned them to us. He says, take this
few years time when I separate the soul
again, we'll take this back. And we're gonna
just see how you use it. Don't pierce
it. Don't meaning there's certain things you don't
do with it. Don't do these permanent tattoos
and so on. All this is part of
Islamic teaching.
So we shouldn't do to our bodies what
we're not allowed to do. Keep it clean.
Keep it pure. Keep it well looked after
because Allah is going to take it back.
May Allah Almighty make it easy for us.
Obviously, I haven't gone into the details of
the rulings of piercings and tattoos, but you
can find that out, inshallah.
What I'm more interested in today is dealing
with the difficulty of
not even
appreciating
what Allah has blessed you with.
He's blessed you. If people don't like you
because of what you look like, trust me,
they're not worthy of being your friends or
interacting with.
Necessity.
They are uneducated.
They don't have a connection with Allah. No
one's taught them. And this is why I
always say, let us not treat others a
different manner. Just because this person happens to
have a certain tone of skin, we treat
them in a different way. People do that.
And sometimes without thinking, they do that. We
want to become conscious of it. Go out
of your way to be kind to everyone,
and Allah will bless you. But my brothers
and sisters,
just love the way Allah made you.
That's when you will be liberated. You don't
have to plaster yourself with a ton of
makeup before you love what you look like
because that's not you. Just love yourself, the
original you. May Allah bless you.