Mustafa Umar – You Are Who Your Friends Are
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We praise Allah
because he deserves to be praised.
Allah deserves infinite praise for who he is
and for what he's done.
We ask Allah for help
because nobody else can help anyone
if Allah does not help that person.
And we ask Allah for forgiveness for all
the sins that we have done,
those that we remember
and those that we've forgotten.
I declare that there is no one worthy
of worship
or admiration
except the one and only true God, and
that is Allah.
And I declare that Muhammad was the last
and final messenger
sent for the guidance
of all people until the end of time.
Now then,
there's an ancient Greek philosopher known as Aristotle,
who made a comment
about
human relationships.
He said that man is a social animal.
And what he meant by that was,
he says that people cannot survive in isolation.
They cannot live just by themselves without interacting
with other people.
The reason why we interact with people daily
is because,
1, our survival depends on it,
and 2, it makes our life more comfortable
and more enjoyable. We trade,
we barter, we help one another, we specialize
in different things and society is able to
develop more.
But when we interact with people, it benefits
us.
But also,
interacting with people can also harm us.
And the closer you are to somebody,
the more benefit
or the more harm
will actually result
from that relationship or from that interaction.
So Islam taught us
what types
of relationships
we should have
and to what extent should we have them.
And it told us what type of people
we should try to keep company with and
what type of people we should keep a
little bit of distance from, because it affects
us greatly.
Now in general,
Allah says in the Quran,
that believers are nothing but
siblings to one another, brothers and sisters of
each other.
So we should be nice and we should
be kind and we should be friendly
to everybody,
to all people,
to Muslims
who believe that there is only one God
and that Muhammad, peace be upon him, is
the final messenger, we should be extra friendly
to them.
But the word friendly
is an adjective,
and
the word friend
is a noun.
And we should differentiate between the 2.
Because the prophet
peace and blessings be upon him, he said,
that a person is going to be on
the deen,
the religion or the way of life of
their closest friend.
So be very careful whom you take as
your close friend.
Authentic hadith.
So he's he's warning us,
and he's basically saying that be careful
who you're friends with because it's going to
affect you greatly.
If you look at what the definition of
a friend is, what is friendship?
Friendship
is a relationship of,
you know, mutual affection between 2 people,
but it's a different type of relationship than
just a normal interpersonal,
you know, bond with your coworker
or with your classmate
or with your neighbor, or with some colleague,
it's on
a higher level. It's not just people you
know or interact with daily.
It's somebody that you actually choose to spend
more of your time with
on a much higher level.
And the reason why it's so important is
because when you love somebody
and when you spend time with somebody,
you are influenced by them, whether you like
it or not. And when you're influenced by
them, you start to synchronize with them
In your behavior,
in your way of thinking,
in your tastes, in your style, in everything.
So if you take an example of somebody
who likes to play basketball, a lot of
Muslims in our community play basketball.
And if you're on the court, you'll see
some people, they're gonna wear a jersey of
their favorite basketball player. It's gonna have their
number on it. It's gonna have their name
on it. Not the name of the person
who's playing the game. It's gonna have the
name and the number of somebody else who
they idolize and they look up to as
being a great basketball
player. Whether it's, you know, Kobe or LeBron
or older Michael Jordan, whoever it may be.
And what happens is not only are they
changing their dress, but then when they dribble
the ball,
if they like Michael Jordan, they start sticking
their tongue out.
If they like, you know, some other player,
they'll they'll they'll go and
get a haircut
that's similar to the haircut of the basketball
player.
Now,
does the haircut
help the ball go into the hoop?
No.
Does sticking your tongue out help you make
the 3 pointer?
No.
So what happens is, you start to imitate
and you automatically take on things that are
unconnected with the game whatsoever. Why? Because the
influence of the people that you hold dear
in your heart automatically affects you.
And this is natural whether you like it
or not. And I learned this the hard
way When I was in India,
I studied in Islamic University,
and the principal of the school told me,
even though it's a Muslim school with Muslims,
the principal told me, don't tell anybody that
you're from the United States of America.
I'm shocked. What do you mean? He goes,
just trust me. For your own good, don't
tell people you're from America because this is
a poor area and they're gonna look at
you differently and they're gonna try Something's gonna
happen, it's just not gonna be good for
you. So I said, okay. I'll do that.
So I was going around,
trying to blend in with everyone else, and
wearing the clothes, and just kind of keep
my mouth shut so they don't hear my,
you know, accent and all that stuff.
And still people would come up to me,
and they'd be like, where are you from?
And I'd be like, yeah, I'm not from
over this place. No, you're not.
You're either from the US, the UK, Canada,
or maybe South Africa, but nowhere else, if
you're from one of these countries. I'm like,
and it kept on happening again and again.
I'm like, how do all these people know?
He said, we can tell by the way
you walk.
It's automatic. Just by the You don't walk
like people from this country. You walk differently
because you're from a culture.
Whether you like it or not, you absorb
the mannerisms of people around you. You absorb
the ideas of people around you, and you
naturally this just happens whether you like it
or not. That's why
we need to think about the importance
of the people we're around,
and that's why it's also important for people
to hang around Muslims to hang around Muslims.
And I get this question all the time.
Parents call and ask me, they say, you
know what? My son, he's going off on
the wrong path.
My daughter, she's going away from Allah.
What can I do? Can you talk to
her? Can you talk to him? And I
ask first two questions always. Question number 1,
do they pray
and did they grow up praying?
And if the answer is no, it's a
really bad sign. And the second question that
I ask is,
are the majority of their friends Muslims or
non Muslims?
And you can tell if they say they're
not Muslim,
then you can tell where a large part
of the problem is.
It's gonna take people away from Islam. And
if they say, yes, they're Muslims, then ask,
are they Muslims who pray?
It changes everything too. So these are really
it shows you that people are gonna be
influenced. And I know the argument. Some people
are gonna make the argument. They're gonna say,
well, you know, what if the Muslims in
your community are bad influences,
but the non Muslim, they have good behavior
and they have good characteristics and all that
stuff? Yes, there are some exceptions, of course.
But when you live
in a society where 1 out of a
100 people are Muslim
versus another society where 99 out of a
100 people are Muslim,
whether you like it or not, there's gonna
be some level of influence.
When Islam is normalized
in a society, there's gonna be many pros,
there's gonna be some cons. People will take
Islam for granted and things like that. But
there are many pros as well. So the
point is
that you need to surround yourself with people
who believe in Allah.
Surround yourself with people who respect the prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him. Surround yourself with
people
who love the Quran and who turn to
the Quran for guidance.
And when you do that, it's automatically gonna
affect you. Whether you like it or you
don't like it, it's automatically you're gonna start
to synchronize with them,
whether you do it intentionally or unintentionally.
And that's why it is said that a
good friend is a priceless gift. You can
never put a price tag on it.
But what is a good friend?
A good friend is not just somebody who
accepts you who you are.
The definition of a good friend is 2.
Somebody who accepts you who you are
and somebody who helps you become the person
that you should be.
It's 2.
And that's why, you know, friends are like
it's like having good friends is like being
on autopilot.
We do a lot of things on autopilot.
Right? If you have like a coffee machine,
you set it for like 5 AM and
automatically it turns on. Or if you have
a toaster for example, a lot of people
use toasters. You put it in there, it's
on autopilot. It's gonna turn off after whatever
setting you did, it pops out. If you
left it on the stove, you'd have to
sit there and watch it all the time.
Here, don't have to worry about it. Just
push one button, it's gonna pop out and
it's gonna be ready. It makes your life
easier. Cruise control or adaptive cruise control or
advanced autopilot or whatever it is, makes your
life easier.
When you have good friends, it makes your
life easier because automatically the goodness is just
gonna be absorbed by you.
You. It makes your life easier. It's easier
to be a good person. It's easier to
excel in the things that you want to
do.
And that's why the prophet, peace and blessings
be upon him, he described
having a friend
like a person who sells perfume
and an ironsmith or a blacksmith, like an
iron worker.
So he said, if you go into a
person who sells perfume and cologne and things
like that,
you can either buy something, you buy something
that smells nice and you put on your
clothes and you walk out you're smelling nice.
And he says, even if you don't buy
anything, meaning you don't even put much effort
into it, you don't invest much into the
relationship,
you still probably at least it smells nice
when you're in there, and when you walk
out probably you're gonna walk out with a
little bit of good smell on your clothes.
But when you walk into the store
where somebody's working with metal, like those in
the old times, they're working with metal and
they have the fire on there, and they're
making swords and all of that stuff. When
you go in there,
you can potentially get burned by the fire,
because it's moving around. And even if you
stay away from the fire and you're very
careful,
it smells bad in there, and when you
walk out probably your clothes will be smelling
a little bit bad too. So whether you
want it, even if you were super cautious,
there's still gonna be some remnants, some effects
on you when you walk out,
And that's
why we need to, you know, we need
to be very very careful. Now some people
when they hear this, they say, okay, I
want I want to have good friends, but
you know people don't like me.
And those religious people and stuff, people go
to the masjid and all that, I don't
feel welcome around them.
And you can't sit there and complain,
because when it comes to friendships,
you have to also ask yourself,
what am I doing to nurture
that friendship?
And how can I make myself into a
good friend, somebody who's generally likable? You know?
So
there's a nice book called The Relationship Cure
by doctor John Gottman, and he's, you know,
well known
researcher.
And, he wrote this book not just for
married couples, but he wrote it for friendships,
and he talks about how can you have
a strong relationship with somebody else.
And he talks about this old theory. He
says the old theory among psychologists was
that people form deep connections with each other
because they open up about
what happened to me in the past and
my life and my dreams and all my
personal secret thoughts, and when you open up
to someone, then you develop a deep bond
with them.
And doctor Gottman said, no.
His research showed that it's actually, that's not
the case. So in 1990, he established a
research lab at the University of Washington, and
he put people in the room and he
was recording them, and he's got sensors tied
up to them and checking their sweat levels
and checking their heart rate and checking when
they when they talk to people, what happens.
And they do a whole team analyzing all
of these interactions with other people, and what
he found was something very interesting.
He said that it's not about what you're
talking about
with the other person,
it's how you talk about it that matters.
So how you talk about things matters more
than what you're talking about. So he talks
about this idea and he says, you know
what?
People have what's called bids for attention.
Basically, you throw out something and you're looking
for some level of response or attention from
that person and people are gonna respond in
different ways. So for example, let's say, you
go up to one of your friends and
you're like, hey, did you hear about
the the elections in Turkey? You know, Erdogan
won and this is good victory for Islam
and all of that. He says there's 3
potential responses that somebody can say. The first
response
is to turn away from it. And turn
away from it is like,
yeah, I heard, and then you take out
your phone and you just start texting somebody
else. You don't care. They're like, yeah, yeah,
I know that.
Conversation is done. The second response is to
turn against
that
attention that they threw out, and turning against
it is like, who cares?
I don't live there. I don't live in
Turkey. I don't care what happens over there.
So you just shut that entire conversation down.
And the third response
is you turn towards it and you accept
it and you acknowledge it. You feel like,
yeah, alhamdulillah.
It's great. I hope Islam flourishes there. You
know, I love those Ertugrul type inspired shows.
You know, they're awesome. I want to go
visit the country. It's gonna be great for
me. You know, inshaAllah, it's gonna be good
for the Muslims.
So that
happens with every interaction you have with somebody.
If you're just sitting down and you're just
having like cup of coffee with somebody,
and, you know, you ask somebody, your hands
are dirty, you're eating one of those cookies
or something, and you're like, hey, can you
grab me a napkin?
You can do the same thing. You can
turn away from the bit, and you'd be
like, oh my coffee is going to get
cold. Sorry I can't help you. You can
turn against it,
get your own napkin. I look like your
slave or something,
or you can turn towards it. Be like,
sure man, I'll get you a napkin
for the other people on the table too.
What is that gonna do to your friendship?
What you're doing is you're communicating a message.
When you turn towards somebody's bid, you're automatically
communicating a signal saying, I value you.
I care about you, I like spending time
with you. When you turn away from that
or when you turn against it, you're basically
sending a signal that I don't appreciate you,
I don't care for you, and you really
don't mean anything in my life.
So depending on how you respond, it's gonna
determine how you build relationships with people. So
what we need to do as Muslims is
first of all, we need to identify what
type of relationships do you want to have
in your life,
And then think about the ones you already
have, and the ones that you know you
want to keep, try to strengthen them.
Try to spend more time with those people
and be extra good to those people. And
you work on building new relationship with other
people to help yourself improve for your own
good, for your good of your akhirah, your
next life, and for the good of your
dunya, for the good of your this life
as well. But then the prophet, peace be
upon him, he also warned us.
What about that bad smell?
What about the potential to get burned? What
do we do about that? And a lot
of people, they say all the time, they're
like, it's hard for me to
get out of my friend circle. Every time
they call me, they're like, come on, we're
going out. Man, let's go hang out. It's
really hard for some people to say no.
They're just
they just can't say no.
So there's 2 nice books that have been
written
about this, somewhat similar. One of them is
called Boundaries by Henry Cloud, and another one
is called Necessary Endings, also by by him
too.
And he says that a lot of people
struggle with
saying no
when they know something is not good for
them, but they just get sucked into it.
So he gives a good tip. He says,
the tip is
you let the other person make the decision
for you, if you're hesitating, so that you
don't have to make the decision.
You say, well, how how do you do
that?
What you do is you set
healthy
and reasonable boundaries with the other person. Basically
telling them that there's certain behavior that I
don't like,
and I really really don't like it, and
it's actually unacceptable to me, but I don't
know what to do. So you set this
boundary and you tell them,
you know what man? Every time you cuss,
every time you use bad language,
it really bothers me. It goes into my
heart, and then I start using the same
thing and I'm thinking about those words. I'm
trying to cut that out of my life.
I don't want it in my life, so
please don't use that language around me. Or,
say, every time you smoke,
you know, I really I don't like it.
You know, I don't want to get lung
cancer,
and you know, if you're smoking weed, it
smells so bad. I I don't want to
I don't want to be around there. I
know maybe you're addicted
and you're not getting the help that you
need, but don't do it in front of
me.
And you set a boundary,
and now you let the other person make
the decision.
You had communicated very clearly what really bothers
you, and then they get to decide. Are
they gonna cross over your boundary and just
smoke in front of you anyway? It's gonna
use foul language in front of you anyways,
or they're gonna respect it? And if you
give them the threat and say, hey, if
you cross this boundary, you don't have to
use the word boundary, but if you if
you do this,
I really don't want to hang out with
you anymore.
And if they break it, you follow through
on the threat
and you say, look, I don't want to
hang out anymore, and now you know why.
I'm not just not gonna answer your phone
calls anymore, you're gonna understand why because I
already communicated this to you very clearly. They
made the decision for you, and you don't
have to sit there feeling bad about, oh,
what did I do? No. They decide.
You put the ball in their court. So
may Allah
bless our relationships,
and may Allah
help us to get closer to Him.
Ameen. I ask Allah for forgiveness for me
and for you, you also ask Him for
forgiveness.
So just to recap, we talked today about
the importance of friendships,
about
cultivating and building good strong friendships that are
gonna help you in your life and gonna
help you in your next life. And be
careful and distance yourself from some relationships
that are taking you towards the fire or
relationships that are just dragging you down and
you're stressed out and you're not moving anywhere
in life,
change your friend circle.
May we ask Allah, oh Allah, help us
to have the courage to make the right
decisions
in this life. Oh Allah, help us do
only things which will please You and keep
us away from doing anything which will displease
You. Oh Allah, those people who are struggling,
oh Allah, make it easy for them. All
of those people who are sick, cure them
and make it a means of purification for
them. All of them show us the truth
is truth and help us to follow it.
Show us the false is false and keep
us away from it.