Nadim Bashir – Community Ethics – Surah Hujurat Tafsir Verse 12
AI: Summary ©
The community's approach is to avoid assumptions and show evidence, even though they may not be appropriate. The community's criteria for success is based on a report rather than gender and their approach is to stop being attached to anyone. They stress the importance of avoiding these kinds of behavior and staying away from certain situations.AI: Transcript ©
So last week, we were, I believe it
was ayah number 11.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, Surah Hujarat. We are
continuing the tafsir of Surah Hujarat.
And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, he mentions that
there are 6 things we need to stay
away from as a community.
And the reason why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
he placed both of them in 2 different
aya's,
is because 3 of them often happen in
front of the person,
and 3 things happen often behind a person.
So in the first in the first verse,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentioned 3 things that
happened in front of the person. Allah says,
Do not make a mockery of each other.
Do not disgrace each other. Do not put
down each other. And then number 2 is,
Do not use nicknames against each other.
Now in this ayah, Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala,
he says, you yuhulalareenaamanu.
Again, you see, subhanAllah,
the first verse, Allah begins the verse by
saying,
He's addressing us in particular.
The next ayah, Allah again is addressing us.
Oh you people who believe, stay away from
most assumptions.
Now often when we hear about 1, the
only thing that usually comes to our mind
is su'ovan.
But there is something called also husnavan,
good assumptions.
Giving people
benefit of the doubt. So Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala is saying,
is a word that is used in the
Quran too often
refer to something that is terrible, and you
should stay away from it completely.
Meaning that you should not even get close
to it. 1 is to get close to
something that is wrong,
it becomes difficult for a person to then
stay out of haram.
Allah is telling us, stay far away from
it. You know in English they say, stay
away from it with a 10 a 10
foot pole. You understand? The idea is driving
get remotely close to this idea of doing
something like this.
Stay away from most assumptions.
Then Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says,
That some
someone
or some assumptions
are wrong. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala First
of all, we know that not all assumptions
are wrong. There is something called hussnavan.
You see something happening, you give someone benefit
of the doubt. You see something,
you're perhaps giving that person a better assumption,
that this is the situation they are in.
You see someone somewhere,
you give someone,
you know, you you apply.
Often we apply what?
We always take the negative approach when it
comes to other people. However, you know what's
interesting? When it comes to others, we always
use The first default
action is
And when it comes to us, we want
everyone to have what?
Husnavan with us. So just like we want
others to treat us with Husnavan,
we need to treat others with Husnaban also.
That is why Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he
says what?
A person cannot be a believer until they
do not want for themselves,
what what they want for their muslim they
want for the for themselves, for their Muslim
brothers also. If I want people to treat
me with hoslivan,
I need to treat other people with with
hoslivan.
So a lot Now, first of all is
why is this so important?
Because often whenever there's issues in a community,
it always starts off with an assumption.
And people What happens is that people are
very quick in spreading rumors.
You find out something. You don't even have
the full details about something,
but people often go straight to social media
and they post whatever's in their head, in
their mind, they put it on social media.
And after that, what happens is that you're
always gonna have some people who are gonna
take anything, and they're gonna magnify it. They're
gonna grow it into something that is unnecessary.
And from there, there goes, you know then
there's hatred that happens.
There's judgment that happens after that. Then there
is people who are campaigning against others, and
then there are just unnecessary news in false
information that begins to spread in a community.
Every single issue in the community
often starts off from where?
Su'urban.
And this is why it's very important that
anytime we hear anything about anyone,
and subhanallah, I have to be very blunt
about this.
That right now in our communities,
often the criteria
of who's right and who's wrong
based on a report, or based on a
1, any kind of assumption that appears in
a community.
Often the criteria
to determine whether it's true or false has
come has come down to unfortunately
gender.
If it's a woman who complains about it,
kalashi is a victim. Kalashi is, you know,
she is the 1 who is the victim.
The man is wrong and so forth. And
this is where we are.
This is where we are as a community,
and we have to stop this. The criteria
of who's right and who's wrong does not
come down to gender. The criteria is, you
make a claim about someone, you have to
back it up, you have to say, bring
me the receipt. Meaning, not literally, bring me
the evidence. You understand? You have to show
me the evidence.
And anyone who comes,
you have to bring the evidence.
And if you don't have any evidence, it
is simply a 1. Yes, that man or
that woman
may be true, may be right in their
claim, but you have to bring evidence.
Till you don't bring evidence, it is hard.
You cannot make a judgment
in in the favor of anyone else. So
this is why Allah subhanahu wa'ala is saying
that most assumptions Stay away from because most
assumptions
are wrong. Then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says,
often what happens after
a an assumption has been created about someone
or something,
what happens after that? People are usually restless.
I need to go dig deeper. I need
to get into this situation.
So you know what happens after that? They
begin to spy on 1 another. So that's
why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said next,
Do not spy on 1 another. And how
do we spy? You know, mashaAllah, we are
very
very sophisticated when it comes to spying. We'll
send our kids to someone else's house. Okay?
And when they come back, you know, tell
me. Sit down. You know? What goes on
inside their house? Tell me. Okay? What was
the mother wearing? What was the father wearing?
What were they doing? How they were talking
to each other? What's inside their house and
so forth? Did they talk about this? Did
they refer to this and so forth?
Spying. You understand? This is all part of
spying.
Getting into other people's businesses
when it's not our place is spying.
And this is something that many muslims are
doing. Not only that. Not always sometimes sending
our children. Sometimes we might send someone else.
Sometimes we will go ourselves and so forth.
Sometimes we will track where they're going and
so forth. We get behind a family, and
we start noticing every single thing. And this
is where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, or
he refers to in the Quran, you become
so obsessed about other people,
and you forget about yourself.
Once again, it's not our job. If a
person is far from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
that's between them and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
It's not my place to interfere to other
people's families. It's not my job to interfere
into other people's,
in other people's lives. As the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasalam, he says,
Stay away from things that do not concern
you. This does not concern you. What happens
in another family and someone else's house does
not concern any 1 of us. So
Allah says,
Now often,
imagine there's an assumption that's been created by
someone,
and you start to dig into someone else's
life, and you even grow that assumption, what's
the next thing that usually happens? You don't
you feel restless. You know why? Because you're
probably the only 1 who knows something about
someone else's family. So now you feel the
need to do what? To share it. Okay?
That's why Allah then says,
leading to the 3rd step. Do not backbite
about 1 another. You understand? And this is
where often we think. Because a person when
you tell a person, don't not do not
commit ghiba or bagbaai about someone else, they're
like, well brother, I'm only sharing something that
is true about that other person. That is
exactly what ghiba is. The The prophet
he says
that talking about someone
behind their back,
that is true, is actually
And especially if they don't like to be
talked about, or you're be you're addressing something
about them, that if they were present they
would not like it. That's exactly what kibah
is. And the prophet was asked, what if
it does not exist within their life? And
we're making of something, the prophet said that
it is considered as slander. So that is
why it's very important that we understand
that ghiba is something that the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam, he has told us that many
hadith to stay away from it. Now in
order to create some kind of disgust,
in order to help us avoid griba in
our life, Allah gave us an example. He
says,
Allah then says
that first of all, imagine sitting down.
Allah subhanahu says,
The the the flesh of your own brother.
First of all is, none of us will
even do something like this. But imagine there
was a piece of flesh.
Okay. Uncooked. By the way, all
often is in reference to uncooked meat too.
So imagine sitting in front of raw flesh
to begin with. Okay? Let's say it's even
from an, a permissible animal, but you're sitting
in front of raw flesh. First of all,
we will not even eat something like that.
You understand? We don't even eat something like
that. So that's 1. Then Allah subhanahu says
that, let's take it a notch higher.
It's not the it's not the flesh of
any animal that you are, that we are
permitted to eat or consume.
It is the flesh of your brother.
Okay?
Our own biological brother. Would I do this
to ever to my own biological brother? We
will never do this to anyone in our
family. You understand? And then Allah
is saying,
Dead brother.
So imagine how much disgust
anyone would feel,
if they're sitting in front of a piece
of a flesh
that comes from their brother
who is dead.
Would we do anything like this? Just like
we find this this We find this idea
of eating a flesh of this type disgusting,
you should always approach ghiba in a disgustful
way. You understand?
Allah then says,
Be conscious of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is the 1 who
forgives, and he's the 1 who has mercy
who is merciful.
Why did Allah mention this? Because often we
will fall into this. And the fact that
Allah subhanahu wa'ala is saying tawab. Why is
he saying tawab? He could have said just
al Ghafoor, that Allah subhanahu forgives, but he's
he's mentioning tawba.
Because tawba often happens when?
Not after you commit a minor sin but
you commit what?
A major sin. Tawbah is required
after you commit a major sin. So Allah
is almost as if Allah is saying, all
these 6 things
are considered Especially the last 3 things.
And
spying on 1 another, and then ghiba.
These 3 things are considered as
major sins,
and stay completely fur as far as you
can,
from them. So this is something that as
long as we can do this in our
community, and this is wallahi, this is what's
plaguing our community.
Anytime you see a situation, you're always gonna
see it always starts off with su'udhan.
You hear something,
you cannot base the you cannot make a
judgment
without listening to the evidence, listening to both
sides.
Even By the way, there are times when
people say, oh, there is some kind of
evidence online.
Even if there is evidence online, or someone
has written something about it, who's that person
who has written about it? It could be
a non Muslim who's written about it. Non
Muslims don't have any criterias
about about, about Islam. They have no ethics
of Islam and so forth. Our deen is
a very rich deen. We have a process
in every single thing, especially if there's a
person who has done something that is wrong.
There's a process in place to determine
if that thing if that person is actually
guilty or not. There's a whole process, and
often we call ourselves Muslim. We wanna get
rid of the entire process, and we're very
quick in judging others. So I ask Allah
that he gave gives us the tawfiq to
stay away, not only from these 3 things,
all 6 things.
We do not make a mockery of anyone.
We do not insult anyone.
We do not,
use offensive names towards anyone. We will stay
away from Su'avon.
We stay away from, from spying on others,
and we stay away from hiba. These are
6 things that Allah is telling us very
clearly. If you want to thrive as a
community, stay away from these 6 things, inshallah.
I ask Allah
to grant us the tawfiq, inshallah.
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