Naima B. Robert – Episode 4 Finding The Balance Can you be both Truthful and Loving
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Welcome
to episode 4 of Finding the Balance,
rediscovering
the ideal Muslimer. Now as you know, in
this
series, we are asking
a few important questions.
1st, who is the Muslim woman? And what
are her abiding
characteristics?
And how can we live up to the
standard that has been set for us by
our creator, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, in today's
day and age. But before I dive into
today's episode,
I'd like to take a moment to reflect
on
why.
Why should we seek to live up to
these standards?
What is it that we should be aiming
for, striving for?
Well, I'll tell you.
It is the love of Allah.
Abu Hurayrah radhiallahu anhu reported that the messenger,
sallallahu
alaihi wasallam,
said that when Allah loves a servant,
he calls Jibril
and he says,
verily, I love this person,
so you should love him.
Then Jibril loves him and makes an announcement
in the heavens saying, Allah loves this person
and you should love him.
Thus, the dwellers of the heavens love him,
and he is honored
on the earth.
SubhanAllah.
High, high, high standards
for a high reward indeed.
How can we go about
embodying these characteristics?
Well, in today's show,
we're gonna be asking, can you balance being
truthful
and loving
at the same time? Let's do it.
We are all aware
of the importance of honesty and truthfulness
in in life and in deen. So this
ayah is merely a reminder to us where
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says, oh, believers,
stand firm for Allah
and bear true testimony.
Do not let the hatred of a people
lead you to injustice.
Be just,
that is closer to righteousness,
and be mindful of Allah.
Surely Allah is all aware of what you
do.
And yet another reminder,
oh, believers,
stand firm for justice as witnesses for Allah
even if it is against yourselves,
your parents,
or close relatives.
Be they rich or poor, Allah is best
to ensure their interests.
Do not let your desires cause you to
deviate from justice.
If you distort the testimony or refuse to
give it, then know that Allah is certainly
all aware of what you do.
So let's just take a moment to think
about
the
emphasis that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has placed
on us being truthful,
standing for justice even if it is against
ourselves.
This requires
radical honesty.
Being truthful
with yourself,
being truthful with Allah,
choosing
the truth
over comfort
even with our loved ones, which as we
know can be the hardest people to tell
the truth to, but also being truthful with
the people. And I'd like you to look
at that truthfulness as something that you do
about yourself
and also about others.
Now for many of us, the idea of
being truthful about ourselves is uncomfortable
because that means that we have to confront
certain things, but the idea of being truthful
with others is even more uncomfortable
because now we are potentially
hurting feelings, making people feel bad, putting people
in a difficult situation.
But the amazing thing about it is that
the dean teaches us
how to tell the truth
to the people, to others
in
a loving way,
in a way that brings barakah.
And that's where we can now start talking
about being loving
as
the opposite or as the the the thing
that balances out your truthfulness.
Anas
narrated that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
said, none of you believes
and so he loves for his brother what
he loves for himself. So let's take a
pause there for a minute and ask ourselves,
if we're honest,
would we like the people to be truthful
with us? When we have erred, when we
have fallen short, when we've hurt someone,
do we want somebody to lovingly
tell us the truth
or will we prefer that they tell us
a lie and we remain ignorant?
It may be uncomfortable, but for most of
us, we would prefer to know when we've
done something wrong.
And the beautiful thing is is that hadith
is reminding us that
love for the people what you love for
yourself. And if you would love for someone
to be honest with you and speak to
you in a particular way, then that is
the way to speak to the people.
The prophet also said that when a man
loves his brother, he should tell him that
he loves him. So again, this emphasis on
coming from a place of love.
Yet another reminder from the prophet
where he was said it was said to
him, a man may love some people, but
he cannot catch up with their good deeds.
And the prophet, salaam, said, everyone will be
with those whom he loves.
So let's look at what love means to
us.
Of course, many of us have, you know,
a a notion of love that is about
making people feel seen and feel safe and,
you know, making them feel good.
So how does that work with being truthful?
Because most people,
if we're telling truths, it's things that they
may not necessarily want to hear.
And this is where the balance comes in,
where we use
the teachings of the deen to help us
to tell the truth
with love, and that is by following the
manners of giving nasiha.
Now nasiha is what? It's advice.
And we have been given a playbook for
how to give nasiha in the very best
way. So the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
so told us that religion is sincerity.
And so the companion said, to whom? And
he said, to Allah,
to his book, to his messenger, and to
the leaders of the Muslims and their common
folk. So there are certain there is a
playbook.
There is a way to be truthful. There
is a way to give advice.
And
the shurut, the pillars
of our giving of advice should be this.
Firstly, it must come from a sincere place.
It must come from a place of wanting
good for the other person.
You must also speak the truth. Don't give
nasiha in a way that is not truthful.
And we're encouraged not to shame those people
that we are advising,
not to shame people and make them feel
bad.
If you are going to bring the truth
to somebody,
bring your proof. Where's the dalil?
Make sure that you're not coming to somebody
with truth that is actually conjecture.
And
almost most importantly,
the nasiha is to be given in private.
That is the best way to ensure that
you are able to stay within the bounds
of Islamic advice
and tell the truth with a dose of
love on the side, Insha'Allah.
Now stay with me, sisters, because in the
next segment,
sisters and I will be reflecting on some
stories from the seerah
that demonstrate
the importance of telling the truth. I'll see
you
there. And I am back with my sisters,
Umtalha
and sister Anissa. And we wanna dig a
little bit deeper into some of the issues
that we talked about earlier in the episode.
So
when I was doing my research, I came
across that story. I'm sure you guys have
heard of it,
of the Amir ul Momineen walking through the
streets and him overhearing a conversation
between a girl and her mother about
mixing her milk with water. So they were
selling milk in the marketplace.
And her mother told her to go and
mix it with some water so they could
get more money for the milk. Right? And,
the daughter says, no. The emir has already
announced that we shouldn't do this. And the,
you know, the the, the mother says, he's
not here. He can't see you. You know,
do what I said. And then the little,
the girl says, you remember what the girl
says? She says, you know, even if he
cannot hear me, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala can
hear me, right? Basically, I'm not going to
do that. Alhamdulillah, happily for her, she was
overheard by the amir who decided that this
was an extremely
valuable virtue that she had, displayed. And he
went and found her husband from amongst his
sons. So, you know, happy ending for everyone.
But, you know, that must have taken some
guts for the girl to say to her
mother,
I'm not doing it, you know. Even though
the mother obviously felt very strongly that this
is something they needed to do,
for her to be able to tell the
truth to her own mother and say, you
know, basically you know, call her out and
say,
in front of Allah,
I'm not going to do this.
Do you think that that must have taken
a certain level of iman for her? And
how can we
how can we tell the truth, especially
to the people who we love and who,
really, to be honest, don't want to hear
the truth from us? I think one other
thing that we find is so clear in
our faith is
that truthfulness
or truth, sidq, always leads to good outcome.
Definitely in this situation for the young girl,
you know. And, subhanAllah, from our, you know,
tradition we find that a siddh, you know,
yahdiilalbir.
You know, albiryahdilaljannah.
You know, that truthfulness leads to righteousness, good
things. You know? Definitely in her case, it
led to good things, and good things leads
eventually to Jannah. Opposite is true. You know,
like, you know, when you lie or when
you engage in falsehood, it it leads to
sin.
And sin
and destination is in Jahannam. Yeah? We we
seek protection from it. So as believers, as
as Muslim, we have to know that
Allah loves truth. And sometime
you may have the truth with you,
but you may not be able to deliver
the truth because the time is not right.
However, stick with the truth
and look for opportunity
to deliver it in the right time and
place. That's where wisdom comes in. Yeah.
But to
hide your truth or to hide the truth
is not from, you know, the best way
of doing things. Because
people
that, you know, are in front of you,
who may not
appreciate the truth at that time, but they
would always value the truth when they're in
their own, like, in a bubble thinking and
reflecting, you know? And often I see that.
Sometime when you are the torch bearer of
the truth, people,
they know if they want the truth, they
come to you. Yes. Yeah. They come to
you, and they respect you.
Although they may differ with you because you
hold the truth. They may even dislike you
Exactly. But they still respect you. But our
thing is not that we we are like
to dislike. Our thing is, okay, Allah likes
it, so therefore, I'm going to
live my life
according to the truth, you know, and I'm
going to tell the truth
to the best of my ability, you know.
And when you when you live your life
with that truth, then you find that people
often
get you, you know, people know you for
your truth. You know? Because they know that,
you know, if they want the truth, they
will come to you. And even in your
silence, they know that
you have the truth, and you're feeling hesitation
to, like, you know, speak the truth. You
know? So they will always prompt you, like,
what do you think? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. And it's definitely to do with wisdom,
a 100%. You know, I think that's the
main thing because people
so readily,
especially now agate days, get offended, don't they?
You know, so it's how you deliver that
truth and when you find the opportunity. And
and I think that's really simple. I think
it can be done
with beauty, you know, for instance, I don't
know if somebody's upset you or something's, you
know, they they've said something or they've done
something to you and it's something that, you
know, you want to,
you know, get out. Let's say for instance,
you know, you use beautiful words in the
beginning. So you have that Hikma, you know,
you use beautiful words and then you say
whatever is on your chest that whatever truth
you want you need to tell them and
then you close it with something beautiful as
well. So to be thoughtful about
the way that the person is going to
receive the truth, I think that's
as important as delivering the truth. I agree.
I agree. And I think that the, you
know, this idea
of telling the truth from a place of
genuine love and concern, I think it makes
a difference. Because obviously there are rules and
there are manners, etiquettes for how to give
nasiha with advice.
And a a big part of that is
that in your heart, you want good for
the person. Right? You're not trying to humiliate
them. You're not trying to shame them. You're
not trying to have you know, get one
over on them. Yeah. It is literally from
a place of love. And actually, it's interesting
to me that, you know, for many people,
refrain from telling the truth because they say
no. I, you know, I I love the
person too much. Like, I don't wanna hurt
them. Right?
But it's one of those funny things. It's
like you said, you know, do you really
love this person? So if somebody, for example,
is involved in some kind of munkh or
some kind of masi
and you don't tell the truth and you
don't speak the truth to them and you
don't give them nasiha because you don't want
them to be upset because you don't want
to be sad, you are basically complicit
in their munkar or mawasi.
Is that love? Yeah. But doesn't it then
go back down to
you ultimately
not just loving them, but,
you helping to shape them and make them
better.
Because again, going back to what we spoke
about before in terms of we're always in
this place of happiness or comfortability.
That's not necessarily what makes us grow and
helps us to be better. It's literally not
what makes us grow. Yeah, exactly. So when
somebody points out something and they and they're
doing it from a genuine place because they
love you, it's only because they want you
to be better. You know? So we should
be ready to receive
the naseeh also, Insha'Allah.
I think the point that you mentioned about
being, you know, uncomfortable, you know, when you
are trying to help another person grow, often
what I see in the community is that
a sister may, you know, have something to
say to another sister. So what they tend
to do, they go down the path of
speaking to other sisters.
But the thing is the problem is not
going to be solved by you talking about
this other sister with another sister. But now
you're just backbiting. Exactly. And and and basically,
shaitan's loving it because you've actually created
something that was supposed to be
good intented. Right. But you've just given you
know, like, opening for the shaitan. And you've
just gone you know, you've derailed yourself, you
know. So it's almost like there's that was
was
to say, no. Don't say anything to her
because she's gonna get upset. Mhmm. And you
know what she's like. You know, she doesn't
like to, you know, x, y, and zed,
and you don't wanna be the the reason
for her to be upset. It's like this
little West West Yeah. Just plants the seed
in you Yeah. To derail you, as you
said, from your initial good intention Yeah. Which
was to be a true lover of that
person. Yeah. Because if you truly love for
your sister what you love for yourself,
I hope that in our honest moments, we
could say that
I would prefer to know the truth,
even if it's hard Yeah. Than to be
told a lie and think that everything's happening.
And I think we all would agree that
if somebody was to come to you in
the nicest manner and
were to approach you and say, you know,
there's something I need to talk to you
about, and they were to say, look, I
have observed x, y, and zed, You would
feel like, oh my god. This person has
taken that time out to actually connect me.
They care.
But
compare that with another scenario. This person has
gone with with another person, had a little
chat, and the other person the party. And
you think, no. Even if your intention was
good, the way you have gone about it,
it's not good. You know? Also, I have
seen, generally speaking,
people
appreciate,
you know, correction and
Yeah. Advice if it's done in the right
way. Like, subhanAllah, you know, sometime, you know,
we we always doubt ourselves. Should I? Should
I not? Because we don't wanna offend. You
know, we live in a society where we
don't wanna offend, but growth comes about when
somebody actually says, you know what? It makes
you a little uncomfortable? Yeah. It makes you
uncomfortable
for the giver and the taker. But you
know what? Sometime you don't realize how much
appreciation, you know, is going to be thrown
at you when you do take the pluck
the courage to do that. And and I
tell you, I think sometimes and this is
what I like to do and I like
to teach my children is actually be truthful
to yourself.
Reflect yourself
before another person before
Yeah. Allah. Because, you know, let's say for
instance, and, you know, I'm taking a very
obvious one here, but let's take,
something like weight. Yeah. Okay. The truth is
you're looking in the mirror
and you're seeing that, you know, the your
habits are leading to this destruction. Right? It's
not just about the way that you look,
you know, and and the and the weights,
the actual physical weight. But it's the the
the implications that you can have. Yeah. You
know, the contradiction that can come from it.
But you have to be truthful to yourself
and to be able to say actually you
know what I need to make a change,
for myself.
So reflecting on your truth,
do it yourself first. It's true. It's true.
It's it's that it's that whole, you know,
pointing a finger at another, you know, and
what's what's happening with you, subhanAllah.
I think that's really, again, when we refuse
to face the reality
that is staring back at us in the
mirror. Right?
It's easier to focus on other people's
flaws, other people's faults, other people's mistakes. Right?
And sometimes we can be very ready to
be truthful
with everybody else but not with ourselves. And
I think what that's one of
the aspects of the deen that I truly
appreciate and that is the way that we
are encouraged to self reflect.
It starts here with me Yeah. With me,
myself, and I, and then
Yeah. Rabbanah and I. Right? And and and,
you know, my lord and I. And that
is, you know, what we say, that's your
first
sphere of influence is yourself. Yeah. So so
a lot of the times, we are looking
at others and trying to find fault or
seeing faults in others. But we haven't Yeah.
Had a check taken them. You can actually
do this yourself practically. Again, looking at practical
ways on, know, how the viewers can do
it is by doing personal development Yeah. You
know, or getting a coach. But when you
do your personal development, then you don't even
need tell anybody. You need to just look
at yourself. You know what? As a mother,
I might be a little bit too harsh.
How am I gonna, you know Yeah. And
just just for the viewers who may be
wondering what you mean by personal development, you
know, we're we're talking about
sitting down,
looking at your life with, you know, with
a journal or something and just looking at
each area of your life. Obviously, there's so
many resources, mashallah, online. But it literally is,
you know, however you wanna see it as
a as a slave of Allah, as a
mother, as a wife, as a sister,
how am I doing Yeah. Honestly,
you know. But also, I think there needs
to be a balance between, you know, self
development also helping people around you because nasiha
is very, you know, key in our deen.
You know, a deen or nasiha. Deen is
nasiha. Yes. So I think, you know, we
have to be mindful
that, yes, you you you take care of
yourself.
You are engaged in your own, like, well-being,
spiritual well-being, everything. But at the same time,
don't forget your neighbor. If they're doing something
wrong, it's that thing of, you know, commanding
good and forbidding evil that you are responsible
for the people around you as well so
that if somebody is, like, drowning, you you
you need to, like, you know, pull them.
And this is what Surasa talks about.
You know, that that the element of tawun,
like, corporation. Yeah. And that has to be
so that you see something and you think,
okay. What's the best way I can actually
deal with that advising or that nasiha?
And often, you know, when you take that
time to think, okay, if I was in
her place, I would want someone to advise
me. So when you put yourself in their
shoes, you you carve a way out that's
going to help you to navigate through this,
say, criticism or advice. Because you know that,
okay, if I was in her shoe, I
would want the same none to to me.
Yeah. So that helps you to know what
method to
apply, isn't it? Mhmm. And that, you know,
the essential
acceptance
that we all, you know, we all need
to have, which is that we are a
work in progress. Yes. That we are human
beings. Definitely. That we are created with flaws.
Mhmm. Not perfect, imperfect, masha'Allah.
And by design, right?
And it's okay to be wrong and it's
okay to make a mistake and it's okay
as long as you grow and you learn.
So my dear sisters I hope that you
took something of benefit from that insha'Allah.
If you did, you know what to do.
Please do post about this on your socials
and make sure you tag Iman Channel and
myself, Naima b Robert. We can't wait to
see what your takeaways have been. Now let's
go over to my parting thoughts.
Let's do it.
As a revert, the idea of belonging to
a global family defined by the bonds of
faith and mutual respect and responsibility
is a powerful
one. Here, in the arms of the Ummah,
we expect to shed the barriers of race,
class, culture and caste, and embrace each other
as sincere brothers and sisters in faith.
Now while this is not always the reality,
in spite of all its complications
and contradictions,
there is something special about this community forged
by Iman.
There are the little things,
the random acts of kindness,
selfless generosity,
unflinching
solidarity, and pure love
for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
that remind us
of what this ummah could really be.
Because the ummah is not some
we
want
to help the Ummah, if we want to
improve our condition as
And if we want to help the Ummah,
if we want to improve our condition as
Muslims,
it starts with us.
It starts with us seeking knowledge of this
deen so that we can understand where we're
going wrong and how to rectify ourselves.
It starts with us cleansing ourselves,
elevating ourselves,
striving to live up to our potential as
Muslims.
And it starts with us passing on what
we learn to our families,
friends,
and communities
in ever widening circles.
And if we do all this with true
sincerity and trust in Allah, do you have
any doubt
that we will see a change in the
condition of the ummah?
That we will be able to taste the
sweetness of true brotherhood,
true sisterhood,
that our communities will become enlightened places of
worship, acceptance and joy?
I don't.
So how about we get the ball rolling
starting today?
May Allah
accept all the work that we do within
the Ummah
and make us a cause for its revival,
Amin.
See you in the next episode, Insha'Allah.