Sadullah Khan – 5th Post Witr Talk Ramadaan 1444 2023
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the confusion surrounding the use of language in advertisements and how it can be misunderstood by people. They explain that advertisers may not realize the reality of what they see, but that people may see things differently without realizing it. The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding and engaging with people according to their level of understanding.
AI: Summary ©
We continue our theme for this blessed month
of Ramadan.
Moral guidance from everyday experiences.
Sometimes things are communicated,
but what the communicator
intended to communicate
is not always
received by the recipient
and understood by the one who's receiving the
communication. In other words,
what was meant by 1
is not always understood in the same way
by the other.
An example I want to give us
is there is a detergent or a washing
powder called Tide,
And this company
was trying to promote their washing powder,
and they wanted to circumvent
or
bypass or avoid the language barrier.
And they thought that they will promote this
in a number of countries
and try to avoid using language
and purely using pictures.
So they had a sign tied written on
top. If it was in France, it was
written maybe in French or Turkish, whatever it
was, whatever script in Greek or whatever, tide
was written there and there were 3 pictures.
In the left frame,
they had
a lady holding a piece of what looked
like a brownish or a dirty cloth.
And then the second picture
or the middle picture had this lady putting
this
cloth
into
a powder and the water in the middle,
and then in the 3rd frame,
she holds up the
cloth, and the cloth is pure white.
Simple and straightforward, it seems.
Take a dirty shirt,
wash it in Tide,
and it will come out clean.
What could possibly go wrong
with an advert like this?
So though the sales were good in many
parts of the world,
they found, however,
that they sold almost nothing in Morocco.
Because the people of Morocco
did not perceive the advert as other people
did.
The fact that the Arabic speaking people,
both the text
and the images
are read from right to left
and not from left to right.
It does not mean the people were stupid.
They were ignorant.
They had less intelligence.
But when you communicate something,
did the person you're communicating
understand
what you were communicating?
So what the people in the Arabic speaking
countries understood
was the opposite of what people in other
countries may have understood.
They saw a lady
taking a white shirt,
putting it to this tie business,
and it came out brown.
So they thought it was Sibhul Malabis.
It was
a dye for the clothes. You take a
white shirt, you put in here, it comes
out brown.
And they did not think of it
as,
what they call a washing powder.
You see,
I have a number written on here.
And from your side, it looks 6.
From my side, it looks 9.
Neither of us is wrong,
but both of us don't say the same
thing.
What it implies
that many people see what they see
depending on their perspective,
but may not be aware. And this is
where wise people get involved.
They may not be aware that someone else,
wise people do,
but generally people don't realize that someone else
might see it differently
without
either of them being wrong.
At another level,
how people perceive things
may misconstrue
the reality of things. How people perceive things
may misconstrue
the reality of a situation.
In the Ma'arika of Mu'ta, a very famous
expedition
in the 8th year of Hijri,
Khaled bin Walid was the commander of the
Muslim forces, a companion prophet
And when he saw the Roman army, the
Byzantine army was extremely large and his forces
didn't seem to be matching up to them,
he withdrew his forces from the battlefield and
returned to Madinah.
When they reached Madinah,
some of the people refer to them as
furor,
deserters, you ran away.
The Prophet
said, no. They are kruar.
They are people
of advancement
and people of strategy.
Perspective.
These Madinan people were thinking dichotomously.
Either you fight or you run. So you
didn't fight, so you ran. Either muhari boon
or you are farar, you ran away.
The prophet
said no,
there is another option.
Delaying the battle.
Prepare yourself adequately
and strengthen your forces.
The battle may not be fought today, it
may be fought some other time.
Strategize.
So you may interpret it
as hypocrites
or people who are weak, though you are
on the battlefield by the way. All the
critics were not on the battlefield by the
way.
So history documents that 3 years later,
in the expedition of Usama bin Zayed
who,
by the way, was 20 years old at
that time,
he led the Muslim forces against the Roman
army and they defeated the army 3 years
later, the year the prophet
passed on.
The lesson we deduce from all of this
is that what may work in one place
may not work in another place.
And what may not be effective
at a particular time and place
may be useful and successful at another place,
in another way, at another time.
Therefore realize
that everyone may not see the same way
you see something
because they may understand it differently
and they may not know as much as
you know
or as little as you know.
They may not know as much as you
know or as little as you know. Sometimes
you judge people not based on your knowledge,
but based on your lack of knowledge.
I remember the first time we went to
Makkah, people said, why are some people praying
like this? Can't they tie their hands up?
That means you don't know in Samadha, he'd
be put their hands down. We follow the
Shafi'i mother have been kept on predominantly, and
his teacher, Maliki, they prayed he prayed with
his hand down. So not because you knew,
you knew the Shafi'i
mother, for example, you don't know how Malik
Ki, the teacher of Shafi'i prayed, for example.
So not because of your knowledge
that you found criticism,
it's because of your lack of knowing that
Imam Malik did it in that particular way.
Therefore, when we communicate with others, it's very
important to understand, and this is where the
Rasul was a master.
When we communicate with others,
engage with people
according to their level of understanding.