Sadullah Khan – 5th Post Witr Talk Ramadaan 1444 2023

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.