al-Raghib al-Isfahani #11 – The Importance of Focusing On Yourself

So at this point, we understand who we are as human beings, we understand our purpose, or at least the multiple layers of purpose that we have. We understand our capacity, we understand the tools that Allah gave us, and the potential that we have to fulfill the question then is okay, now what do we do? How do we get there? How are we going to develop ourselves? How are we going to refine ourselves so that we become eligible so that we become deserving of this amazing station and responsibility that he left over last panel to honor that the the managerial role, right, the successor or the stewards for all of creation? It's a process and so the author wants us to consider

what are all of the potential obstacles to embarking upon this path of reforming the self refining the self so that we can get there and one of those obstacles sometimes is getting too busy with the faults of others trying to focus too much on reforming other people. So the importance of focusing on yourself and reforming the self before you start to try to be a guide for others or reforming others is because as Sheikh Abdullah used to tell us, in Medina, a sick doctor can't heal anybody, right? If somebody tries to go fix somebody else, then if if you're sick, if you have disease, you might end up spreading your disease to the other person. And that doesn't hold true for every single

situation. And doesn't mean you have to be absolutely perfect before you start giving advice or helping anybody but let's just say that the temptation and the usual scenario is that people become so busy concerning themselves with other people's faults and problems that they neglect themselves. And this is something Allah blames us for in the Quran, Allah says, Are you going to command the people to do something that you yourself don't do, right? And then that sort of stuff, allows power data says Kevin, I'm not gonna turn in the law, he enter kolomela tough, I don't know, he says that it's an enormity for a loss power data or in the sight of a loss amount of data that you would say

something and not do it. So this is blameworthy, we have to make sure that we are at the very least we are fixing ourselves as much as we are concerned with the faults of others, and preferably that we should probably be fixing ourselves a little bit more than we are paying attention to the to the faults of others. And so we have this balance and a slam between we have on one extreme we have like okay, the proverbial quote unquote haram police people who are we could say that that represents one extreme of focusing excessively on the faults of other people to the point where you're being blinded from your own faults, and you're neglecting your own self perform the project of refining

yourself. But there's another extreme as well. And that's the Mind your business extreme, that's to imagine that there is absolutely no accountability in Muslim social spaces that everybody can just act however, they want to do whatever they want. And nobody can call you out or hold you accountable for anything because well, you don't know me and you don't know my heart and you don't know my actions. And what I do, and I do all this other good things. But besides that, you don't even see both of those extremes, right. And so Islam is right in the middle in between those two extremes, we have to have some level of mutual accountability between each other, you don't get to act however

you want, right. And this goes for the lay Muslim, and this goes for this give us the scholars and the Duat and the big speakers and stuff like that, right, you don't get a pass, you're going to step out of bounds. Sometimes I'm going to step out of bounds, sometimes I'm going to do something wrong, I'm gonna say something I shouldn't have said or get involved maybe in something I shouldn't have gotten involved in, and I've got to be ready for people to hold me accountable. That's just what it is. It comes with the territory. I can't be all allergic to people, you know, telling me Well, you shouldn't have done that you shouldn't have done that. It comes with the territory at the same time.

At the same time. Everybody needs to understand that their primary responsibility in this world is reforming yourself. Right? It's like it's actually the shaytaan doesn't care if he drags you down to the left or he drags you down to the right. If he can get you busy with the dunya he'll get you busy with the dunya and if he can get you busy with worrying about other people's faults and up these people over here, they do that and they do this and they do that a lie the May Allah guide them right Sheikh Abdullah used to really criticize us for this sort of attitude. He said, he used to say a lie, he can't like May Allah guide you. Now you focus on yourself, what are you doing? You know,

you can't control them at the end of the day, but you can control yourself. So the primary focus always has to be reforming yourself first, until the point where you're able to take it outside of yourself to other people.