al-Raghib al-Isfahani #36 – Do We Want Good For Others

Being a good student is docility and we covered what that meant. It meant being humble. It meant being a reasonable amount of generous and but still, like somewhat critical and it meant being courageous. The second prerequisite is your intention and having your intention and basically specifically being sincere. Okay? You absolutely have to be sincere. What does that mean? Okay, sincerity. One real quick, easy test for your sincerity is do you want good for others, okay. And we used to come across this problem sometime in Medina where some people, they would be stingy, right, certain certain Sheikh is teaching a lesson, oh man has this big shake. And he's got this exclusive

kind of circle and crew, and only a few students are allowed. And people would want to conceal it. They want to keep it all to themselves, right? If somebody else would ask about how they go, I don't know what you're talking about. Right? They want to keep it to themselves. What does that say about their sincerity? Do they want other people to be guided like them? Or are they looking at it from a rivalry sort of perspective? Are they looking at it as competition? Are they looking to come out ahead of their fellow student or their fellow Muslim? No, we want to be the sort. We want to have this sort of intention towards other people this sincerity, where we want for them what we want for

us it's the old Hadith of the Prophet alayhi salatu salam, that you aren't a true believer until you love for your brother, what you want for yourself. Is there anything we want for ourselves more than guidance, then having our sins covered, then being approached in a beautiful way? A beautiful way that's beyond just the bare minimum of what's Sharia compliant? Right? So do we want good for others? Do we want good? Or do we want other people to be guided, because sometimes we approach other people in a way that demonstrates that we don't really want them to be guided, we really just want to prove our point, or you want to win the debate, or we want to score one over on them or show

them up. This is a poor intention. This is indicative of a flaw and a false in your sincerity. And it's going to make it impossible to act ethically, it's going to make it impossible to develop your nobility. Okay, so we're not in competition with others. And we're also not about just putting ourselves above everybody. It's like, Oh, I was the student of this. Okay, you were one student, there were 70 other students, you know, like we were, you know, like, for Shake Shack treaties, lessons in Medina, 100 people there every single day, right? Some people were workers, some people were young, some people were old, it wasn't like, we have to resist this sort of thing, like I was,

you know, the, the main student of the sheikh, and I, you know, carried his water to him. And that's good. That's good man. You know, like, I'm not belittling, actually a very, very good friend of mine who used to use to carry the water for him. And that's great, but to put yourself up above others, and to imagine that you have some sort of special status, because you know, you used to wipe the sheiks forehead when he got sweaty, like this is something that indicates that there's something wrong with your intention. And there's something wrong with your sincerity, you shouldn't be putting yourself above other people, right? This is something that you should be doing out of the love of

your heart. And you should realize that you're just as poor and miskeen as everybody else. So when it comes to our intention to attain nobility, we have to make it our goal, the cultivation of good manners, we're not just passing our days in a lawful or unlawful, right in sort of unthinking uncritical, the opposite of awareness, right? That we want every single action that we engage in sitting and shooting a video for YouTube, or having coffee or making coffee for your spouse or every single act, whether it's a worldly goal or a spiritual goal, it needs to be beautified. And it needs to be perfected, right? And spiritual acts even more. So. Right. So all of our actions are eligible

for this type of beautification and this type of perfection, but even more so of course, the spiritual acts such as prayer, such as liquor and things like that, and we want to be absolutely sure that we're not doing these things for favors in the dunya. And we're not doing these things. transactionally and this is why we have Hadith of the Prophet salallahu Salam where he said, for example, that he's allowed to Sudan that real joining ties, family ties, relationships is doing it to the one who cuts you off, right. And real giving is giving to the person who is looking to deprive you, right, is that it's easy when it's give some get some right that's like, oh, I

compliment you, you helped me I scratch your back, you scratch mine, quid pro quo, right? That's not the sincerity that we're after. Right? We're after? Can you give someone charity and have them spit in your face? Can you give someone a charity? And they say to you, that's it and you smile. And you say, I'm sorry, forgive me about this as I write, like, that's actual sincerity. Because you're not doing it for the approval of the person that you're giving it to. You're not doing it to be praised. Oh, I'm such a good humble Muslim. Thank you. Yeah. Got the award at the end of the year. You know, no, you're doing it because it's sincere. You're doing it to purify yourself regardless of what sort

of circumstances or consequences happen, happen because of it. So these are all the things this is the second main prerequisite to obtaining the ability that are all well, so honey draws our attention to the first was docility. And the second is our intention. We have to be really, really careful and aware about all these issues related to r&d.

Tension we should not expect anything. Anything Sheikh Abdullah used to tell us when you go into a room and people don't stand up for you, you should be happy. You should be happy because that shows that you have a pure self. If you go into a room and you know you just arrived to the party, everybody stands up and you feel that little Oh, yeah, that's right. You feel a little proud, a little happier. You're getting this recognition. That's when you should start to doubt yourself and doubt your sincerity.