al-Raghib al-Isfahani #50 – The Importance of A Sincere Teacher

And the second half of the kinds of tools that help someone to receive guidance that are otherwise for any kind of intersection with, they have more to do with societal things or things that are outside of the self. So one of them is, and it's really interesting the first time I read it, it wasn't necessarily something that I expected, he says, the restrictions and the limits of a sincere teacher. So it's really fascinating to me a couple things. So the fact that he specifies that the teacher has to be sincere, and that is people ask all the time, who should I study from? Who should I learn from? Who should I take from, right? How do I decide as a lay man, or a lay woman who's

worthy of me studying with and the first thing is that I have to be sincere, it doesn't matter if the person has a mountain of knowledge of the Quran and the Sunnah, and the statements of the scholars and this and that. And the third, if they're not sincere, that knowledge is going to end them up in the hellfire. And if you're learning from them, it's going to end you up in the Hellfire too, because you're going to get their lack of sincerity, whether it's Kibet, whether it's, you know, pride or whether it's you know, seeking out your own personal interest or whether it's you know, showing off or whatever it is the most important thing before anything about jazz was or

about, you know, the snad are about, you know what he's you know, how you feel how amazing of a speaker he is sincerity. If you get a whiff from somebody that they're not sincere, runaway runaway, maybe they'll benefit other people, maybe you're wrong, but you would rather be cautious with this sort of thing you have to take from sincere people. That's the most important thing. So having uh, he points out a sincere teacher, and then what are you expecting from a sincere teacher restrictions and limits? I find that fascinating to me, that was not what I expected. A sincere Teacher, why can you trust their limits and their restrictions, because they're sincere. If you believe that they're

sincere, then there are restrictions and limits that they're going to put on you. First of all, they're coming from a place of knowing more than you do. And they're coming from a place of experience, if they weren't sincere, you wouldn't be able to trust their limits or their restrictions, maybe they're just trying to hold you down. Maybe they're trying to keep themselves up on a pedestal and keep you into the student role. Right. But if you have a sincere teacher, one that wants to empower you, then you can trust that the rules and the restrictions that they're going to place on you are for your own benefit, and for your own development are actually going to put you in

a higher place. So that one day, hopefully you can even surpass your teacher, right? So trusting your teacher, making sure you have a good one. And then what's the purpose from this teacher is to have limits and restrictions to save you from yourself. The next thing that also he mentions, is an agreeable friend. So it's really interesting the difference between those two, a sincere teacher to give you limits and restrictions and an agreeable friend, because you can't just live your life socially with people telling you Nope, you got to stop this. And don't do that. Don't do that. And you need encouragement. But it's not always the role of your shake, or your teacher to give you

encouragement, sometimes Sure, that's part of a good you know, education, but you should be looking to your teacher to give you the limits and the restrictions and looking to your compatriots, your friends, your comrades to be agreeable and to give you support and to give you encouragement and these sorts of things. And this is a tremendous benefit to because that's also how you're going to be able to tell that your friends are sincere, because a lot of friends, so called friends, they don't want good for you, they're going to try to hold you down, they're going to try to discourage you and say you can't do that, or you know, they're going to hide things from you and say that you

know, this, they know of opportunities, but they're not going to let you know those opportunities and things like that. You want people who are going to be in your corner who are going to build you up that are going to hype you up that are going to be able to support you in your quest for guidance and in your quest for becoming a better person. So having a sincere teacher that gives you limits and restrictions and having agreeable friends that aren't we're not saying agreeable in the sense that if you do something bad, they're going to support you, but agreeable in the sense that they're in your corner, they have loyalty towards you. And they're going to help push you forward when it

comes to encouraging you to keep going and to do more. He says sufficient wealth, sufficient wealth that neither occupies somebody or puts them in an excess of deprivation and destitution. So that sweet spot, right, you don't have so much wealth, that it's a distraction, so that you can't become guided or that you don't care about guidance, but you're not in the poor house. So that you have to spend all your time worrying about when how you're going to pay rent and how you're going to put food on the table. You're in a sweet spot. This is one of the things that really helps people to accept guidance and to walk this path. And then finally, he mentions family, having a family getting

married, having kids having these sorts of responsibilities, because what does he say? It's going to keep you from foolishness, tying you down to the real world. Right? It is amazing to me that the way that the university system in the United States and in Europe is set up is that you've got mo tons of people producing theory producing books producing research, and most of them aren't married. They're 25 or something years old, you know, 20 to 25 and we have privileged yes okay, that age

The range has the most energy, perhaps, maybe they're even at the height of their intellectual prowess. But they lack one essential quality, most of them. And I know because I was there, that they're not tied down to the ground, their feet are not on the ground. They don't have kids. They don't have responsibilities. They don't have skin in the game. And so you have theory and social commentary, and yeah, economics, whatever it is research that's been done, done, done, and it's just floating away in space. What's the point? What's the relevance? What's the application, if you had, I guarantee you, if you had a society of people, even the majority of people producing research and

getting degrees and working on their PhDs were between 30 and 40, or 30, and 45 people with kids, people with families and that the universities actually supported rather than punished people who had children and people that were in families, you would have more ethical research being done, you would have more ethical outcomes from the sort of intellectual production and knowledge production that's going on, right and this is something that's not lost on us for Hani This is a pre modern world that we're talking about. And he's saying that you need family. If you want to be guided you want to pursue this path of of knowledge you want to pursue this path of guidance and an ethical

reform and, and and virtue then you need to be grounded and what's gonna ground you best is having a family. So these are the sorts of considerations that you know are things tools in your tool belt, do you want to walk this path, you're not content with just a matter you're not content with just a bed you want to go to the top level you want to go to school, if you want to be Allah's representative on on Earth, this is the path this is you're going to need Allah's guidance. You're not going to be able to do it by yourself. But obtaining Allah's guidance happens through certain doors, and these are the doors that you have to walk through