al-Raghib al-Isfahani #61 – How Poor Character Can Destroy Nations

Diana Ross for HANA, he talks about the negative consequences of poor character. And we're used to thinking about this in terms of our individual lives, right? Unfortunately, we probably often think of it in a transactional way, right? If I don't have good character, then people aren't going to like me or they're not going to give me the things that I want to treat me with the respect that I feel like I deserve or things like that. And those of us that have maybe a little bit more developed than that, then it's not that brass, but it's still that individual level of what are the possible negative consequences on my individual life, but the author or Augusto Hani reminds us that there's

actually a collective consequences as well to not developing good character and this is part of how Allah Subhana Allah has dealt with communities and nations that have gone before us. So ALLAH SubhanA he says that, you know, if a community had a mixture of good and bad, then he would send profits, obviously, the time of getting profits is over last Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa salam, but he said, you know, if you look at the Quraysh, they weren't all bad. And this is not a controversial statement to make. Yeah, they got the biggest thing wrong, that you could possibly get wrong, which is *. But you know, they had honor, they believed in honor. They believed in

generosity. Their generosity was legendary. They took care of the guests that came to the Kaaba that visited on pilgrimage to Mecca. And they believed in joining family ties and this sort of thing. I mean, they had their fair share of evil, right, but they also had their fair share of good. And so a lot of us for honey, he says, in this sort of situation, Allah azza wa jal will send the prophet to basically demonstrate what's in people's hearts, those who are sincere and who want to follow the truth, they will be convinced by the Prophet, they will allow themselves to believe belief is here more of a virtue than it is on a tool for knowing or to a tool for knowledge. But if your heart is

rotten, if you're not looking to be corrected, if you're not looking to develop yourself or progress at all, then you're going to reject it. So there's this kind of group of people or nation where there's a mix of good and bad. And then he says that if a nation is mostly bad, and has only a little bit of good in it, then Allah subhanaw taala will cause oppression to overtake you. And he brings the example of the people of Musa Benissa, right, and there were a couple of different times, there's the Nebuchadnezzar, you know, the whole Babylonian captivity, right? And then there's the captivity in Egypt, which Musar that he said and brought them out of, but I'd also honeys argument

is that if there's only a little bit that's worth saving than Earth, there's only a little bit of good and this is sort of how Allah spawns oughta meet sir or treats that that reality. And then the final scenario, and that's the really scary one, if everybody in the nation of the community abandons good character, and obviously, we're talking about good character in the greatest, most broad possible sense, which begins with good character towards the loss of panel data. If there's no one doing that work, if there's nothing good going on, then Allah is prone to auto will destroy them and wipe them off the face of the earth as he did with the people of know when people have AD and

the mood and loot right and how he gave them their tests. And if they were any of them left that were just a few people that were doing the right stuff, he would actually separate them and remove them from that society before punishing them like that. So I'd also honeys main point is that there's real consequences of this stuff. It's not just about you know, oh, do I have time to fit it into my schedule? You know, after my Netflix, whatever else I'm doing, you know, can I fit in some some time to develop myself and develop my character this is real, you know, not just for your individual salvation, which of course is our main concern, but also our collective survival is very,

very important thing.