Tom Facchine – Hadith Series – #17 – Save Your Face From The Fire

			The Prophet Muhammad Ali salatu salam said that if somebody defends his brother's reputation, when
he's not there, Allah will turn his face away from the fire or will save his face from the fire. So
we have here a model of how to care for other people's reputations when they're not present. And we
also have the opposite of the sin, which is talking about people behind their backs or backbiting
them is that if somebody's reputation is tarnished, don't just turn away and leave, the best thing
to do is actually to defend that person, right? That person, yeah, they're gonna have faults and
shortcomings and so am I, and so are you. But that doesn't mean that they're fair game to talk about
		

			when that person is not there. And so if somebody starts down that conversation, that they start
down that kind of line of conversation, then you can intervene, and you have a motivation and an
incentive to intervene. Now always remember, when I was a very, very new Muslim going to a flipbook
in a certain machine and I was with the man and the man from a different mesh, he kind of took me
there. And we were riding in the car on the way back and this was after the Arab Spring had was just
happening. And the football was about certain things. And he brought up an example from about the
Arab Spring and took a position on it that I didn't agree. I didn't agree with at the time. And then
		

			so we're riding in the car on the way on the way home, and the mom asked me, What do you think, what
did you think about the hook, but and I and I immediately went to the thing I didn't like?
		

			And I said, Well, you know, I didn't agree with this. And that in the other end, the Imams response
was so beautiful and always stuck with me. He said, Oh, that was just an example that he used, you
know, the point that he made was this and that and you know, the points true even if the examples
not true, and you know, he went to the good, right. And this is perhaps an example of what it's like
when it comes to it doesn't have to be dramatic, right? You don't have to go to the barricades for
somebody's reputation. You can it can be simple, and it can be pleasant and you can just say
something that kind of makes the other person think and displaces their tendency to go into the
		

			faults and shortcomings and mistakes of other people.