Tom Facchine – Hadith Series – #28 – Positions of Authority

			There's a couple of Hadith that
		

			they both talk about the proper balance of people in responsibility or people in positions of
authority. So one Hadith the Prophet Muhammad SAW said, um, said that if somebody has been given a
trust or a position of authority, that if that person betrays that trust, if that person violates
the trust and abuses the authority, that a law will prohibit gender for that person. So this
obviously, is a very scary Hadith and the prophesy centum is talking about a situation where
somebody is abusing their power, whether somebody is benefiting as an individual, and we see this
Subhanallah unfortunately, with leaders, sometimes community leaders, they abuse their position to
		

			enrich themselves or pursue
		

			the various pleasures of the dunya instead of fulfilling their role as a servant, and a public
servant, and a community servant. And then other Hadith they also balanced out and balanced this
hadith out by talking about the other side, which is okay, what about the good servant, the good
ruler, the good person who's in authority. So the Prophet sallallahu sallam said, that if somebody
takes up responsibility for any part of this ummah, and the people make it difficult for that
person, then
		

			Allah subhanaw taala is going to basically make it difficult for those people that
		

			just as we need to hold our leaders accountable, and we have to pursue justice when it comes to
leaders who are abusing their authority, right, we say wolves in sheep's clothing, people who are
misusing the platform and the status and the authority that they have. We also have a certain duty
to the good ones, to the good leaders and the good. People in positions of authority and influence
when they do are trying to do things from a sincere way we shouldn't obstruct them, we shouldn't
undermine them.
		

			That's the kind of person that deserves all of the sort of
		

			subtleties of manners and etiquette to approach them in private if you have a question or you're not
sure about something that they said or something that they did, right. And so there's a balance here
and there's a balance here in between these two Hadith and how to treat people in authority. And you
can't just treat everybody the same way.