The noblest of characters
أرحت نفسي من هم العداوات | لما عفوت ولم أحقد على أحـد |
لأدفع الشر عني بالتحيــات | إني أحيّي عدوي عند رؤيتـه |
كما إن قد حشا قلبي محبـات | وأظهر البشر لإنسان أبغضـه |
وفي اعتزالهم قطـع المودات | الناس داء ،وداء الناس قربهم |
Translation:
When I forgave and envied none,
From the affliction of enmity did I set myself free.
Verily I greet my enemy when I see him,
To repel evil from myself with greetings.
And I express gladness to a person I am angry with,
As if my heart is full of love.
Humanity is an illness and its cure is propinquity,
And by forsaking them there comes an end to affections.
Explanation:
One finds that holding secret ill-thoughts about others derives from two things; either the person is an enemy who has angered us by an action of his, or he is someone we envy and wish to become like. The word “hasad”, which has been translated as “envy” here, carries connotations of wanting the property of the other to cease and that same property to be given to oneself. In other words envy here is not the average English meaning of the word “envy” where one desires the same property as another's, but of a more evil sort.
This occupation with negative thoughts about other people is something which is not only harmful to our own thought-process, as it instils negative thought-processes for all of our thoughts, but it also means we lose time and effort on things which can never benefit us. Instead of thinking bad about someone – perhaps wrongly – we could have assumed the best, or forgiven him, and kept our own mindset positive and uncluttered by a secret festering hatred for someone.
Islam teaches that one should find excuses for others and assume the best. We are instructed to find seventy excuses for our brother before we condemn him to a fault[1] but alas we almost always do the opposite and find seventy ways to condemn someone!
The Qur'an also makes this point emphatically through the ayah:
“And let not those among you who are blessed with graces and wealth swear not to give (any sort of help) to their kinsmen, the poor, and those who left their homes for Allah's Cause. Let them pardon and forgive. Do you not love that Allah should forgive you? And Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.” (22:24)
The exegesis behind this verse makes the point even more poignant and shows how much Islam ranks forgiveness of others. Aisha, the daughter of Abu Bakr and the wife of the Prophet, was accused of infidelity by a number of hypocrites in Madinah which caused great angst to Aisha, Abu Bakr's family, and the Prophet. From amongst the people spreading the rumour also happened to be a poor relative of Abu Bakr's whom Abu Bakr had been supporting financially. Naturally Abu Bakr grew extremely angry when he heard that this man, who was eating and drinking using the money Abu Bakr had given him, was going around slandering his daughter, and he stopped the man's stipend. When Abu Bakr did this, Allah sent down the above verse, and upon hearing this verse Abu Bakr not only reinstated that man's stipend, but he increased it to more than it was before!
And we are all sinners and were Allah to take us all to account for our sins then we would all be doomed as he says in the verse:
And we are all sinners and were Allah to take us all to account for our sins then we would all be doomed as he says in the verse:
“And if Allah were to punish men for that which they earned, He would not leave a moving (living) creature on the surface of the earth; but He gives them respite to an appointed term: and when their term comes, then verily, Allah is Ever All-Seer of His slaves.” (45:35)
In other words, we expect to be forgiven our mountainous amounts of sins and yet we cannot bring ourselves to forgive petty things that people do in everyday life around us.
Imam Shafii then goes on to advise that one should never be bad-mannered and visibly angry, even in front of someone who angers you or is your enemy. And indeed body-language research shows that there is a tendency for people to mirror the actions of those around them and to reciprocate in a like manner. So if we keep a happy exterior, then chances are people will interact with us positively.
The final verses advise us to keep in close contact with society so that we know how people function and so that we can start to judge them more accurately. If we were to stay away from them however, then we would lose the ability of social interaction and would suffer as a result when we need to interact. This can be clearly seen by the observation that salesmen, doctors, nurses, and other professionals who deal with people daily, possess much sharper social skills than desk-bound employees who have little to no customer interaction.
Jazaka Allah
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