Surah Al Hujarat with Mufti Abdul Rahman Waheed | Session 3

Surah Al-Hujurat — Session 3: Verses 6–10

السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

Alright, I will go over, if there's any questions, you can put that. Ayah number 5 we'll do at the end of the class. I'll just go right into verse number 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Recap: The Foundation of a Good Community

Just to summarize — where are we right now? At what juncture are we in this surah? We laid down the foundation. The foundation of a good community, the foundation of a good family. I mentioned last week, you cannot build a structure without the foundation. And the foundation is laid down in the first 5 verses of Surah Al-Hujurat.

The foundation is our etiquette towards Allah and our etiquette towards the Prophet ﷺ. The relationship we have with Allah and the relationship we have with the Prophet ﷺ. This is the foundation.

Brothers and sisters, honestly, we get text messages all the time — can you find my... I have two kids, 25-year-old, 23-year-old. Can you find, if you know someone that's looking for a spouse, can you please recommend us, refer us to somebody? We're ulama, so we get these messages all the time. Most of the time I just say, I don't get involved. If I find out, I'll let you know.

But really, even in a marriage, if you're starting up your new family, the foundation — sometimes we go wrong with it. Like, in desi culture, you know, this is how it works. You have to meet these three requirements: he has to be tall, he or she has to be light-skinned, and he or she better be in med school or becoming a doctor. But I see where you're looking for security for our daughters, for our sisters, for our brothers. The reality is the foundation of a good family is: does this person pray Salah? What's his love? What's his effect when he listens to the Qur'an? How is her life affected when she hears the Qur'an or hears a wa'az?

We have people who are of the highest degrees but don't know how to speak and have a conversation for over a minute gently and positively. The foundation is having love for Allah and His Rasul, knowing the etiquettes towards Allah and His Rasul ﷺ. When someone has that, he has the material, she has the material to be a person who is rightly guided.

Now when you have this foundation and you're living in a community, what's going to happen? You will be tested. You will be tested over and over again. Your morals, your ethics will be tested. So you will be tested. Now Allah talks about the first test as a community — what's going to happen.

Verse 6: Verifying News from a Fasiq

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا — O you who believe. Again, we spoke about how many times يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا comes in the surah.

إِن جَاءَكُمْ فَاسِقٌ بِنَبَإٍ — If a fasiq comes to you with a naba'. The English translation of fasiq in many of the English translations is "disobedient" or "an open sinner." And naba' means information, news — I'll elaborate on both of those shortly.

فَتَبَيَّنُوا — Verify, clarify, investigate.

أَن تُصِيبُوا قَوْمًا بِجَهَالَةٍ — Before what's going to happen: you may harm a people out of ignorance. If you take this information and you don't verify, it's possible you may harm people.

فَتُصْبِحُوا عَلَىٰ مَا فَعَلْتُمْ نَادِمِينَ — And then you will become regretful over what you just did.

The Three Groups When Rumors Spread

Now this is very powerful. Allah is saying to us about the fasiq: the first test is going to be hearing rumors, hearing negative comments about people, about things in our community. This is the first step towards developing a good community.

When there is a rumor in our community, in our society, there are three different groups of people. The first group — they unconditionally support that person. Unconditionally. They love that person. They don't care what the world says, what anybody says online.

The second is unconditional opposition. Unconditional opposition. They don't want to hear nothing from anybody. This person did it. He is guilty. She is guilty. It doesn't matter what happens.

And the third group of people are the ones who are neutral. But they can be swayed one way or the other. If these people have interaction with the first group for too long, they will become like that. If someone from the second group interacts with them, they can become like that.

There's always three sides of the story — not two sides. What this person said, what that person said, and what the truth is. There's always three sides.

This is telling us the foundation of a good community, of a family. And this was happening directly with the Prophet ﷺ. Allah is giving a message to him ﷺ about how to deal with people like this. Because not everyone who walks through the door with information is going to be an alim or a pious person.

Allah is talking in this ayah not to the person who's speaking — He's talking to the audience. Why did you listen to it? Allah is telling us how to react to the person who's speaking to us. The conversation right now is not about that person who's speaking. It's about us who are listening.

Every person will have their share of sin. The person who spoke will have their share of sin. The person who listened will have their share of sin. And the person who amplified before verifying will have their share of sin as well.

Understanding the Word "Fasiq"

Fasaq, in Arabic, means when the grain gets out of the seed — when something comes out of its shell. Even you will say, like an easier example: when the banana comes out of the peel, you would say that this banana had فَسَقَ عَنِ الشَّجَرِ — this banana has left its peel. And there's a reason for that: as long as the banana stays within its peel, it can continue to ripen. But the moment it comes out, its process of growth finishes, and the process of deterioration starts.

When someone breaks away from the truth, breaks away from the teachings of Qur'an and hadith, and becomes a habitual sinner — a person who is committing sins openly — then you call this person a fasiq. None of us have the license to label anyone as a fasiq. Remember that. Allah is saying, if a fasiq comes to you — and that judgment belongs only to Allah. None of us have the right to label anyone.

A fasiq is a person who has clearly left the teachings of Qur'an and hadith — an open sinner, someone who is sinning in public. Nowadays it's so easy to sin openly: just a click of the mouse and your sins are exposed to the whole world.

Understanding the Word "Naba'"

When a fasiq comes to you with a naba' — there are many words for information in Arabic, and the two most frequently used ones are naba' and khabar. There's an interesting reason why Allah used the word naba' here.

A nabi is not called khabeer — he's not a person who just gives messages — but he is called nabi from the word naba', not from the word khabar. So what are the two meanings we should understand from the word naba'?

First: naba' is something that directly impacts you, directly affects you. This is haram, this is sunnah, this is nafl — that impacts me, that affects me right now. That's called naba'. "The Prophet said this" — that's naba'. I should know about it, I need to learn about it. That's why the Prophet and all the other anbiya are called nabi — they come with a very important message.

Khabar, on the other hand, is just news — some random news. It can be important to know the news happening around the world, but it doesn't have the same weight. Khabar is just news. It's something that doesn't really impact you directly, you can't do much about it. That's why even the modern-day word for news is khabar.

So Allah is telling us: not all news requires the same process of verification. When a Muslim comes to you and talks about something negative about another person — why don't you apply that same careful scrutiny then?

Verify Before You Amplify

Then what do you have to do? فَتَبَيَّنُوا — Tabayyanu. Maulana Sheikh Sulaiman says it very nicely: verify before you amplify. And Mufti Asim, one of my teachers, says: you are what you click and you are what you tap. You just clicked share. You just clicked forward on your WhatsApp. You are going to be responsible for that thing you shared. "Forward it as received" — that's not going to hold. That disclaimer doesn't free you on the Day of Judgment. It is your responsibility when that message comes to your ears. فَتَبَيَّنُوا — strong emphasis on this.

Distinguish the reality from the wrong. What is the other side of the story? Verify before you convey to others. This is also in Surah An-Nur — Allah talks about this there as well.

What does Allah say in Surah An-Nur? He says: you receive the news with your mouth — you don't even process it with your head. It just comes to you and right when it comes to you, you speak about it. Allah says the first way of processing negative information about someone else is: why didn't you just have good expectation of that person? Maybe there's something different about this. Maybe this person only knows one side of the story. Maybe there's something we don't know about.

Umar ibn al-Khattab says: whenever you hear something negative about another person, always try to figure out the positive angle of what he's saying or she's saying. As long as you can find a positive attribute, something that can deflect the negativity — do that. Maybe this person was busy. Maybe he was going through something challenging.

I'll give you an example. One of my shaykhs, Sheikh Tariq Jameel Sahib — I love this man, he is my mentor, my dad's close friend. People sometimes say, "Oh, I went to visit him and he just wasn't paying attention to me." But he has these severe migraines. When he has a migraine, they are so bad that he doesn't allow anyone to make tea for him unless that person really knows how to make it for him, because he doesn't want to get a headache from the wrong tea and lose focus. So if someone catches him at that time of his migraine, they would assume this person doesn't want to talk to me, that this person is rude. But a person who knows him, or a person who has good assumption of believers, could say maybe he had a headache, maybe he was going through something challenging. That's the default position we're supposed to have.

The default position of a believer when we hear rumors or negative information is: No! It can't be. Maybe there's something else going on. That's how we should process information. We don't work for the rumor mill. Don't be indiscriminate in sharing things. Just because something is told to us, we don't just keep turning and turning it. Rather, as a Muslim, it stops when it comes to us.

So if someone comes to our community or to our family and says something negative, and they see our reaction — we have no reaction. It's as if they're speaking to a wall. Like, what you're saying is a waste of time. Go tell someone else. Now this person will think three times before coming next time to tell you something negative, because you've created that parameter: you can't just backbite about someone in front of us.

Once you lend your ear to somebody the first time, he's going to come again, she's going to come again, and now you're going to be participating in the sin just as he or she is. So the first thing — our default mode is assuming good about the other person. Not just taking it at face value and then spreading it.

How Rumors Can Escalate: A Real Example

I'll give you an example of how much the narrative can change from one person to the other.

People that know me know how strict I am about dhabihah. I usually tell Miftah students: don't ask me about restaurants — is this restaurant halal or haram? I am extremely strict about what I eat, my parents taught me this. I would rather eat at home, and I hardly go to restaurants.

Recently — like two or three months ago — one of my students came up to me and said: "Shaykh, I was sitting in a dinner with some family members and friends, and one person said, 'Hey, why do you go pray Salah behind Shaykh Abdul Rahman? He eats pork' — na'udhu billah." The guy was like, what?! He said, "Yeah, I saw him eating pork."

I love you brothers and sisters, that's why I'm opening up to you with real raw material. When I heard it for the first time I laughed. So this person has it in his head that Mufti Abdul Rahman eats pork — al-iyadhu billah. Now the smart person, one of our students, said: "When did you see him eating pork? This is 2020 — when was this?" He said, "About 2010 or 2011." "Where did you see him eating pork?" And when he started investigating, it turned out he didn't see him himself — it was a friend of his who worked at a restaurant in a Marriott who said, "I saw the shaykh come into the breakfast buffet and eat food here." Did he tell you he ate pork? No. He didn't see him eating pork — he saw him eating eggs. And those eggs were fried in a similar area to other meats. So basically he was eating eggs. And it goes from "Shaykh Abdul Rahman was eating eggs" to, ten years later, this person saying "he's eating pork — and I saw this with my own eyes." And only Allah knows how many people he said that to.

And I said: does that person even know I don't even eat eggs? That couldn't have been me. It might have been someone who looks like me. So that poor guy was eating eggs — and now, those eggs at a breakfast buffet have become "pork."

Next time you see this happening, be careful. You don't know where things can lead. You think one comment doesn't carry too much weight — it's not like physically hitting someone. To hurt someone physically you have to have power. But to hurt someone with your tongue, it doesn't require anything. That's why it becomes so easy for us to do it.

So that's what Allah is saying: when this happens, you better clarify. Verify before you amplify.

Verse 7: When Allah Makes Iman Beloved to You

Earlier in Surah Al-Hujurat, Allah said:

Allah says early in Surah Al-Hujurat: if you act without etiquettes, it is possible that the manner of your disrespect could be a means of destroying the good deeds you have done — without you knowing. I mentioned that a lot of times we say something wrong and later on we say, "Oh, I didn't mean it like that." Allah says it doesn't matter if you didn't mean it — what matters is if that hurt someone's feelings. That is possible to cause your a'mal to go to waste.

Because a lot of our mishaps and bad habits get a pass — rather, Allah has love for you, Allah has made Iman beloved to you, and Allah has beautified that for you in your heart. And Allah has made hateful for you disbelief — Kufr, Fusooq (open and abundant sins), and al-'Isyan (disobedience or sins done occasionally). Allah has made all of that hateful to you.

أُولَٰئِكَ هُمُ الرَّاشِدُونَ — and those are the rightly guided people.

A Grammatical Gem: You, You, You — and Then "Those"

Now take that translation and step back for a second. The entire ayah — for those of us who know sarf — is in the second person: فِيكُمْ… يُطِيعُكُمْ… إِلَيْكُمُ… فِي قُلُوبِكُمْ… إِلَيْكُمُ — second person, second person, second person throughout. And then it ends by saying أُولَٰئِكَ هُمُ الرَّاشِدُونَ — "those are the rightly guided people." This is called iltifat al-maqami — when Allah shifts from second person to third person, He is telling us: be like the Sahaba. That's how they were. They were like this — Iman was beautified for them, good deeds were attracted to their hearts, they did not like kufr, they did not like major sins, they did not like occasional sins. Now He looks at us and says: be like them. They were rightly guided.

The Prophetic Du'a from This Verse

A believer should make this du'a abundantly — it is a prophetic du'a based on this very ayah:

O Allah, make Iman beloved to us and beautify it in our hearts, and make hateful to us disbelief, open sin, and disobedience, and make us among the rightly guided.

When you start doing what you love, you don't need much motivation. You don't need to be pushed to do what you like. When there's love, small things here and there are okay. But when that sparkle of love leaves, then it becomes a problem. So make du'a that you love Iman and you're attracted to Iman — because if you love something and you're attracted to something, you will run towards it even without any added motivation.

The Sahaba loved Salah. They say a person at night does that thing which brings the most pleasure with the least effort — that's what you resort to. For example: you just sit in front of a TV, it brings you pleasure with no effort. But all the Sahaba were doing at night that which brought them the most pleasure with the least effort — praying Salah. Because compared to what they were doing during the day — in the battlefield, going in the path of Allah — this was the easiest thing. And this brought them the most pleasure. So they loved it. They rushed towards it.

When the Prophet ﷺ heard it was time for Salah, he would not say, "O Bilal, give the adhan." Rather he would say:

(Sunan Abi Dawud, Book 14, Hadith 4985 — narrated by Abu Dawud)

"O Bilal, give us comfort through Salah." So the love factor — having deeds become beautified in our hearts, being attracted to them — makes it easier for us to do those things.

Rashidoon vs. Muhtadoon

There are different ways of saying "rightly guided" in the Qur'an. There is muhtadoon, which also means rightly guided — those who are rightly guided in their belief system. They know Allah, they know who the Prophet is, they know about the Anbiya. And then there is rashidoon, which encompasses both. Rashidoon means these are people who are rightly guided in their belief system AND in their social and moral system. This surah is all about adab — so Allah says: these are people who are rightly guided when it comes to morals and ethics.

Looking Ahead: Verses 9–10

There was a question asked: if you respond to negativity with positive intent and you get anger directed at you, how should you respond?

That beautiful question will be answered in the next ayah. The next ayah is dedicated to exactly this: whenever there is a fight, like group A vs. group B — two people arguing — you are supposed to have group C, which stands for community, come in and settle their differences. I wanted to talk about that today but I didn't have time. That "C" — those peacemakers — there are rulings for that person. They have good intentions, they want to make things better, but then they can get anger directed at them. How do we react? How should we continue to react?

Whenever there is a conflict there is A, B, and C. There is conflict between A and B, and then C comes in, and sometimes one or both groups react negatively to that. Allah teaches in the next ayah how to be in that manner as well. So next week, stay tuned — we will do that insha'Allah.

Dealing with Anger: Prophetic Guidance

How do we positively react to anger or injustice? These are two different things. How we react to anger depends on what the anger is about. If it's anger about the command of Allah, that's from Iman. If it's anger about someone doing something wrong to you, or from the children's side or the community side, it's completely different.

The best way of course is what the Prophet ﷺ taught us. When someone came to the Prophet ﷺ and said, "Give me advice — advice that I don't have to ask anyone after you," he said:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 78, Hadith 137 — narrated by Abu Hurayrah)

"Do not get angry." Knowing that anger is from Shaytan, and:

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Book 27, Hadith 2012)

Taking your time, deliberating, thinking, pondering over what you are going to say — that is from Allah. That is what Allah wants you to do. And rushing — seeing a rude message and immediately reacting — that is from Shaytan.

My rule of thumb: if you want to say something nice to your friend, say it as a text message — it's preserved. "I love you, you're amazing." But if you have something even a little critical or negative — don't write it as a message, because it gets preserved. Say it over the phone or face to face.

When something angers and frustrates you, don't react immediately. Even as a husband or wife — even if you are right in what you want to say, the instant reaction is from Shaytan. Because when you don't think and deliberate and ponder, there are more chances of you saying something wrong. Then next thing you know, both of you did something wrong and now you're in the game of who should apologize first. "Well, you started it." That just opens another whole can of worms. Better to stay quiet, deliberate, and then react positively. By then you'll be cool, you'll be calm, the mood will be better, and you can say it in a better way.

Closing

May Allah accept on our behalf. May Allah accept all of your fasts, all of your qiyam, your ruku', your tilawah, your effort, your struggle. May Allah accept it from all of us, and continue to bless us from His mercy, from His treasures with rizq — rizq which means health, which means joy, which means happiness. Every type of rizq from the treasures of Allah.

May Allah make us among those who truly love Allah and make us understand how to process information when it comes to us — not just amplify it before we verify it. May we be people of high moral standards. Ameen.

JazakAllah khair. Forgive me for any mistakes, and forgive me for taking more time than allotted. May Allah bless you all.

سُبْحَانَ رَبِّكَ رَبِّ الْعِزَّةِ عَمَّا يَصِفُونَ وَسَلَامٌ عَلَى الْمُرْسَلِينَ

وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ