Rights of the Neighbour - Shaykh Adil Saleem

Opening

Alhamdulillah, we praise Him, we seek His help, we seek His forgiveness, and we seek refuge in Allah from the evils of our souls and from the misdeeds of our deeds. Whomsoever Allah guides, no one is misguided, and whomsoever He misguides, no one is guided. And I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, alone, no partner for Him.

And I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and His Messenger.

O you who have believed, fear Allah as He should be feared, and do not die except as Muslims.

O you who have believed, fear your Lord, Who created you from one soul, and created from it its mate, and spread among them many men and women. And fear Allah, to whom you ask for help and mercy. Verily, Allah is ever watching over you.

O you who have believed, fear Allah and say the right words. He will amend your deeds for you and forgive you your sins. And whosoever obeys Allah and His Messenger has certainly attained a great triumph.

As for what follows: the best of speech is the Book of Allah, and the best guidance is that of Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him. And the worst of all affairs are those that are newly invented, and every newly invented matter is an innovation, and every innovation is a misguidance, and every misguidance is in the Fire.

The Story of the Man and His Neighbour

As for what follows: a man once came to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and he complained to him about his neighbour. "My neighbour is harming me, my neighbour is doing such and such to me. What shall I do, O Messenger of Allah?" The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, "Have patience," and sent him back home.

So the man followed the advice of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. But his neighbour continued to harm him, continued to hurt him. So the man returned to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, a second time and then a third time, in the same situation.

The second or third time, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, "Go home and take your belongings and put them in the middle of the street. Put them out in the road." So the man went home, he gathered his belongings and placed them in the middle of the road, outside his place of residence.

When the people saw this, they asked, "What's going on?" So the man explained the situation. He said, "My neighbour is harming me, my neighbour is hurting me, my neighbour is causing me inconvenience. And this is what the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, ordered me to do."

So the people went to the neighbour and they started reproaching him. They asked him, "Why are you doing this? Why are you harming your neighbour? Why have you pushed him to such an extreme that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, has ordered him to take his belongings and put them in the middle of the road? What are you doing?"

So the neighbour, seeing the situation, went to the man and said: ارْجِعْ، لا تَرى مِنِّي شَيْئًا تَكْرَهُهُ — "Return, go back to your house. You will never find me doing anything which you will hate again. You will never find me harming you. You will never find me insulting you."

The Importance of Neighbours in Islam

My brothers, neighbours and those people who are around us have a great importance in Islam — the way we react and interact with them, the way we see neighbours. Why has Islam placed such a great emphasis on neighbours? After our families, our neighbours are our support network. They are supposed to be those people that we feel safe with, security. You might leave things with them. They might see things which only neighbours see — seeing people in an uncompromising situation. They hold your secrets.

The Prophet ﷺ said:

"Jibreel would always advise me about the neighbours, about their rights — constantly, all the time, advising me about the rights of neighbours — until I thought that the neighbours would come to inherit from me." Until he thought that the order would come from Allah that his neighbour would come and inherit from him.

Such is the importance of neighbours in Islam. Such is the importance of having a good relation, a good alaqa, a good rapport with your neighbours. Your neighbours are people that shouldn't feel any harm from you. They should be safe from any evil from us.

The Prophet ﷺ said — three times:

"By Allah, he does not believe! By Allah, he does not believe! By Allah, he does not believe!" The companions asked, "Who, O Messenger of Allah?" And he said, "That person whose neighbour is not safe from his evil."

Being good to your neighbour and having iman is synonymous — they go hand in hand. Being good to those people around you. And this is not just the person that's living next to you. Scholars have spoken about how far your neighbours extend — some say it's a certain number of houses to the left and to the right and behind you, and some say it's the people that attend the masjid with you. But the point is that the neighbours are those people who are around you, who you have a daily interaction with. Maybe it's the shopkeeper; maybe you own a business. How do you react with those people around you, those people next to you?

Sometimes we find that when we see our neighbours buy a new car, or when they have some joy in their life, instead of making du'a for them, asking Allah to increase them in their provisions, a number of questions come into our mind: Do they deserve this? Why can't I have this? I wish I had something better. Instead of making du'a for them, we have negative thoughts and feelings towards them.

The Prophet ﷺ said that making du'a for your brother or your sister in their absence is a du'a that will be accepted — or more likely to be accepted.

When we move houses and we look at which neighbourhood we want to move into, one of the first things a person asks is: How are the neighbours? How are the people on the street? How are the people in that particular area? It's something that everybody wants — everybody wants to have good neighbours. But are we doing what's needed and what's expected of us?

In our areas that we see around us — the way people are driving, the way the streets are, the dirt that's in the streets, the rubbish that's left — is this how we want our neighbourhood to be? Is this what we want for our neighbours? We need to ask ourselves the question: Is this something that we take seriously, or just something that we hear and don't really implement in our lives?

The Rights of All Neighbours — Muslim and Non-Muslim

This is the position and the status of a neighbour and the way we interact with them. And neighbours have many rights over us. They could be our relatives, or they could just be Muslims, or they could be non-Muslims — all of these have rights.

The Prophet ﷺ, one day — when a person was cooking some food and distributing it — asked, "Did you give a portion of what you were distributing to your Jewish neighbour?" Showing that it's not just the Muslim who has a right; it's also the non-Muslims around us, those people who we live with and interact with. It's a way of showing them the true meaning of Islam, practically implemented.

Again, in another incident, a man was cooking some food and the Prophet ﷺ said, "Increase the water" — i.e., increase the quantity of the food — "so you can give it to your neighbour." This was how the Prophet ﷺ commanded us and how he taught us how we should be with our neighbours: that they are safe from any evil from us, that we rely upon them, we help them, we serve them, we assist them. This was the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ.

The Story of the Orphan, the Tree, and Abu Dahdah

There was an incident in the time of the Prophet ﷺ where a young boy — an orphan whose father had just passed away — came to the Prophet ﷺ and said, "My father has passed away and he has left us two sheep. This was the only inheritance he left for us. This is all I have right now. This is my livelihood. This is all I have to depend on."

"But where I live, there's a pathway and my sheep always escape. And it's hard for me to go and find them again. And I'm scared that one day I will lose them — they will go into the desert and I will lose them. So I'm trying to build a fence between my house and the neighbour's house so that the sheep don't escape. But there's a tree that's preventing me from building this fence. And I've gone to the neighbour and I've tried to speak to him about removing this tree or doing something that will allow me to build this fence. But it's not working out."

So the Prophet ﷺ, upon hearing this, wanted to help this young boy, this orphan. He went to look for this man, asked around who he was, and came across this person. And he said to the man who owned that path and that house and that tree, "Can you give this tree away in charity so this boy can build the fence?"

And the man, seeing the situation he was in, got angry with the boy and said:

"You've raised this issue — you've taken this to the Prophet ﷺ!" So his arrogance overtook him, his pride overtook him. And he said:

"No, by Allah, I will not give this tree — this nakhla, this date palm tree — in charity."

So the Prophet ﷺ said, "Okay, then sell this tree." And he said:

"Sell this tree and you will have a date palm tree in Jannah, in Paradise." The man said, لا — "I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to sell this tree, even for a tree in Jannah, even for a tree in Paradise."

Now there was a companion who was witnessing this. His name was Abu Dahdah. He saw the situation. And he was a rich man — he had orchards, he had houses, he had farms. A very rich man. And when he heard what was happening, he went to the Prophet ﷺ and said, "If I buy this tree, if I purchase this tree, if I help this young boy out — will I receive a tree in Jannah?" The Prophet ﷺ said, "Yes."

So Abu Dahdah gave away his entire orchard — hundreds and thousands of trees — for that one tree. He bought it in exchange for a date palm in Jannah. He gave away everything, sorted the situation out between these two people, and then went home to his family.

And he said to his wife, "Don't eat, don't take from anything — we're leaving." And his wife was astounded. "Why are we leaving everything?" And he said, "Because we bought a tree in Jannah. We have something in Jannah, something which is far better than this orchard, than these hundreds of trees, than this farm, than this house. Something far better." And his wife said, "What a great transaction you have involved yourself in."

Conclusion — Being the Bigger Person

Sometimes we need to learn how to step back, lower ourselves. Sometimes we might be in the right — but knowing when to step back and being the bigger person, stepping down, even if you're right — this is how we should be with those people around us. Treating people with respect, being gentle with people, having that emotional intelligence where we see the situation a person is in, and we help them, we assist them. This is how neighbours are. This is how neighbours should be in Islam.

We ask Allah to make us from amongst those people who are good to those people around us, good to our neighbours.