How doing harm to others erases the good you've done

The Truly Bankrupt Person

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in one very profound hadith gives us the imagery of the Day of Judgment. The Prophet ﷺ tells us these stories not because they are far off or that they may not happen. We know for a fact that they will happen.

But he tells us these stories so that we can start to prepare ourselves accordingly — to emulate those good characteristics that we hear and to try to stay away from the things that he is describing as being destructive. And in this hadith, the Prophet ﷺ engages his companions. It is narrated by Abu Huraira, may Allah be pleased with him, that the Prophet ﷺ asked a question:

"Do you know who is the person who is bankrupt — al-muflis?"

The companions answered in a way that was literal, that was direct. They said:

"The bankrupt person among us is the one who has no money and no livelihood." That's how we know bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is a person that has nothing.

The Prophet ﷺ then clarified, as he often did. And he said:

(Sahih Muslim, Book 45, Hadith 60)

"The truly bankrupt people from my ummah are those who will show up on the Day of Judgment with their prayers and their fasting and their charity, all of them being fulfilled."

So if we pause here, it's a very interesting moment. Because the Prophet ﷺ is describing a negative state — bankruptcy. But then he's describing this bankruptcy and the first characteristics that he gives to this person is the one who has achieved and accomplished all of these beautiful deeds. These are the things that we try to do. We hope to become those people who have our prayers in order. We hope to become someone who has our fasting done perfectly and our zakat is never missed.

But then he says:

But then there will come people on that day, straight up to the person that will have accomplished all of these good deeds. And a person will tell them that you insulted so-and-so, and you slandered so-and-so, and you stole the wealth of so-and-so, and you spilt the blood of another person, and you even struck somebody. So all of these characteristics — subhanAllah — you can even see it in your mind's eye, that all of the good that this person has done is coming up against all of these transgressions.

And then the Prophet ﷺ describes:

Then people will be able to take from his good deeds and her good deeds. They're going to deflate and they're going to diminish all of their good deeds. Until when?

Until this person runs out of all their good deeds, and then people will be able to give this person their sins — until that very same person that looked like they were going to cross the finish line into Jannah at the first line of the hadith, because of these transgressions, they will be emptied completely of all the goodness that they did. And in fact, they will have to take on the burden of others, tossed onto them, until the Prophet ﷺ said that person will be thrown into the hellfire. May Allah protect us.

A Double Life

This is a tragic story. It's not a very good ending. When we think about this person, in the beginning we're anticipating that they might have something good, but now we're realizing that this person lived almost like a double life — a dual reality. On one end, they were someone who was engaged in all levels of spiritual devotion to Allah. But on the other side, if you ask their family and their friends and those who worked with them and those around them, they had nothing but complaints. Because on the Day of Judgment, they showed up and everybody came to get their justice.

The Role of the Tongue

So what do we learn from these ahadith, from these moments where the Prophet ﷺ peels back the curtain? He gives us another narration — narrated by Abu Sa'id al-Khudri, may Allah be pleased with him:

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2407)

That when the son or daughter of Adam wakes up — meaning every single morning — every single limb of the body defers all of their responsibility to the tongue. So you wake up every morning; today you woke up Friday morning, and in the spiritual world, every single limb — your fingers, your eyes, your ears, everything — inwardly looked at your tongue. And what did they say? "Fear Allah, O tongue. We are with you. If you succeed, we succeed. If you fail, we fail."

So in both of these narrations, subhanAllah, we see something very powerful. We see that a person's downfall, a person's failure, may not be because of a lack of the good that they did. In fact, a person may have accomplished much good — but the downfall that the Prophet ﷺ is telling us about is not because of the good that they did or the lack thereof, but because all of the good that was accomplished was diminished by the negligence in how we treat one another, in how we talk to one another, in how we engage with people. That a person can walk into the Day of Judgment very confident, but their shortcomings would deflate all of the good that they did.

Wronging Others vs. Wronging Allah

In fact, an interesting point — we don't have narrations, and Allah knows best, that explicitly say that a person can wrong everybody and Allah would overlook it because they prayed Fajr in the morning. We don't have narrations that say that. We don't have a narration that says there was a person that wronged everybody in their life, but because they came to Fajr every morning, Allah forgave them of all their transgressions.

But we do have the opposite. We have narrations where people fell short — not intentionally, sincerely they failed, meaning they tried but they just didn't make it. We have narrations where people fell short, but because of the way that they treated their brothers and sisters, their spouse, their kids, their co-workers, their neighbors — Allah forgave them for their shortcomings because of their sincerity.

So which one is more at risk? We ask Allah to protect us.

The scholars state something beautiful when you look at the commentary in these ahadith. They say that if we transgress our relationship with Allah by making a mistake — by missing a prayer, or by not fasting the way we should, or by not paying the zakat the amount that we should — all of those transgressions, the forgiveness is only between us and Allah. Meaning, if a person's heart turns and they come to realize that they need Allah's forgiveness, there is no barrier between that person and their forgiveness except their tawbah to Allah and their istighfar.

But the scholars say that when you add a third party into this conversation — when you add another person, and that person has been wronged — then Allah withholds His forgiveness. Not because He can't forgive, but because He honors the right of the person to receive their justice first. And so the way that a person is forgiven when they wrong others is not only through the forgiveness of Allah, but Allah tells us and the Prophet ﷺ teaches us that you have to first seek the forgiveness of the one that was wronged. That's why we think of our faith in two parts: our relationship with Allah, and our relationship with others.

The Thesis: If You Can't Be Perfect, At Least Do No Harm

The Prophet ﷺ taught us a very important principle, and this is the thesis of today's khutbah: if you can't be perfect, then at least do no harm.

If you can't be somebody that is perfect in your relationship with Allah — which is everybody, because the Prophet ﷺ said that all of us will fall short, all of us will make mistakes — you know what everybody can do? Everybody can choose not to hurt somebody else. Everybody has the ability to hold their tongue. Everybody has the ability to not backbite or slander or to take the wealth of somebody else. Allah has given every person the capacity to not cause damage. Because not causing damage is something that will allow somebody to have their deficiency in good deeds overlooked. But even if a person is full of goodness but they cause damage, then we learn that that unwinds all their good deeds.

That's why the Prophet ﷺ said in a very powerful lesson:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 7288; Sahih Muslim, Book 15, Hadith 411)

"Whatever I have forbidden from you — stay far away from it. But whatever I have commanded you to do, then do from it as much as you are capable, as much as humanly possible."

The muhaddithin, the scholars of hadith, comment and say that's a very interesting change. On the first half of the hadith, the Prophet ﷺ didn't say "avoid it as much as you can." He said — فَاجْتَنِبُوهُ — whatever I have said not to do, don't you dare come close. But then when he talks about fulfilling your obligations and your acts of worship, he said, "Whatever I have commanded you to do — do whatever you find yourself capable of doing."

The scholars — including Imam al-Nawawi, who includes this hadith in his Arba'een — say that this is because if you can't do everything perfectly, at least don't do something wrong. At least don't do something wrong.

The Perfect Example in Character

Brothers and sisters, in today's world, commenting and talking about and offering an opinion about and hurting the feelings of those who are around us is something that has virtually lost any sensitivity. Things happen so quickly — comments and looks and body language.

One of the things that the Prophet ﷺ mastered — and this is why we need to work on this — is that Allah described him as being the perfect role model of character that we could ever have:

"And indeed, you are of a great moral character."

When you see the Prophet ﷺ engaging with people, you see that he did not neglect his relationship with Allah, but he also never neglected his relationship with individuals. And when he saw people doing so, he responded so sternly — sometimes so harshly — to a deficiency in character that sometimes it leaves us confused as to why he didn't respond this sternly when somebody missed a prayer or made a mistake in their religion.

The reason being, brothers and sisters, is because when a person has an error in character in the way they treat people, it is very difficult to recover from that damage. Think about the words that have been said to you. Think about the words that you've said to others. Think about the statements that you've made. And think about how long it took for you to repair that damage — the apologies, the gifts, the humility, the guilt. And even till this day, the pain, the scar still exists, doesn't it?

We ask Allah to forgive us. With Allah, His forgiveness is easy. With others, we have to be very careful — with our family, with our friends, with those that we work with — because these wounds do not heal quickly. We ask Allah to protect our hearts and our tongues. We ask Allah to make our good deeds those that are protected from our bad deeds, ameen.

The Wisdom of Imam Al-Ghazali

I'll finish today's khutbah with a beautiful reflection from Imam al-Ghazali. He paints this picture of a person who prays and fasts and makes tasbihat and all of these things. And then he describes how, after that person is done praying, they go and they start to comment and they are mean to their children, mean to their spouse, mean to their parents — they're just not nice people.

Imam al-Ghazali says — and this is his own opinion and estimation — that this person would be better off not making any tasbih at all if that meant that they would just always be quiet, than they are now making a hundred or a thousand tasbihat and hurting people.

He finishes that reflection by saying: protecting the tongue against its sins is a greater endeavor. It is a much more beautiful use of a person's energy than to sit there and try to build a beautiful house on top of faulty land.

We ask Allah to make our tongues pristine. We ask Allah to protect our hearts. We ask Allah to protect our eyes and our ears so that these things do not sabotage all the good that we try to do. We ask Allah to bless everybody in this gathering. We ask Allah to cure those who are sick. We ask Allah to forgive those who have passed away. Ameen.