Serving the "Undeserving"

Serving the "Undeserving"

We ask Allah to send His peace and blessings upon him, the Prophets and Messengers that came before him, his family and companions that served alongside him, and those that follow in his blessed path until the Day of Judgment, and we ask Allah to make us amongst them. Allahumma ameen.

Dear brothers and sisters, I was asked a question after last week's khutbah, which basically gave me my khutbah today. The question was, as we were talking about this idea of owning our own mistakes, and the way that sometimes we overcompensate in the midst of our disputes by not acknowledging our own mistakes for what we feel like is a deficiency on the other side. You know, if there are two people that are in dispute, I feel like that person wronged me more, and because that person is not willing to acknowledge this much wrongdoing, I'm not willing to acknowledge this much wrongdoing, and therefore it ends up in a complete collapse.

And subhanAllah, it led me to think about this concept, which is called serving the undeserving. Serving the undeserving as a concept usually refers to the realm of charity, but at a deeper level, there's a quote to the effect of: I never regret good deeds, I just regret doing good deeds for the wrong people. And how someone might feel like, but Shaykh, I'm going to give that person the upper hand. If I do that, then that person will feel like they can get away with it. That person will feel like they're justified in their position, they'll feel like it's okay for them to act the way that they are acting.

And so the question was, how do we reconcile that with our own teachings in the religion of ihsan — of excellence — people that swallow their anger, which really means swallowing your pride most of the time, and pardoning people even when you feel like they don't really deserve to be forgiven or pardoned? How do we reconcile that with the possibility of letting these things only get worse?

What Ihsan Is Not

So let's talk about what this concept is not, first, from an ihsan perspective, from an excellence perspective.

First and foremost, it's important when a person looks back at their own lives, or on their own relationships, or things that they have done for others, that they also think about perhaps the good that they're not recognizing that others have done for them. And sometimes a person is only able to see the good that they have done for others and not the good that has been done for them. Sometimes a person only sees things through their own lens and fails to acknowledge the good that has been done towards them — and that's why the bad that's been done towards them is exaggerated, and the good is minimized. And on their end, the good is exaggerated and their own wrongdoings are minimized. So sometimes you have a very skewed perception about not just your own level of giving out good and bad, but your own level of receiving good and bad. And that can mess up the way that you're looking at something.

But then there are other levels where there's a clear wrongdoing. So what does this not mean from an ihsan perspective?

It's not ihsan for a person to not try to deliver what people need to those that are most in need. Meaning, when you say "serving the undeserving," thinking about those who deserve help the most and trying to find out who's most in need — it's not ihsan to just do away with all of that and, in the process, hurt those that deserve the help most. That's not ihsan.

It's not ihsan to perpetuate injustice, to perpetuate dhulm. How would you perpetuate dhulm? Someone hurts you or oppresses you and oppresses other people, and everyone decides to let it go and not talk about it — and in the process, you set other people up for being wronged in like manner. So you have a corrupt person in business that has harmed people over and over and over again. And you hear that someone else is going to go in business with that person, and you don't take them to the side and say, listen, I just want you to know that this happened to me, that this is a wrongdoing.

So it's not ihsan to let an injustice go unchecked that poses a societal harm, but to find a way to curb that injustice. And ihsan would be using the best possible methods, the best possible ways that are found in the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ to curb that injustice from growing without introducing another injustice in the process. So it's not born out of vengeance. It's not born out of revenge. It's not born out of wanting to hurt that person back in the name of some noble cause of preventing injustice, but really trying to figure out a way to curb the injustice from growing without actually making things worse. So ihsan — serving the undeserving, forgiving the undeserving — does not mean letting injustice perpetuate in a society.

It also doesn't mean subjecting yourself to a repeated injustice, or your community to a repeated injustice. When the Prophet ﷺ said, "The believer is not stung from the same hole twice," that has ramifications not just in battle and in war — where the Prophet ﷺ forgave a man and he promised he'd never come back, and then he came back the next battle and the Prophet ﷺ didn't forgive him that time — but also on an individual level, on a community level. To put yourself in a place of repeated harm from the same person is not wise. That's not hikmah. So you can forgive, and then protect yourself from further harm and hardship from that person. Excellence would not be to subject yourself to repeated injustice at the hands of a person.

What Ihsan Is: The Charity Dimension

So what is ihsan then? What does it mean to serve the so-called undeserving? In the charity sense, it's easier to reckon with this concept. Why? Because if you give charity to someone and then you find out that they really didn't deserve that charity, you might feel a little bit bad about it. But at the end of the day, it's not that the person hurt you — it's that you came to find out that, you know what, I could have spent that money better, or that person might have been pretending to be in a more dire situation, pretending to be deserving when they weren't really deserving. And you kind of pinch yourself, but at the end of the day, the loss is primarily financial if not entirely financial. So you really probably don't hurt too much over that.

The Example of Abdullah ibn Umar

And there's a beautiful example from Abdullah ibn Umar رضي الله تعالى عنهما. According to Nafi' — who was a freed slave of Ibn Umar who became one of the greatest scholars of the deen, the teacher of Imam Malik رحمه الله تعالى — Nafi' رضي الله عنه said that by the time Abdullah ibn Umar رضي الله عنهما died, he had freed over a thousand people from slavery. Do you know how amazing that is? When you're reading in the histories of people, people would try to store up enough money to be able to free 5 people, 10 people, sometimes 50 people, 60 people. We know the reward of freeing someone from captivity or freeing a slave in Islam throughout the Quran.

Ibn Umar, basically, when he received money, he said: is it enough to feed someone? If so, let me feed someone. Is it enough to free someone? He immediately would take his money out and he'd go free someone and free groups of people. So Nafi' says, by the time he died, he freed over a thousand people. And there was a preference — that he especially, when he would see someone who was righteous, a righteous person who was enslaved, he would really, really push himself to go free that person.

So Nafi' said that people knew how much Ibn Umar رضي الله عنه liked to free people, that there were those who would rush to pray in the first row of salah so Ibn Umar could see them — because they knew if Ibn Umar رضي الله تعالى عنهما saw them praying in the first row, surely he would rush to free them. And of course Ibn Umar رضي الله عنهما would immediately try to do whatever he could to free that person.

And Nafi' himself — who was freed by Ibn Umar — went to Abdullah ibn Umar and said to him:

"O Ibn Umar, they are deceiving you! Can't you see what they're doing? They're waiting, they're making sure that they're in your sight, because they know that if you see them, you're going to do whatever you can to free them."

He would laugh and say: "If they deceive us for Allah, then we will live in that delusion — it's okay. I did what I was supposed to do. I'm freeing this person whether that person is righteous or not, whether that person was displaying an added level of righteousness in hopes that I would free them. At the end of the day, when I meet Allah, I want to be able to say that I freed this many people for the sake of Allah. So let them deceive me for Allah — it's okay. I did what I was supposed to do. I don't care what the reality was in that situation."

The Hadith of the Three Nights of Charity

There's another hadith in Sahih Muslim — a man went out one day and said, "Today I am going to spend for the sake of Allah, I am going to give charity for the sake of Allah." So he goes out in the middle of the night and he gives charity to someone in secret. No one knows who it is — a secret sadaqah. And how beautiful a secret charity, right? As the Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sahih al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 664)

It extinguishes the anger of your Lord. So pure, so pure.

But he wakes up in the morning and the people are in laughter — they say, "Last night someone gave sadaqah to one of the wealthiest men!" Imagine: someone walked up to a rich person and gave him sadaqah. He heard it and said:

"O Allah, to You belongs all praise. Perhaps Allah didn't accept it from me — let me try again tomorrow." He goes out the next night, gives sadaqah to someone in secret. They wake up in the morning and say, "Someone gave sadaqah to a zaniyya — to an adulteress!" Who would give sadaqah to an adulteress? اللهم لك الحمد. He goes to sleep, says I'm going to do this again — does it again. Third night. Wakes up and they say, "Someone gave sadaqah to a sariq — to a thief!" Imagine: a thief was going out to rob people and someone said, "Here, take this for the sake of Allah." اللهم لك الحمد.

He asked Allah, and an angel came to him at night and said to him: "It may be that as for the zaniyya — the adulteress — because of your sadaqah you reminded her of Allah, and so now she will restrain herself from her zina, from fornication. The rich man might learn a lesson and start to spend from what Allah has given to him — so it's a lesson for him too. And as for the thief, now they might refrain from committing theft because of your sadaqah to them."

(Sahih Muslim, Hadith 1022)

So you don't know the extent of your charity. Now the reality is that for most of us, if not all of us, we're not going to have an angel come to us and explain to us the wisdom of our charity in a dream. When we look back and say, you know what, I gave sadaqah to this person, I did good to this person, and it seems like it was a waste — that is between them and Allah. That is the realm of charity when it comes to serving the undeserving. You don't know who's undeserving, and you don't know what your charity might do to the one whom you give it to — to make them reflect and wake up and realize that Allah will sustain them and they should earn in halal and spend in halal as well.

When It's Harder: Betrayal in Relationships

But it becomes harder in a relationship — when it's not just money, not just giving to someone who turned out to not be honest in asking, not just giving to a charity that turned out to not be legitimate. It's also: I was in a relationship — a business partner, a cousin, a nephew, a brother, a sister — and I showed them so much ihsan and they stabbed me in the back. They betrayed me. In a marriage where one spouse — husband or wife — gives so much, shows so much ihsan to their spouse, and then comes to find out that they were wronged and they were betrayed. And they start to kick themselves and say, "Why did I show that person so much goodness?"

The Example of Aisha and the Slander

I was thinking about Aisha رضي الله عنها. We usually go to Abu Bakr as-Siddiq رضي الله عنه immediately in this story. But there is a line in the narration of Aisha when she was slandered — some of the people that slandered her, she had done so much good to them.

She was going out with Umm Mistah, the mother of Mistah, who she did not know was one of those who had passed the slander. Imagine — Mistah, who was a recipient of the charity of her father Abu Bakr, a cousin, someone shown so much good. And while she's with Umm Mistah, Umm Mistah trips. And she says:

"May Mistah perish." And Aisha, out of her goodness — not knowing what had happened — what does she say?

"What a horrible thing you said — and that was a man who witnessed the Battle of Badr!" She's telling the mother of Mistah what a great man Mistah is — not knowing that Mistah had slandered her, had not shown her that same courtesy. And she's showing more courtesy than even the mother of Mistah.

Then she came to find out that Mistah was one of the key people passing a horrendous slander against our mother رضي الله تعالى عنها. And then what happens with Abu Bakr as-Siddiq رضي الله عنه? Abu Bakr says, "I was giving this man charity, and he goes around slandering my daughter." What did Allah reveal?

"Forgive. Show mercy. Overlook. Don't you want Allah to do the same with you?" This is powerful. Powerful. Because it's not just the ihsan of as-Siddiq — it's the ihsan of as-Siddiqa, the truthful one, the daughter of the truthful one. Their excellence, all together.

Mistah has an affair with Allah at this point رضي الله تعالى عنه. He's a veteran of Badr and he made tawbah — he repented to Allah. He has his relationship with Allah to reckon with now.

Don't Regret Your Goodness

In our own lives, dear brothers and sisters — don't kick yourself over a goodness that you showed to someone who didn't reciprocate it. Don't kick yourself over showing ihsan to someone who showed you the opposite of ihsan, the opposite of excellence. Because you will be questioned about your own actions.

That's why Imam al-Ghazali رحمه الله said: the greatest test of good character is the way that you deal with someone with no character. Husn al-khuluq — how do you deal with someone with su' al-khuluq? You want to know the goodness of your character? See how you deal with someone with no character at all.

So don't regret the goodness that you showed, because at the end of the day:

Let Allah reciprocate it for you. Let Allah repay you the goodness that you were not repaid in this world. And if someone repaid you with evil and hardship when you gave them nothing but goodness and excellence, then that's even a greater gap for Allah to fill on the Day of Judgment. Don't kick yourself over it.

Yes, be wise. Don't put yourself in situations of toxicity where you'll be hurt over and over again. But at the same time, don't regret the good that you show to others and let it make you bitter or jaded. Keep on showing ihsan. Keep on showing excellence. Allah will never let it go to waste.

We ask Allah to make us a people of ihsan and to forgive us for our own shortcomings. Allahumma ameen.

Closing Du'a