Effects of not Practicing what you Preached.
ASSEMBLED BY MALLAM ABBA ABANA, KUBWA, ABUJA, NIGERIA
http://variousislamicdawadocuments.blogspot.com
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emails:gonidamgamiri@yahoo.com; abba.abana@gmail.com
Saturday 17 Shawwal 1442 AH and 29 May 2021 CE
Bismillah Walhamdulillah Was Salaatu Was Salaam 'ala Rasulillah. As-Salaam Alaikum WA-Rahmatullahi Wa-Barakatuhu.
Praise be to Allaah; we seek His help and His forgiveness. We seek refuge with Allaah from the evil of our own souls and from our bad deeds. Whomsoever Allaah guides will never be led astray, and whomsoever Allaah leaves astray, no one can guide. I bear witness that there is no god but Allaah, and I bear witness that Muhammad (ﷺ) is His slave and Messenger.
Help us Answer the Ummah! Every second, everywhere someone needs an answer. The Prophet (ﷺ) said: “A person who leads others to doing what is good will earn the same reward as those who do it.” (Muslim, 1893).
وَلَا تَهِنُواْ وَلَا تَحۡزَنُواْ وَأَنتُمُ ٱلۡأَعۡلَوۡنَ إِن كُنتُم مُّؤۡمِنِينَ (١٣٩)
“Do not lose hope, nor be sad. You will surely be victorious if you are true in Faith.” And do not mix the truth with falsehood or conceal the truth while you know [it].” [Holy Quran Chapter Al Imran Ayah 139]
إِن يَنصُرۡكُمُ ٱللَّهُ فَلَا غَالِبَ لَكُمۡۖ وَإِن يَخۡذُلۡكُمۡ فَمَن ذَا ٱلَّذِى يَنصُرُكُم مِّنۢ بَعۡدِهِۦۗ وَعَلَى ٱللَّهِ فَلۡيَتَوَكَّلِ ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُونَ (١٦٠)
“If Allah should aid you, no one can overcome you; but if He should forsake you, who is there that can aid you after Him? And upon Allah let the believers rely.”
[Holy Quran Chapter Imran Ayah 160]
Preamble
What are the conditions of Dawah in Islam?
In the Hadith ("sayings") of Muhammad (ﷺ), Dawah is mentioned to emphasize importance and virtues: "Whoever directs someone to do good will gain the same reward as the one who does good." "Whoever calls to guidance will receive the same reward as the one who follows him without any decrease in the reward of his follower."
Refer to verse 3 of Surah As-Saff (61)
ڪَبُرَ مَقۡتًا عِندَ ٱللَّهِ أَن تَقُولُواْ مَا لَا تَفۡعَلُونَ (٣)
“It is most hateful in the sight of God if you preach something and do not practice it yourself”, and underlined the need for everyone not to advise others to do something while they themselves act differently.
Allah very much dislikes preaching what one does not practice.
The prophet (ﷺ) said; ‘’the night during which I had the journey (from Makka to Jerusalem), I passed by a group of people whose lips are being torn with shears of fire.
I asked: who are they?
The Angels answered: ‘’they used to be preachers in the worldly; life, telling other people to do good deeds while they did not do good deeds themselves.’’
Source: Musnad Ibn Hanbal (v.3, p.210)
PROPHET MUHAMMAD (ﷺ) said:
A man will be brought on the Day of Resurrection and thrown in
the (Hell) Fire, so that his intestines will come out, and he will go around
like a donkey goes around a millstone. The people of (Hell) Fire will gather
around him and say: O so-and-so! What is wrong with you? Didn't you use to
order us to do good deeds and forbid us to do bad deeds? He will reply: Yes, I
used to order you to do good deeds, but I did not do them myself, and I used to
forbid you to do bad deeds, yet I used to do them myself.
(SAHIH BUKHARI Vol #4, Hadith #3267)
(SAHIH BUKHARI Vol #9, Hadith #7098)
(SAHIH MUSLIM Vol #7, Hadith #7483-7484)
Practice What You Preach
Today, I want to share a couple of points with you about this ayah of Surat Al-Baqarah. In this verse, Allah Almighty is talking to the Israelites; He gives them a bunch of advice that is actually, you can consider it, positive reinforcement. The following is a paraphrase of it:
أَتَأۡمُرُونَ ٱلنَّاسَ بِٱلۡبِرِّ وَتَنسَوۡنَ أَنفُسَكُمۡ وَأَنتُمۡ تَتۡلُونَ ٱلۡكِتَـٰبَۚ أَفَلَا تَعۡقِلُونَ (٤٤)
Do you command people to do good things while you forget yourselves though you are the ones reading the Book?
Don’t you think? Don’t you apply your intellect?
Obviously the base meaning of the ayah is that you are telling people to do something good and you forget about yourself; you don’t do it yourself. How can this be?
Let’s dig a little bit deeper for a few minutes.
First and foremost, Allah mentions as an irony that these people are the ones reading the Book. The idea here is when anyone reads the Book of Allah, whether it is the Torah in the past or the Quran now, when you read the book of Allah then the one that you should be thinking of is first and foremost yourself.
I should be thinking of myself. My concern when looking in the Book of Allah should not be to search for ammunition against someone or to make a good speech. My concern when reading an ayah should not be that I might be able to use it to give advice to somebody else. The first recipient of advice from the Book of Allah is myself.
Sometimes people recite the verses of Quran, study knowledge, listen to lectures and talks only to write down a list of points that they can use when they give a speech. That is OK so long as when you write all of those things down, the first reason you write them down is the benefit you get from them. After the verses benefit you and have an impact on you, you say to yourself, ‘You know what? It is probably good that I share this with someone else.’
And if you don’t; if you don’t have that process, then this just becomes an empty theatrical performance. In other words, you may be learning this religion to just teach to somebody else; maybe to impress them or even out of concern for them but even though, this concern is empty if it doesn’t begin with concern for yourself.
So, Allah Almighty says, ‘Don’t you think?’ This part of the ayah speaks very loud to me; every time that I study Quran, the question, ‘Don’t you think,’ should ring in my head like, ‘I’m reading this, I’m studying this but first and foremost it’s supposed to be for myself.’
You know, sometimes we learn a lot but we don’t really think about why we are learning it. We have to remind ourselves and refresh in ourselves that we are learning the Quran, every single word of it, every single ayah of it, every single hadith of the Prophet (ﷺ), for one purpose and one purpose alone, first and foremost to benefit our own selves and then anybody else.
My last reflection on the Ayah is that it does not apply only to individuals; it also relate to us as a people and as an Ummah – the entire Muslim community. It is easy to rush to judge other nations, other people, other countries, you know, entire cultures, to throw them under the bus and say “All those people are like this. All those people are like that.” It’s very interesting that we do that and we don’t take the same level of scrutiny as regards our own selves.
Interestingly enough I have even seen Muslims who, when talking about themselves, say, “Well, we have been influenced by the non-believers. That’s why we’re so bad. Their negative influence has hit us.”
You cannot blame others for your corruption. You and I, we are responsible for how we carry ourselves before Allah and we are not going to be able to turn to anybody else, point at anybody else before Allah and say, “You know what, it’s not our fault. It’s their fault. They corrupted us.” That’s not going to fly before Allah Almighty.
So, I pray that as individuals we learn to be introspective when we study the Quran and even as a people, as a culture, we learn to be introspective when we engage the Book of Allah.
O fellow preachers, practice what you preach[1]
In the Quran, Allah, states that the lowest and the most egregious pit of fire will not be filled with those who denied God and His blessings, rather it will be for hypocrites – those who are two-faced and preach what they do not (nor ever intend to) practice). The traits of hypocrites and warnings to them are found throughout the Quran.
In one such passage, Allah chastises a group of people who claimed to be the most dear to Allah saying, "Do you command people to do good things while you forget yourselves though you are the ones reading the Book? Don’t you think?”
This was directed toward the learned people among the Israelites but indirectly is a warning to all of us who claim to be smart, knowledgeable and wise. The most ironic thing is that these people were the learned scholars who used to read the scripture to the people and interpret what God wanted them to do, while neglecting to do so themselves.
In another passage, Allah states that “He hates that you say what you do not do.”
The preachers like myself are the most at risk for falling into things like this because we preach all the time. However, all parents, teachers, politicians and even the average person are involved in some level of preaching. As a result, we all need to watch out.
The Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) told us some tell-tale signs of those who are fake, two-faced, hypocrites. He said that a two-faced person lies frequently, doesn’t fulfill his/her promises, is untrustworthy, and gets nasty when in a disagreement. Such people are always worried about pleasing the people who are watching them and try to hide who they really are. As a result, they have to keep lying to project a false image.
A few things we can do about these type of people:
(1) Do not be like them. Avoid all those traits and work hard to live as honest upright individuals. What’s worse than being bad is being bad but pretending to be good. Let's try to be truly and honestly good or at least not harm others.
(2) If you have these people in your circle, be careful and stay away. These people can be toxic and can get others in trouble just to save themselves. It's also important to teach kids at some point about the difference between friends and acquaintances. Friends are chosen carefully, while others are school, work or neighborhood acquaintances.
(3) Be humble. When I see what ties all the scandalized preachers, the common thread among them is arrogance and pointing fingers at others. Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) said that we should not air others’ dirty laundries, for if we do, Allah will expose our most private sins in this life and in the hereafter. Not only one should not expose others or publicize the sinners while “reminding" them, we should be humble and not think of ourselves as better than them.
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