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ISLAMIC
BROTHERHOOD
In
His name
There is nothing that does not
glorify Him with praise.
In the name of God, the Merciful,
the Compassionate
Verily
the believers are indeed brothers;
so make peace between your
brothers .
(49:10)
Repel
(evil) with that which is better;
then he, between whom and you there
is enmity, shall be as if he were a
loyal friend.
(23:96)
Those
who restrain their rage and forgive
people - verily God loves the
good-doers.
(3:134)
Dispute,
discord, partisanship, obstinacy and
envy among the believers are distasteful
and vile, harmful and sinful, for
personal, social and spiritual life
Dispute
and discord among the believers, and
partisanship, obstinacy and envy, which
lead to rancor and enmity among them,
are distasteful and vile, harmful and
sinful, for personal, social and
spiritual life, by the testimony of
truth and wisdom, and from the viewpoint
of the supreme humanity that is Islam.
Also, they are poison for the life of
mankind. Out of numerous aspects of this
truth, we shall set forth only six.
That
it is wrong from the viewpoint of truth:
O
unjust man who nourishes rancor and
enmity against a believer! Suppose that
you were on a ship, or in a house, with
ten people, one innocent, the others
criminal. If someone were to try to make
the ship sink, or to set the house on
fire, because of that one criminal, you
know how great an injustice he would be
committing. You would cry out to the
heavens against his injustice. Even if
there were one innocent man and nine
criminals aboard the ship, it would
still be against all rules of justice to
sink it.
In
the same way, a believer may be compared
to a house or a ship belonging to God,
and he has, not nine, but as many as
twenty innocent attributes such as
faith, Islam and neighborliness. If,
then, you cherish rancor and enmity
against him on account of one criminal
attribute that is adverse to you, and
you desire the sinking of that ‘ship’
or the burning of that ‘house’
created by God, then this would be a
most atrocious crime.
That
it is wrong also from the viewpoint of
wisdom:
As
is well-known, love and enmity are, like
the light and darkness, opposites so
they cannot be combined in a heart in
their true nature.
If
love is truly felt by a heart, by virtue
of the predominance of the causes that
produce it, then hostility in that heart
will take on the form of pity. A
believer should love and indeed does
love his brother and is pained by any
evil he sees in him. He tries to improve
him not with harshness but gentleness.
Because of this, as warned in a
Prophetic saying: A believer should
not be angry with another, nor refuse to
speak with him, for more than three days.1
If,
by contrast, the causes that produce
enmity predominate and accordingly,
hostility truly invades a heart, then
the love in that heart will become
merely formal and take on the form of
pretence and flattery.
O
unfair man! See now how great an
injustice is rancor and enmity towards a
brother believer! If you were to regard
worthless pebbles as more valuable than
the Ka‘ba and greater than Mount Uhud,
it would be a repugnant absurdity.
Likewise, while all the Islamic
attributes like faith, which has the
value of the Ka‘ba, and Islam, having
the splendor of Mount Uhud, demand love
and concord between believers, it is a
disgrace and folly of the same degree,
and a great injustice, to nurture
hostility towards a believer. To do so
would mean preferring to faith and Islam
certain shortcomings in him which arouse
hostility, but which, in reality, are
like the worthless pebbles compared to
Mount Uhud or the Ka‘ba.
Indeed,
unity in faith requires the unity of
hearts, and the oneness of creed demands
the oneness of society. You cannot deny
that if you are in the same squadron as
someone, you will feel a friendly
attachment to him; that a friendly
relation will be formed between you and
him due to your both being under the
command of a single commander. You will
also experience a brotherly relationship
because of living in the same barracks.
All these things considered, you should
understand the extent to which you are
attached to a believer by ties of unity
between you as numerous as the Divine
Names, bonds of accord and relations of
brotherhood coming from the light and
consciousness of faith.
There
are hundreds of bonds among Muslims
Both
of you are the slaves of the same, One
Creator, One Sovereign, One Object of
Worship, One Provider... so there are a
thousand ties of unity between you, to
the number of His Names. Besides, your
Prophet, your religion, your qibla,
are one and the same, and the number of
such ties amount to almost a hundred. In
addition, your town is one, your country
is one, your state is one; tens of
things are one and the same for you. All
of these ties require unity and oneness,
union and concord, love and brotherhood,
and they are, as immaterial chains,
strong enough to link all the planets
together. If, despite all this, you
prefer those things, as frail and
trivial as a spider’s web, that cause
dispute and discord, rancor and enmity
and the bearing of grudges against a
believer, then you must understand -
unless your heart is dead and your
intelligence extinguished - how great is
your disregard for those ties of unity,
how grave the slight you give to those
causes of love, how serious your
transgression against those
relationships of brotherhood!
To
nurture rancor and enmity against a
believer is like condemning all the
innocent attributes found in him on
account of one criminal attribute.
According
to the Qur’anic decree, No soul
laden bears the load of another,
(6:164) which expresses absolute
justice, to nurture rancor and enmity
against a believer is like condemning
all the innocent attributes found in him
on account of one criminal attribute,
and is therefore a very great injustice.
If you go further to include in your
enmity all the relatives of the believer
with whom you are angered because of a
single evil attribute of his, then you
will be the object of the Qur’anic
reproach, Verily man is much given to
wrongdoing. (14:34) While truth and
the law and wisdom of Islam warn you
against this much greater act of
injustice, how can you imagine yourself
right and still say, ‘I am in the
right’?
In
the view of truth, the forms of evil
which arouse enmity are in themselves
evil and dense like earth; others are
not necessarily touched or moved by
them. If it should happen that another
person does, after seeing those forms of
evil, imitate them, that is a different
matter - it is more from his inclination
to those forms of evil than the
effective powers of evil that he is led
to do evil. By contrast, good actions
and qualities spring from love and
arouse love, they are luminous as love
is; it is in their nature to be
infectious and so to be transmitted. It
is for this reason that they say it as a
proverb, The friend of a friend is a
friend; as also it is on everybody’s
tongue that Many eyes are loved for the
sake of one eye.
So,
O unjust man! If this is the case from
the viewpoint of truth, you will
understand now, if you are able to see
the truth, how great an offence to truth
it is to harbor enmity towards a brother
in religion who is innocent and worthy
of love or towards his relatives because
you happen to have taken a dislike to
him.
That
it is wrong from the viewpoint of
personal life.
Consider
the following four principles:
-
You
can say, “My way is right and
better,” but you do not have the
right to say, “Only my way is
right.”
When
you know your way to be right and your
opinions to be true, you may be
justified if you say, “My way is
right and better,” but you do not
have the right to say, “Only my way
is right.” As stated in the wise
saying, The eye of contentment is too
dim to perceive faults; whereas the
eye of anger exhibits all vice, your
unjust view and distorted opinion
cannot judge between the ways and
should not condemn the way of another
as wrong.
It
is incumbent upon you that all that
you say should be true, but you do not
have the right to say the whole of
what is true. If you do so, the person
you address may be irritated by your
advice and react unfavorably -
especially where the intention is not
quite sincere.
If
you wish to nurse the anger of
hostility, then direct it against the
feeling of enmity in your heart and
try to remove that. Also, be an enemy
to your evil-commanding self and its
fancies and try to reform it, for it
is more harmful to you than all else.
Do not nurse anger and hostility
against believers to please that
injurious self. If you cannot rid
yourself of enmity, then there are
numerous unbelievers and heretics to
nurse your anger and hostility
against. As the attribute of love
deserves the response of love, so too,
is enmity fit to receive enmity as its
response. If you wish to defeat your
enemy, then respond to his evil with
good. For if you respond with evil,
enmity will increase; even though he
may be outwardly defeated, he will
nurture rancor in his heart and enmity
will persist. If, by contrast, you
respond to him with good, he will
repent and become a friend to you.
As
expressed in the couplet,
If
you treat the noble nobly, he will
be yours,
But
if you treat the ignoble nobly, he
will revolt...
it
is the nature of a believer to be
noble and he will be subjected to you
by noble treatment. However, should
there be among the believers a man
apparently ignoble, he is yet noble
with respect to his belief. It often
happens that if you repeatedly tell a
man ‘you are good’, he will become
good; and if you insistently tell a
good man ‘you are bad’, he will
become bad. Therefore, heed the
following sacred principles
established by the Qur’an, for
happiness and salvation are to be
found in them:
If
they come across vanity, they pass
by with dignity.
(25:72)
If
you pardon and overlook and if you
forgive, surely God is
All-Forgiving, All-Compassionate.
(64:14)
One
who indulges rancor and enmity wrongs
and transgresses against his own soul,
his brother believer, and the Divine
Compassion. He condemns his soul to
painful torment on account of his
rancor and enmity. He inflicts anguish
upon himself whenever he sees his
enemy obtain some blessings or
advantage, and he suffers pain on
account of his fear of him. If his
enmity arises from envy, this is the
most severe form of torment. For envy,
first of all, consumes and destroys
the envious, and does not harm the one
envied; even if it does so, it does so
only a little.
The
cure for envy:
Let
the envious individual ponder the fate
of those things that arouse his envy.
Then he will conclude that the physical
beauty, strength, worldly rank, and
wealth enjoyed by his rival are
transient. Their benefit is slight, but
the trouble they cause is great. If the
things arousing his envy are merits
possessed by his rival with respect to
the Hereafter, they cannot be an object
of envy. But if one does envy another on
account of them, then he is either
himself a hypocrite, wishing to use up
the rewards to be paid in the Hereafter
while yet in this world, or he imagines
the one whom he envies to be a
hypocrite, thus being unjust towards
him.
If
the envious person rejoices at the
misfortunes that the envied one suffers
and is grieved by the bounties he
receives, it means he is offended by the
good done to the other by Destiny and
Divine Compassion, and is, indirectly,
criticizing Destiny and objecting to
Compassion. Whoever criticizes Destiny
is striking his head against an anvil on
which it will break, and whoever objects
to Compassion will himself be deprived
of it.
You
cannot condemn your brother believer by
attributing solely to him the evil you
have experienced at his hands
How
can justice and sound conscience accept
that the response to something unworthy
of even a day’s enmity should be a
year’s rancor and enmity? Besides, you
cannot condemn your brother believer by
attributing solely to him the evil you
have experienced at his hands because:
-
Destiny
has a certain part in allowing that
evil to be, to which you should
respond with quiet acceptance.
-
The
share of Satan and the
evil-commanding self should also be
taken into consideration. In this
case, you will rather pity your
brother than become his enemy, for
having been overwhelmed by his
carnal self.
-
God
may have punished you through your
brother for a defect in your own
soul of which you are unaware or of
which you do not wish to be aware.
As
for the remaining small share, if you
respond to it with tolerance,
forgiveness and magnanimity, a way to
conquer your enemy most swiftly and
safely, then you will be saved from
wrongdoing and harm. Otherwise, if, like
someone drunken or crazed merchant who
buys fragments of ice and glass at the
price of diamonds, you respond to
worthless, transient and insignificant
affairs of this world with violent,
persistent hostility and permanent
rancor, as if you would remain in the
world forever with your enemy, it would
be excessive wrongdoing, drunkenness and
a kind of lunacy.
If
then, you care for yourself, do not
allow enmity and desire for revenge,
which are so harmful to inner life, to
enter your heart. If they have already
entered, do not listen to what they
command. Hear what truth-seeing Hafiz of
Shiraz says:
The
world is not a commodity worth
contending for.
The
world is worthless because it is
transient. If this is true of the huge
world, then you can grasp how
insignificant are the petty affairs of
the world! Hafiz also says:
The
tranquility of both worlds lies in
two things: Magnanimity towards
friends, wise management of
enemies.
If
you have no choice other than enmity?
If
you say, ‘I have no choice, there is
enmity in my nature. Moreover, these
things angered me, so I cannot overlook
them,’ my answer will be this:
If,
in resisting the force of the evil
impulse in yourself and the tendency to
behave badly, you refrain from carrying
out your intention, and (in doing so)
become conscious of your own defect,
there is no harm. This is because
awareness of your own defect and
admission of the wrong in having such an
evil impulse, are a means and form of
repentance and seeking God’s
forgiveness which will deliver you from
the evil consequences of that evil
impulse. That is indeed why I wrote this
part of this Letter - so as to urge you
to seek forgiveness, to distinguish
right from wrong, and to prevent enmity
from being presented as right.
A
case worthy of notice: I once witnessed
that, as a result of partisan bias, a
pious scholar of religion went so far in
condemnation of another pious scholar
whose political opinions he did not
share as to imply that he was an
apostate. On the other hand, he praised
with respect a hypocrite who was of the
same opinion as himself. I was appalled
at such evil results of political
partisanship and concluded, I seek
refuge in God from Satan and politics.
From that time on I withdrew from
politics.
Obstinacy
and partisanship are very harmful for
social life.
Question
A
tradition says: Difference
among my community is a mercy (for
them). Difference requires
partisanship. Even though
partisanship is a social disease,
it relieves the oppressed common
people from the oppressive elite,
for if the elite of a town or
village join together, they
tyrannize the ordinary people. If
there are parties, the oppressed
may take refuge with one of them
and thus save themselves.
It
is also from the confrontation of
opinions and the disagreement of
minds that truth comes to light in
its full measure. Do you agree
with this argument?
Answer
The
difference meant in the tradition is a
positive difference. That is, it is a
difference whereby each side strives to
promote and propagate its own argument,
not seeking to destroy and nullify that
of the other, but rather to improve and
reform it. As for negative difference
which aims at the destruction of the
other side because of partisan bias and
hostility, this is rejected by the
Prophet, upon him be peace and
blessings. Those who are at each other’s
throats cannot act positively (towards
each other).
To
the second part of the question we would
answer that if partisanship is in the
name of truth, it may well become a
refuge for those seeking their rights.
But the current partisanship, which is
biased and self-centered, is only a
refuge for the unjust and a focus of
support for them. For, if a devil comes
to a man engaged in biased partisanship
and backs him, that man will call down
God’s blessings on that devil. But if
a man of angelic character joins the
opposite side, then he will - God
forbid! - go so far as to invoke curses
on him.
To
the third point in the argument we would
say: If confrontation of opinions is in
the name of truth, it is only a
difference of means; in reality, it is
an agreement, a unity, with respect to
aim and basic purpose. Such difference
can make manifest all the different
aspects of truth and so serves justice
and truth. However, it is not ‘gleams
of truth’, but rather flames of
dissension which will emerge from a
confrontation between biased, partisan
opinions based upon egotism and
fame-seeking, a confrontation which
takes place for the sake of a
tyrannical, evil-commanding self. For,
it is unity of purpose that must be the
goal, whereas opposing views of this
kind can never find a point of
convergence anywhere on earth. Since
they do not differ in the name of truth,
they split into absolute extremes and
give rise to divisions that are
irreconcilable.
If
one’s conduct is not based on the
exalted principles, loving for the sake
of God, disliking for the sake of God,
judging for the sake of God, dispute and
discord will result.
In
short, if one’s conduct is not based
on the exalted principles, loving for
the sake of God, disliking for the sake
of God, judging for the sake of God,
dispute and discord will result. If one
does not take due account of these
principles, attempts to do justice will
result in injustice.
An
event which should provide a lesson:
Imam ‘Ali, may God be pleased with
him, once threw an unbeliever to the
ground. Just as he drew his sword to
kill him, the unbeliever spat at him.
‘Ali released the man without killing
him. The unbeliever asked: ‘Why did
you not kill me?’ ‘Ali answered: ‘I
was going to kill you for the sake of
God. But when you spat at me, I became
angered and the purity of my intention
was clouded by the inclinations of my
soul. It is for this reason that I did
not kill you.’ The unbeliever replied:
‘I spat at you so that you would
become angered and kill me instantly. If
your religion is so pure and
disinterested, then it must be truth.’
An
incident worthy of notice: When once a
judge showed signs of anger while
cutting off the hand of a thief, the
just ruler who happened to observe him
dismissed him from office. For, if he
had cut off the thief’s hand in the
name of the Sacred Divine Law, he would
have felt pity for the man and cut it
off without showing either mercy or
anger. Since the inclinations of his
soul had some share in his deed, he was
unable to perform the execution with
justice.
A
regrettable social condition and a
perilous disease paralyzing the life of
society, fit to be wept over by the
heart of Islam: It is a requirement of
harmonious social life, recognized and
practiced by even the most primitive
peoples, that internal enmities should
be forgotten and abandoned when foreign
enemies appear and attack. What then
ails those who claim to be serving the
Muslim community that, at a time when
countless enemies are ever ready to
attack, one after the other, they, by
failing to forget petty hostilities,
prepare the ground for the assaults of
enemies? This is a corruption, a kind of
barbarity and treachery committed
against the community of Islam.
A
story with an important lesson: The
Hasanan, a tribe of Bedouin, had two
clans that were at war with each other.
Although more than fifty had been killed
on each side, whenever another tribe
such as the Sibkan or Haydaran appeared
against them, these two hostile clans
would forget their enmity and fight
together, shoulder to shoulder, until
they repelled the attacking tribe,
without recalling their internal
animosities.
O
people of faith! Do you not know how
many ‘tribes’ and enemies are ready
to attack the ‘tribe’ of believers?
O
people of faith! Do you not know how
many ‘tribes’ and enemies are ready
to attack the ‘tribe’ of believers?
There are more than a hundred, like a
series of concentric circles. When the
believers should be taking up defensive
positions, each supporting the other and
giving him a helping hand, is it at all
fitting for people of faith that, by
insisting on biased partisanship and
hostile rancour, they facilitate the
assault of the enemy and open the gates
for them to penetrate the fold of Islam?
There are as many as seventy circles of
hostile forces, ranging from the
misguided, the atheists and the people
of false belief, to the vicissitudes of
worldly life, each meaning you harm, and
regarding you with anger and hatred.
Your firm weapon, shield and citadel is
Islamic brotherhood. So be aware of how
far it contradicts conscience and the
interests of brotherhood to shake this
citadel of brotherhood on account of
petty enmities and other pretexts, and
come to your senses!
It
is reported in some Prophetic traditions
that extremely harmful and terrible
persons such as Sufyan and the Dajjal
will come to lead the heretics and
hypocrites at the end of time and
exploit the worldly ambitions and
dissensions among the Muslims and
mankind, so that, with only a small
force, they will reduce humanity to
anarchy and the vast world of Islam to
slavery.
O
people of faith! If you do not desire to
fall into slavery and humiliation, come
to your senses and take refuge against
oppressors who would exploit your
differences, in the citadel of the
believers are naught else than brothers.
Otherwise, you will be able neither to
preserve your lives nor to defend your
rights. It is evident that if two
champions are fighting with each other,
even a child can beat them. If two
mountains are balanced in the scales,
even a small stone can disturb their
equilibrium, causing one to rise, and
the other to fall. Thus, people of
faith, your strength will be reduced to
nothing as a result of your passions and
hostile partisanship, so that you can be
defeated by the slightest forces. If you
have any commitment to a collective life
of social harmony and solidarity, then
make the exalted principle of The
believers are together like a
well-founded building, one part of which
supports the other2 your guiding
principle in life! Then you will be
delivered from humiliation in this world
and wretchedness in the other.
Spiritual
life and correctness of worship are
spoilt by enmity and rancor
Spiritual
life and correctness of worship are
spoilt by enmity and rancor, because the
purity of intention that is the means of
salvation is spoilt. For a biased
partisan wishes for superiority over his
enemy in the good deeds he performs and
becomes unable to act purely for the
sake of God. Also he prefers, in his
judgment and dealings, the one who takes
his side, so he cannot be just. Thus the
purity of intention and justice that are
the basis of all good deeds are lost
because of enmity.
This
aspect could be elaborated further, but
we keep it short here in order to
reserve space for other matters.
1.
Bukhari, ‘Adab,’ 57; Muslim, ‘Birr,’
23; Abu Dawud, ‘Adab,’ 47.
2. Bukhari, ‘Salat,’ 88; Muslim, ‘Birr,’
65; Tirmidhi, ‘Birr,’ 18.
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