The Duties of Brotherhood in Islam (Part 2)

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

والصلاة والسلام على رسول الله

4th Duty: To use the tongue for speaking out

• Should use the tongue to express affection to your brother, to enquire agreeably about his circumstances.
• Asking about some accident that has befallen him, you should show the hearts concern on his behalf and over his slow recovery.
• You should indicate by word and deed that you disapprove of all circumstances that are disagreeable to him.
• Use your tongue to let him know that you share his joy in all conditions that give him pleasure.
• The Prophet Saw said “If one of you loves his brother, let him know it!”
• He Saw gave this command because the communication brings abt increase in love.
• Umar Ra said” There are 3 ways of showing sincere brotherly love: Give him the Salam first, make him comfortable, call him by his favourite name”
• Another one is praising his good qualities, and all the good yknw of his achievements you know him to possess in the presence of one he would want to be praised before.
• What is even more potent in attracting affection is defending him in his absence whenever he is abused for his honour and rebuking the fault finder and addressing him harshly.
• 2 measures can be applied as to how to do this; 1) Consider how you want him to reply on your behalf if youre being abuse in his presence. 2) you suppose that he is present behind a wall listening to your words. Ask yourself how your heart would be moved to help him when you were in his hearing and sight.
• This is part of genuine Islam; you do not see fit for your brother what you dont see it for yourself.
• The Prophet Saw said “ Abu Hirr! Be a good neighbour to your neighbour and you will be a Muslim. Be a good fellow to your companion and you will be a Mu’min”
• Duty to use the tongue also embraces instruction and advice.
• Your brother’s need of knowledge is no less than his need of money.
• You are obliged to share all and instruct him in all that is useful to him in religious and worldly matters.
• If he is doesnt act in accordance than you should advise. 1) by pointing out the disadvantages of what he is doing and the benefits to be had, by giving it up. 2) by threatening him with what is distasteful to him in this world and the Other. 3) by drawing attention to his shortcomings, by disapproval of what is ugly in his sight and approval of what is fine.
• However all this must be confidential so that no one knows about it.
• Difference between rebuke and advice is a matter of secrecy or publicity.
• The Prophet said “The believer is a mirror to the believer” thus a man can profit from brother by learning his own faults, whereas if left to himself he would lose this advantage.
• Now one might say “ if advice includes mentioning faults, then it includes alienation of the heart, and how can that come into the duty of brotherhood?”
• So you must realise that alienation only results from mentioning a fault already know to your brother, while drawing his attention to what he is unaware of is compassion itself. All this applies to a fault he his unaware of, when you know he knows it himself, and is merely under compulsion from his nature then you ought not to unveil if he conceals it.
• However if he lets it be seen you must advice him kindly, now by hints and explicitly not the point of alienating him. If you know that advice will not avail due to this nature then it is better to say nothing at all. This is in matter of religion and in the world.
• When it is a matter of a shortcoming in his duty towards you, what is required of you is patience, forgiveness, pardon and turning a blind eye. To interfere in this case has nothing to do with advice at all.
• In any case, if such that his persistence in his fault would lead to rupture, then protest private is better than rupture, indirect is better than direct approach.
• Yet patience is best of all, since your object where your brother is concerned should be to correct yourself by having consideration for him, fulfilling your duty towards him and bearing his deficiency patiently.

5th Duty: Forgiveness of mistakes & failings

• Failing of a friend must be one of two kinds; in his religion through an offence and through a failing of duty in brotherhood.
• In religion where he commits and offence and persist in it, you must advice him kindly so as to supply his deficiency, put his affairs in order and restore him to a correct and virtuous state.
• If you are incapable of this and he remains stubborn there is a difference from of the Sahabat and Tabi’in whether to maintain his right to affection or cut off relations.
• Abu dharr decides to cut off realtions but the others have the opp view.
• One of the pious made a compact between him and God that we would not eat or drink till God cured has brother of his passion. After 40 days the passion left his brothers heart.
• Imam ghazalis hold this view and said it is more subtler and penetrating and when he said subtler in which tenderness, consolation and benevolence are effective in recalling and inspiring repentance.. for the sense of shame endures with continuing friendship, whereas when relations are severed and his appetite cut off from fellowship he will be obstinate and persist in his ways.
• When he said penetrating he meant that brotherhood is a contract on the same footing as kinship, once its contracted the duty is confirmed and must be fulfilled.
• Fulfilment includes not neglecting the days of his need and poverty, and poverty in religion is worse than material poverty. He has been afflicted by calamity and harmed by which it impoverished his religion.
• Hence he must be watched and cared for, not neglected. He needs constant kindness to be helped to salvation from the disaster which befall.
• If the man of bad morals enjoys the fellowship of the godfearing, and observes his fear and constancy, he will soon come back to righteousness and be ashamed to persist.
• We should not break ties bcs separation between love ones is one of the things dear to Satan like that of divorce.
• We have seen that to avoid contact and to keep ones distances is preferable. But to discontinue pre existing contract is not advised.
• All has been said above relates to errors in the brothers religion. As for his error in brotherly duty, by which he causes alienation to ourselves the proper course being forgiveness and patience.
• Whenever a good interpretation or excuse is possible whether obvious or fat fetched it is obligatory in the duty.
• It has been said you should seek 70 excuses for your brothers misdeed. And if you heart will accept none of them you should blame yourself for having a hard heart.

6th Duty: Pray for you brother during his life and death so he may have all he wish for himself, his family and his dependants.

• You should pray for him what you pray for yourself, making no distinction at all between the two of you. For in reality your prayer for him is a prayer for yourself.
• The Prophet Saw said, “ whenever a man prays for his brother in secret, the angle says, ‘ and to you the same!’
• According to the tradition: A man’s prayer for his brother, in secret, is not reject.
• Abu Darda’ used to say” i pray for seventy of my brothers during prostration, naming them by their names”
• The Prophet Saw said” the dead man in his grave is like one shipwrecked, completely dependent for everything. He waits for a prayer from a som or brother or relative”
• One of the early believers said: Prayers for the dead are on the same footing as gifts for the living. The angle goes in to the dead with a tray of light, bearing a cloth of light and says “ this is a gift for you from your Brother so and so and your relative so and so” and he delights in it just as a living rejoices in a gift”