Today's reflection - (Ayah 44, Surah Al-Baqarah)

   أَتَأْمُرُونَ النَّاسَ بِالْبِرِّ وَتَنْسَوْنَ أَنْفُسَكُمْ وَأَنْتُمْ تَتْلُونَ الْكِتَابَ ۚ أَفَلَا تَعْقِلُونَ

Do you command people to virtuous conduct, and forget yourselves, even though you read the Scripture? Do you not understand? (Quran 44:2)

This is such a profound ayah. Here the religious scholars of the Jews are being addressed. Allah is reprimanding them for a strange contradiction in their behavior. While they asked their friends and relatives to follow the commands of the Torah ,command people to obey Allah, fear Him and perform pious acts. They forbade the people from rejecting the prophethood and the covenant that they made with Allah in the Tawrah, while they themselves have forgotten the covenant that they would accept Allah's Messenger and then they breached the covenant, and rejected what they knew is in Allah's Book. They did not practice what they commanded.They were enslaved to their desires and was not willing to let go of worldly desires to attain Allah's pleasure.

Although this ayah is addressed to the Jewish scholars , this verse is a reminder for all those who preach good deeds to others but do not act upon it themselves. We often tend to become happy and excited when we gain Hidaya (guidance) and we also hope for others especially our closest family members to adhere to the same path. Whilst this thought on its own is very beneficial, it should be noted that the way we invite them to our path should be done with much caution and as this ayah states , how can we preach to them whilst we ourselves forget our manners and our patience while doing Da'wah. The need or want to have our closest family members on the path of piety and righteousness is genuine but as a muslim we also have the responsibility to fulfill this need in an islamic way. We need to study the method of our Rasool SAWS through the Quran and Sunnah in order to be able to bring people to the right path without causing rifts , conflicts or annoying them or even leading them further astray. So for starters the best way to call them to the deen is through our character and actions before speech. Remember actions speak louder than words. If we give ourselves the training first to practice tolerance and patience in the face of injustice and adversity then we will be able to withstand preaching to them as well.

Sometimes we look at some people and wonder what kind of patience they exercise, or how can they always be so well behaved all the time, or how can they be so generous and kind and loving? This. This is what attracts people more than words of preaching. Preaching comes after practicing. However this doesn't mean we dont preach at all until we are completely practicing each and every word we say. But we need to give it our best shot at implementing it ourselves and while doing that its completely human to falter and not be able to keep up with the deed sometimes. But as long as we are attempting it and have consistency it should suffice. For example we might ask someone to pursue the path of seeing knowledge but we ourselves might sometimes get caught up with life and not seek that path for a certain bit, but as long as we have the niyyah and vow to continue seeking knowledge even if its 2 minutes a day , then we can advise another person to do the same even if we falter in the middle.

This Hadith reports the punishments of those people in the hereafter who preach without practicing,

Anas (R.A) reports that on the Night of the ascension the Holy Prophet SAWS passed by some people whose lips and tongues were being cut with scissors made of fire, on being questioned as to who they were, the Archangel Jibreel explained that they were certain avaricious preachers of the Holy Prophet's SAWS ummah who bade others to good deeds but ignored themselves. (Ibn Kathir).

According to another hadith reported by Ibn 'Asakir, certain people living in Paradise will find some of their acquaintances in the fire of hell, and ask them, "How is it that you find yourselves in hell, while we have attained Paradise just on account of the good deeds we had learnt from you"; those in hell will reply: "We used to say all that with our tongues, but never acted upon what we said." (Ibn Kathir)

Therefore, Allah admonished the Jews for this behavior and alerted them to the wrongs that they were perpetrating against themselves by ordering righteousness, yet refraining themselves from righteousness. We should state that Allah is not criticizing the People of the Book for ordering righteousness, because enjoining good is a part of righteousness and is an obligation upon the Muslims. It is of utmost importance to constantly engage in personal Jihad of wanting to do good and restrain from evil while we enjoin good upon others and forbid evil.

However we should not take this ayah to mean that it is not allowed for a man who has not been religiously doing good deeds or who has faltered in some ways to give good counsel or preach to others. Doing good deeds and persuading others to do good deeds is virtuous in itself and highly recommended many times in the Quran. Therefore, enjoining righteousness and performing righteousness are both required.

Imam Malik has cited Sa'id ibn Jubayr as saying that if everyone decides to refrain from persuading others to good deeds and dissuading them from evil deeds on the assumption that he himself is a sinner and can have no right to preach to others until and unless he has purged himself of all sins, there would be no one left to give good counsel to people, for who can be totally free of sins?

According to Hasan of Basra, this is exactly what Satan wants for people to be obsessed by. This false notion of purity, people should neglect their obligation to provide religious instruction and good counsel to others. It is interesting to note that it is not permissible for someone who preaches to preach good deeds and neglect it himself, but it is not permissible for someone who doesn't preach also to neglect good deeds. The difference between the two categories is just that the one who preaches is aware of the consequences of his deeds and has knowledge and hence he is held  more seriously accountable than the non preacher for having knowledge and spreading it to others while he himself did not act upon that knowledge. He knows if he is committing a sin and cannot hold ignorance as an excuse for his sin.

If the scholars of the society end up committing sins and these sins become public, then what reliability or dependency do us as common man have ? Anas (R.A) reports from the Holy Prophet that on the Day of Judgment, Allah will forgive illiterate and ignorant people much more readily than He will the scholars. 

The people of knowledge and those seeing knowledge should be highly wary of their code of conduct especially with their family and friends. Because as Muslims we always represent our deen ever second and every minute of our life to the rest of the world. And as believers and students of knowledge we need to be on guard of our attitude and take caution of our character with our own household first. The best place to start imparting knowledge and wisdom is within one's own household.