Staying Positive in a Negative World

Staying Positive in a Negative World

Introduction: The Reality of Life's Weather

When I was asked about what topic I wanted to speak about, I suggested "how to stay positive in a negative world." I chose this topic because there's a lot going on right now - in the media, for us as Muslims collectively, and for us personally. It becomes very difficult sometimes to stay positive.

The reality about life in general is something that Allah has told us again and again in the Quran - that Allah and His Messenger have told us that we are always going to be faced with different kinds of weather. Right now it's raining, and no one, no matter who they are, no matter how much money or power they have, can stop the rain. If we went to Trump right now and asked him to make it stop raining here in Indiana, there's absolutely nothing he can do, because this is not something that anyone has any power over.

Finding Shelter in Life's Storms

But is anyone in this room getting wet right now? No. Why aren't we getting wet? Because we're inside of a shelter.

The reality is that we don't control certain things about life - that's just a fact. But what we can control is where we are when that weather hits. If it's cold outside, I can't make it warm - we don't control the sun. But I can put on a coat, gloves, and a hat. I've found a way to cope, to survive the weather even though I can't control it. I've found a way to stay dry even when it's raining outside.

That is what faith gives us. Faith gives us a way to stay inside a shelter, to stay dry even when it's wet outside, even when there are storms.

The Story of Building Strong Shelter

We have tornadoes here. Even if there was severe weather outside, there is a way to protect myself - I can go into a basement. The reality is that even when storms hit us in life, if we learn certain skills and how to be inside proper shelter, we won't get destroyed. Weather will come and go, hardships will come and go. Fitan (tests) will come and tests will go, but we will survive.

To survive a storm requires certain things you have to do. To survive the weather that comes in your life, there are certain skills. If we are in the habit of staying within shelter, then we will be able to survive our storms.

Remember the story of the three little pigs? There are three little pigs - one really lazy, one sort of lazy, and one who works hard. The lazy one builds a weak shelter out of straw. The next pig builds his house

out of twigs. The third pig works hard and builds a strong shelter out of brick.

When the big bad wolf comes, he huffs and puffs and blows down the first house because it was weak. He blows down the second house because it was also weak. But the third shelter made of brick - he huffs and puffs but can't blow it down because it was solid and strong.

Life's Big Bad Wolves

In life we have all types of big bad wolves. We have some that look like Trump, some that look like financial problems, some that look like different kinds of trials. These things come and huff and puff at us and try to blow our house down, to break us down, to basically destroy us or make us weak.

We can't stop the wind. We can't actually stop a wolf from doing what wolves do - they huff and they puff. But what we can do is build a strong shelter.

We can't be delusional and think that the sun is always going to be out in life. We can't be delusional and say that in our lives it'll just never rain. I read this quote recently that said if a person only travels when the sun is out, they won't ever end up at their destination. The truth is that we have to keep going in life even when it's not perfect, when things are difficult.

Four Pillars of Building a Strong Shelter

I'm going to give you four pieces of advice on how to build that strong shelter made of brick and be able to handle the weather of life.

1. The Power of Focus: What You Focus On Grows

There is something within our power that has a very profound effect on our life, on our psychological state and emotional state - and that is focus. What you focus on grows. Whatever you focus on in your life is going to start to grow, become bigger, and start to surround you.

The Problem with Problem-Focus

Some people have a habit of focusing on problems. Sometimes it's not for any bad intent, but because they're problem solvers - their orientation is problem solving. They look for the problem in any situation so they can solve it. These are people you might later say are "so critical," but the reality is they're looking for the problem so they can solve it.

Here's the subtle issue: when you focus on problems in a situation - and there's no situation that's ever going to be perfect in this life (it goes against the definition of dunya, which by definition is imperfect) - there's always going to be a problem. But if you focus on the problem in every situation, it starts to look bigger than it is and will actually start to consume you.

Everything you talk about will be the problem. Everything you think about will be that problem. Everything you post about will be about that problem. Everything you read about will be about that problem.

The Lesson from Musa (AS) and the Red Sea

When Musa (عليه السلام) is standing in front of the Red Sea with an army behind him, he has a very serious problem - a giant body of water in front of him and an army behind him. He looks trapped. But what was his focal point in that moment? Allah.

It's not that he was in denial of his reality. His reality was that he had an army behind him and a Red Sea in front of him. But his focus was not on the Red Sea, and his focus was not on the army.

You see the contrast between him and Bani Israel. Bani Israel were focused on the army. When the armies saw each other, what did they say? (إِنَّا لَمُدْرَكُونَ) - "Indeed, we will be overtaken." They fell into despair because of their focus.

"No! Indeed, with me is my Lord; He will guide me."

(كلا) in Arabic is very emphatic - "no way, absolutely not" - all of that in just one word. "Indeed, my Lord is with me, and He will guide me through."

Musa (عليه السلام) wasn't looking at the problem. He was aware of the problem, but his focus wasn't the problem. His focus was Allah. He said, "Indeed, my Lord is with me, and He will guide me through this."

No matter how dark it gets outside or how much we feel like things are closing in on us, if our focus is Allah, then we don't feel despair. Just like Musa (عليه السلام) knew that Allah was with him, and if Allah is with you, He'll get you through. That was the yaqeen and trust of Musa (عليه السلام)

The Training of Five Daily Prayers

There's a reason Allah told us to pray not once, twice, or even three times, but five times a day. What is that doing? It's making us focus on Allah. It's shifting our focus away from whatever work we happen to be doing, whatever problem we happen to be in.

No matter what your situation is, you still need to turn and pray. You're at work - you leave your work and focus on Allah. You're at the mall - you leave that sale and focus on Allah. You're on your laptop, phone, Facebook, in a meeting, in class - you leave all of that and focus on Allah.

Allah is training us to focus on Him and not on whatever it is that we're doing in the dunya. This is training us, just like Musa (عليه السلام) went through this training. When he was faced with a problem, he was able to put his full reliance on Allah because he was focused on Allah.

Managing What You Consume

How do I have the right focus? Number one is what I expose myself to. You know the dua when you're at the Kaaba? For the entire last part of tawaf, what dua are you supposed to say?

"Our Lord, give us good in this world and good in the next world, and protect us from the punishment of the Fire."

Notice in this dua there are three parts. Out of those three parts, how many are about dunya? One. The first part is about dunya, but then the second part is about the hereafter, and the third part is about the hereafter (where is jahannam? In the hereafter).

Even in this dua, where is the focus? The focus is more on akhirah than it is on dunya. Allah doesn't tell us to forget about dunya completely, but Allah is showing us where our primary focus should be - our bigger focus is on Allah and the hereafter.

Social Media as Food for the Soul

Facebook is nothing more than a tool, just like the internet, just like a phone. It can be used for good or for evil. All these Islamic lectures are on the internet, but there's also a lot of filth on the internet too. These are tools.

Look at your newsfeed once in a while. The content of your newsfeed actually says a lot and affects you. We use social media, and when we're on our social media, you have feeds for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

If you just look at the content, it'll give you an idea of what you're ingesting. You want to know what you're eating? Open up your fridge - it's going to show you the quality of what you're eating. Look at your plate before you eat.

If that food is covered in mold - you open the fridge and all the food is rotten, then you eat it - what's going to happen? You're going to get sick because the quality of your food is bad. You're actually ingesting toxins, ingesting poison. Mold is poisonous and will harm you internally.

It's the same thing with your feed, with your newsfeed, with the articles you're reading, the posts you're looking at, who you follow on Instagram. It's like looking at your plate before you eat it. How's the quality? Because that stuff is being ingested in a different way - it's going through your eyes and into your heart and mind.

What you're actually doing is feeding your soul, and that's more important than even your body, because the food that you put into your soul stays there. The food you put into your body goes into the toilet. The food you're taking into your soul affects your soul - your soul is eternal, something that's going to live forever. You go from this life into the grave, then from the grave into hellfire or paradise.

This soul is staying with you. The quality of the food you're giving your soul is pretty important. It's what you read, what you look at, what you see on TV, on billboards, on magazines, on your Facebook, on your Instagram. All of that is food. Think of that as food. Look at the quality of it.

Ask yourself: is this healthy food? Is this organic? Or is it covered in poison? Is it mold? When you start to clean up your food, it cleans up your soul.

You can make your newsfeed actually healthy. There's this thing called "unfollow" - they don't have to know. You don't have to unfriend them unless you want to, but you can unfollow and nobody knows. If somebody is posting garbage, unfollow them.

There are ranges of different kinds of food - absolute poison, amazing healthy food, and something in between which is just useless. Even overeating useless food will make you unhealthy.

You can make your social media healthy for you, where it's actually growing your head and mind and helping your heart. Or you can make it useless.

The Danger of Superficial Obsession

One of the issues I've found, especially now with social media blowing up, is that we are obsessed with appearances more than before. How I look, how I dress, how I appear becomes of utmost importance more than anything else. This isn't healthy because it's skewed what's really important - now it's how I look.

There's an obsession with perfection. If you have anything imperfect about you, put a filter on it. We're all wearing masks, just pretending. This is very unhealthy because we've completely missed the point of what really matters.

Two Ways the Heart Can Die

There are a few things that can kill the heart. One is sins - that's clear. But there's something else that can kill the heart: ghafla (heedlessness).

Ghafla means I might not be involved in sin, I might not be clubbing and drinking, but I am completely missing the plot. All I care about is fashion, what this person's wearing, what that person's saying. I've actually killed my heart not necessarily through outright sin, but because all I care about is superficial things. I'm missing what really matters, and that's just as dangerous.

There are two ways to die: you can eat poison and die, or you can starve and that will also kill you. When a person isn't getting the remembrance of Allah, and instead the only thing they're taking in is dunya - things about money, fashion, status, celebrities - then what's happening is like I'm starving my soul. I'm not giving my soul its actual food, which is the remembrance of Allah.

Managing Your Thoughts

We have a nafs (lower self) and we have shaitan. The nafs whispers and shaitan whispers, so not everything that occurs to our brain is healthy - some of it's just garbage. We have to be very careful about our thoughts.

If you don't manage thoughts, it's like you're in your house at nighttime getting ready to sleep. You have your family and valuable things in the house, but you leave the front door wide open and the windows wide open. Then robbers come in and you're like, "What happened?" Well, whose fault is it? You left the front door open.

This is the problem with our mind. If we don't guard our mind, our thoughts, and we don't guard our heart, then we're leaving it open to all these different suggestions - suggestions of shaitan, suggestions of the nafs. This will have a very poisonous impact on the condition of our hearts and minds.

Shaitan is there pouring filth in our mind, putting lots of negative thoughts in our head. If we entertain these thoughts, it's like the robber comes in because you left the door open, and then you say, "Have a seat, have some food, stay for a while." That's insane, but that's what we do with these shaitani thoughts, negative thoughts, thoughts about Allah, even negative thoughts about yourself.

Don't think that you're holy because you're hating on yourself. That's not righteousness - self-hate is actually from shaitan. Self-hate is from shaitan. These deprecating thoughts about yourself are not from Allah - they're actually shaitan, because shaitan knows that if you hate yourself, then you're not even going to have the energy to want to worship Allah or repent, because hating on yourself is like beating yourself.

If someone's beat up, where's their energy to do anything? They become totally paralyzed. Self-hate, these deprecating thoughts about yourself, are also shaitani. Don't allow those in. Once they come in and you give these thoughts a place, you engage them, you feed them - that's like taking a robber and feeding him.

Don't let these things in. Block these thoughts. A thought that is self-hating or a negative thought about Allah - do not entertain them. Say:

"I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed devil." Replace them with positive thoughts. Do not feed negative thoughts.

Realize that your brain, your mind, your thoughts, the suggestions that go into your heart - guard it like you guard your house. Keep it clean in there. Don't allow a robber to come throw filth inside your house.

2. Turn Fear Into Dua

There's going to be fear - things you're afraid of. I'm going to make this one really simple: turn your fear into dua. Turn your anxieties into dua.

Everyone has fears. How do we typically deal with fear? We feed it. How do we feed fear? By just thinking about it. Then all these scenarios come - I'm afraid of something happening to someone I love, so I think of all the different possible ways that something could happen to someone I love. I think of this scenario and that scenario. All I've done is feed the fear. I haven't actually solved anything.

Instead of feeding fear, turn it into dua. That thing you're afraid of, make dua about it. Simple as that. Immediately stop the thought, then turn and focus that feeling of fear and anxiety into making dua. Ask Allah for protection. After you've done that, put your trust in Allah - I've given it to Allah. Don't keep feeding that fear.

3. Turn Pain Into Growth

Take your pain - the things that happen in your life that hurt you, things that disappoint you - and turn it into growth. Use those things that happen, take the lessons from them, grow, and continue to become a better person. Let it make you more compassionate.

If you look at all the prophets (عَلَيْهِمُ السَّلَامُ) they all went through challenges in life. One of the things these challenges do for people is increase their empathy and compassion for others. When you've been through something tough, you feel for others - you feel more mercy and compassion for others.

Let it make you a better person. Don't let it harden you - let it soften you. When you go through difficulty, let your pain soften you, not harden you.

There's a hadith in which the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) says:

(Sahih Muslim)

"The matter of a believer is strange. All of his matters are good. If something good happens to him, he is grateful, and it is good for him. If something bad happens to him, he is patient, and it is good for him. And this is only the case for a believer."

This hadith means that no matter what happens to you in your life, as long as you respond with either gratitude or patience, it's good for you. So you never lose - you actually never lose as long as you have faith and respond in the right way.

Be mindful about focus on your painful past. As they say, the past is a place of reference, not a place of residence. You look back at your past to learn from it, but you do not become consumed by your past. You learn from it, but you don't become consumed.

4. Protect Yourself Through Dhikr

My last piece of advice is: protect yourself. Have a shield of protection, and that shield of protection is through your dhikr, through your remembrance of Allah.

I told you that dhikr is food for the soul - it's also protection. When you look at the collection of duas, what is it called? Fortress of a Muslim - (حِصْنُ الْمُسْلِمِ). It's called Hisn al-Muslim, a collection of duas that protect you. It's a fortress.

Three things in dhikr:

First: Salah

The salah has to be something you don't compromise on. It's like breathing oxygen.

Second: Adhkar

The adhkar - you can download apps onto your phone for duas. "My Dua" is one example of a great app. After every morning fajr prayer, open your app and read the morning supplications. After asr, open your app and read the evening supplications. Before you sleep, read the ones for sleep.

These duas will absolutely revolutionize your state, revolutionize how you react to the world, how you live. It becomes protection for you. There's waswasa all the time from shaitan and from the nafs - this becomes a shield, these adhkar.

Third: Quran

Make sure you have a consistent relationship with the Quran. This will be part of the shield that protects you.

Summary: The Four Pillars

To recap these four things:

1. Be careful what you focus on - what you focus on grows. What you focus on is affected by what you ingest, by what you entertain, by your thoughts and which kinds of thoughts you allow in and feed.
2. Turn your fear into dua
3. Turn your pain into growth
4. Protect yourself through dhikr - the adhkar, the remembrance of Allah

Q&A Session

Question: How to Handle Iman Lows

Question: All of these things are easy when you're high in iman, when you're in an iman high. But what happens when you're in an iman low?

Answer: Obviously iman rises and falls. We know this from the hadith of the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) where Abu Bakr and another companion come to him and say, "We've become hypocrites." He asks why. They say, "Because when we're with you, our iman is so high it's as if we see jannah and jahannam with our eyes. But when we go with our families, our iman is different - it goes down."

The Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) said: "If your iman was the same all the time as when you're with me, the angels would shake hands with you in the streets." He teaches even them - these are the best people, yet their iman goes up and down too. This is part of being human.

How you handle the lows: everything I said in these four pieces of advice - make sure you hold on to those things, high or low. If you hold on to your salah no matter how you're feeling, if you hold on to your adhkar no matter how low you're feeling, it becomes like breathing.

When you're feeling depressed, do you stop breathing? When you're having a bad day, do you stop brushing your teeth for a month or taking a shower for five months? We don't do these things. Why? Regardless of how high or low I am, I have to keep breathing to stay alive. I have to keep taking a shower and brushing my teeth, eating and drinking water. These are bare minimums to stay alive.

This spiritual prescription I gave is just like that - it's like oxygen, water, food. It keeps you alive. If you stick to these things, especially salah - everything I've given you is necessary, but salah is like oxygen. You give up salah, it's like immediate death.

You might be able to hobble around as long as you have oxygen, even if you're not eating healthy, but without oxygen, you're going to be dead. Salah is like that.

When you're in an iman low, don't give up your salah. Have you ever been to Cairo? The quality of the oxygen there is pretty awful, but you still have to breathe. You can't say, "Right now I'm in Cairo and the quality of the air is just not perfect, so I'm going to breathe next month when I'm back somewhere else."

Yes, we might not be having a perfect salah at that moment. We may not be at the top of our iman game, but you have to stay alive anyways. What happens eventually is you'll go back up as long as you don't let go of the bare minimum - oxygen, food, water.

The problem comes when you're at your low and you say, "I might as well just stop praying." Shaitan comes and says, "Your salah is terrible. You're committing this sin and that sin. You're just a hypocrite

going to pray. So just stop praying. Oh, and while you're at it, you might as well take off your hijab too, because you're just a terrible person."

When you start to give in to those thoughts, you start going lower and lower and lower. That's his objective - to make you go into despair.

My advice is just stay alive - stay alive spiritually. As the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) said, iman rises and falls. You will go back up. Everything in life, nothing stays the same. But if you stop breathing when you're low, that's when a person drowns. Hold on to your life jacket and you'll be okay.

Question: Dealing with Daily Life Challenges

Question: How do you translate that into daily living? We're dealing with real people, real events, what's going on in our society, TV, the country, the world. How do we deal with that while purifying ourselves? We keep being bombarded by all those negative factors affecting our life.

Answer: Everything I said is absolutely connected to that. Someone might listen and say, "That's all great stuff you do in the masjid, but what do I do about all this other stuff?" But that's my whole point - everything I said right now is absolutely, intimately connected to how I'm dealing with all that.

The Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) said that people will soon come together to attack you like people call one another to eat from their dish. The companions asked, "Is it because we will be small in number?" He said, "No, you will not be small in number. But what will happen is that Allah will take the fear of you out of the hearts of your enemy, and in your hearts will be something called (وَهْن) (wahn)."

He said you will also be like the froth on the ocean - when the ocean has these little bubbles, it has no power, no determination, it just goes wherever the tide takes it. He defined this disease in the hearts of people that's going to make them weak politically. Your enemies are going to attack you - that's a political situation, external - but he's linking it to the internal. He's linking it to this disease called wahn.

What does he define it as? The love of dunya and hatred of death.

We can't actually separate these things - our condition outside is connected to our condition inside.

Quran (13:11) - "Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves."

I'm not saying we don't work, don't do activism, don't get involved. Of course we do. But we cannot neglect the internal work, because all the external work in the world will not be effective if we're not working inside.

We can do all the activism and political work we want. We can bang our head against every wall, try to be involved in every campaign, and absolutely nothing will change until we change ourselves.

I'm not saying we only do one - only read Quran in the masjid and do our adhkar. But I'm saying without that, we're never going to see change. It is not enough to just do activism and be involved in campaigns. It's not going to change our condition until I change inside. We have to do both.

There have to be people working at different levels, but every single individual - this is a fard 'ayn (individual obligation). The individual fard, the obligation, is the internal work. Yes, there are people working externally - we all have different roles. But the role that every single one of us has as a fard 'ayn is internal.

The tazkiyah (purification) and feeding of the heart and soul is something every single person needs to do. When we start to change and purify ourselves inside, our entire condition will change - Allah promises. But it won't happen until we do that.

If we continue to neglect what's happening to us inside, these diseases taking over our hearts, we're never going to see change. It's not going to matter how many political groups we're part of or how many campaigns we work - it's not going to actually change our condition.

Question: Faith Crisis and Bad Things Happening to Good People

Question: A lot of people have faith crises because they don't understand why bad things happen to good people. They can't reconcile it and it makes them lose their faith or say things like "God doesn't love me."

Answer: The reason why I quoted that hadith is because the hadith teaches us that bad things never happen to good people. In fact, whatever happens to a believer is good for him or her, and it has everything to do with the response.

That's a different way of looking at the world. If I see everything that happens to me as a way to get closer to Allah, then everything becomes good for me, even if it's painful.

When you get a shot - suppose you're sick and need a shot of medicine that's going to save your life, but it has to be through a shot - what are you going to say? Yes, there's temporary pain, but it's curing me. The needle has medicine that's curing me. That's a different way of understanding versus a child who doesn't understand - they just look at that needle and scream and cry and be angry because they don't understand that it's medicine.

Another example: if your mom is picking you up and driving, and you ask "Where are we going?" and she says "Just wait and see" - are you going to call the police because you're scared? Why aren't you going to call the police? Because you trust your mom.

If it was a stranger you didn't trust, you'd call the police. The reality is that sometimes Allah does things in our life and we don't understand. He's taking us somewhere we don't know where, but if you trust Allah,

then you're not going to be scared, anxious, or worried.

You may not know where your mom's taking you, but you trust your mom completely. You're not worried she's going to hurt you. But we don't have enough trust in Allah - this is the problem.

A lot of it has to do with getting to know Allah. The more we know Allah, the more we put our trust in Him. Allah is (الرَّحْمٰنُ الرَّحِيم - ar-rahman ar-rahim) - Allah has so much mercy for us, even more than a mother for her child. If we knew that, if we really knew that, then we wouldn't be worried.

(حُسْنُ الظَّنِّ بِاللَّهِ - husn adh-dhanni billah) - having a good opinion of Allah. Just like you're not scared of your mom because you know she has your best interest in mind. You're not worried she's going to take you, throw you in a ditch, and leave you. You have a good opinion of your mom.

(حُسْنُ الظَّنِّ بِاللَّهِ - husn adh-dhanni billah) means you have a good opinion of Allah. You know that whatever Allah is doing with you is for your own good. That's part of knowing Allah.

When you know who Allah is - that He has your best interest in mind, that He's not going to hurt you then it becomes easier to cope, even when you don't understand, even when you have to take a needle, even when you don't know exactly where you're going. But you have full hope and trust in Allah that He has your best interest in mind.

It has to do with knowing who Allah is, then putting your trust in Him, knowing that He's not going to make you get lost or hurt you. Everything Allah does is for our own good. (عَجَبًا لِأَمْرِ الْمُؤْمِنِ، إِنَّ أَمْرَهُ كُلَّهُ خَيْرٌ - ajaban li'amril mu'mini, inna amrahu kulluhu khair) - "The matter of a believer is strange. Everything is good for them."

Question: The Role of Community

Question: A lot of what we spoke about was individualistic. How does community fit, especially in situations where we have a small community and it's not easy to be connected?

Answer: That's a discussion in and of itself. One of the take-home messages I try to impart is this: if you study the ayat, the Quran, the hadith, and the sunnah, you'll find one theme again and again - the way we treat the creation is how we should expect the Creator to treat us.

How we are with people - and it isn't only people, but even animals - how we treat the creation is how the Creator will treat us.

(Abu Dawud and Tirmidhi)

"Have mercy on those who are on the earth, and the One in the heavens will have mercy on you"

(Bukhari and Muslim)

"The one who does not show mercy will not be shown mercy"

Again, that connection, that parallel. We're told, for example, in a hadith, that if we help another person in need, Allah will help us when we're in need. That if a person is in a difficult situation and we help them

out of that difficult situation, Allah will help us on the Day of Judgment. If we shield the flaws of another person, Allah will shield our flaws.

Again and again, these parallels. So much so, to point out the extent of this, the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) says in a sahih hadith that he said: "I prefer to walk with my brother/sister in their time of need than to be in i'tikaf in this masjid." And he's pointing at which masjid? Masjid al-Nabawi.

He's not just talking about any masjid - we're talking about Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina, where one prayer is equivalent to a thousand in another masjid. He's saying that he prefers to help his brother in need, to walk with his brother in their time of need, than to be in i'tikaf in this masjid for a certain period of time, not just one night.

This shows us the extent of our relationships with one another, how important that is with regards to our relationship to Allah. Sometimes the fastest way to get the forgiveness of Allah is to forgive someone who's wronged you.

How do I know that? Because in the Quran, at the time when Abu Bakr found out that one of the people accusing his daughter or spreading the rumor about Aisha was a relative - a relative who he was financially supporting. When Abu Bakr found out about this, all he did was stop the financial support. He didn't go looking for revenge or try to harm this man. He just withheld the financial support. What would we do? That's all he does - withhold financial support.

"Let them pardon and overlook. Do you not love for Allah to forgive you?"

You see the connection that's made here - Allah is saying that us forgiving this person who wronged us is parallel to Allah forgiving us. Allah and His Messenger make these parallels all the time. How we are with people is how we should expect Allah to be with us. Very important.

You cannot separate the community from the individual.

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May Allah grant us the ability to implement these teachings in our daily lives and make us among those who remain steadfast in times of difficulty. Ameen.