Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

illā alladhīna āmanū wa-ʿamilū aI-
ṣāliḥāt
—and they do the few good deeds that are asked of them. 
Wa-tawāṣaw bi-

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l-ḥaqq
is commonly translated: ‘and they enjoin the truth’. Some more
contemporary translations try to suggest, they encourage each other towards the
truth. These are the kinds of translations you get for 
wa-tawāṣaw bi-l-ḥaqq
.
Similarly for 
wa-tawāṣaw bi-l-ṣabr
: they enjoin perseverance, they encourage
each other to be patient.
I wanted to dig a little bit first into this phrase—
wa-tawāṣaw bi-l-ḥaqq
—to
give us a perspective on what Allah is saying in this incredible surah. But before
I do that, I want some perspective of what is motivating me to reflect on this
surah. We are living today in a culture that thrives on criticism. People go to see
a movie and they give it two stars or three stars or four stars, they like to give a
critique to it. People watch a YouTube video and they like to comment and
present their criticisms in that comment. People post something on Facebook and
others comment and critique and offer their counter opinion like the Arabic
saying goes: 
li-kulli khiṭāb jawāb
—every time somebody voices an opinion,
somebody’s got something counter to say. There’s always a counter argument,
criticism, evaluation—‘I kinda like it’, ‘I agree but I don’t agree with this thing
or that thing’, ‘it’s okay’, ‘it’s not great’, etc. So we’re used to that kind of
culture. That’s the consumer culture we’re in, you can’t even just go shopping.
Actually when you go shopping you look at the criticisms of the product first.
You Google trouble with this computer or trouble with this car or whatever and
then you find out what those ratings are. When you go buy something on
Amazon, you look at the star ratings or customer reviews first.
So we’re in the mode, we’re surrounded by this idea of constant, constant
criticism. And it’s not just about being consumers, it’s become a part of our
culture. So now we love criticizing teachers, students, parents, children, co-
workers, bosses, managers, friends, speakers, audiences. It doesn’t matter who.
The imam might be complaining about the congregation, the congregation might
be complaining about the imam. Friends are complaining about each other,
usually not in each other’s presence. People complain about Islamic
organizations, Islamic organizations complain about other Islamic organizations,
it’s just become a thing. We don’t even think twice about it. As a matter of fact,
when I travel and meet people from different communities, I don’t know
anything about them, I only spend a couple of hours, maybe a day with those
people; they’re taking me from the airport so I say ‘How’s your community?’
They say, ‘
Mā shā
’
 Allāh
, it’s good but we’ve got a lot of problems’. And then
there is a list of twenty criticisms. So it began with 
mā shā
’
 Allāh
and 
al-ḥamd
li-Llāh
, but we’re programmed to almost constantly think about criticisms. If

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you look at the kinds of comments, the kinds of communications that are
especially public nowadays because of social media but even in regular TV
media and even in our common discourse; most of the time what we are talking
about is criticism. Much of what we talk about is critical. And sometimes people
hide behind the defence, ‘Well, I’m being constructively critical’. I’m criticizing
to improve things. Now, here’s the thing with that. And that’s what I really
wanted to highlight here. This surah is actually giving us a pretty important
principle about criticism. It’s included in the surah but many don’t pay attention
to that idea.
So let’s think a little bit about this wording, the word 
tawāṣaw
comes from
the original word 
al-waṣiyyah
, in the Arabic language. The word 
waṣiyyah
is
used when you leave a will. When somebody is dying and they leave parting
advice. For example, some elderly person’s on their deathbed and their children
and their grandchildren are surrounding them, before the 
rūḥ
leaves the body, the
few words they say could be called a 
waṣiyyah
. Everybody around them is
crying, they’re trying to listen to every last word they say because this might be
the last time they hear that voice. Those words are going to ring in their head the
rest of their lives—that’s a 
waṣiyyah
. And by the way, 
waṣiyyah
is related to
wirāthah
—
wirāthah
is leaving a will, right?
In the Qur’an Allah (
ʿazza wa-jall
) even says: 
dhālikum waṣṣākum bihi
(
al-
Anʿām
6: 151)—that is how Allah gives you advice. In other words when
somebody’s about to die or they know they are terminally ill or they are about to
leave and they’re not sure if they are going to come back. Then what do they do?
They call their loved ones together and they say listen, ‘I may or may not see
you again but I really want you to listen to my advice please. End the fight with
your brother, be good to your mother, do this, do that’—they give some advice.
That kind of advice is called 
waṣiyyah
. And 
waṣiyyah
, therefore, is never
technically, given to strangers. You don’t give 
waṣiyyah
to strangers. You
actually give 
waṣiyyah
to loved ones, by definition. We haven’t even gotten into
the linguistics yet, this is just a social reality.
Waṣiyyah
is not technically given to strangers, it is given to people you care
about, people that love you, people that are sad that you are leaving them and so
there is a sense of urgency to want to hear what you have to say. They are going
to drop everything; they are not going to be texting while you are giving the
waṣiyyah
. They are not going to be on the phone like: ‘Yeah I’m listening to
both of you’. No, No, No. They’re not going to do that. They’re not going to
have the TV on, they are going to give you one hundred per cent attention

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because you’re about to give them a 
waṣiyyah
. And it’s one of the most powerful
memories in people’s lives; some people have had that trauma in their life.
They’ve had a loved one pass away, they’ve been next to the loved one that
passed away and they remember the words that were said. They remember those