Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

duʿāt
are not prophets, everyone after the 
rusul
of Allah
(
subḥānahu wa-taʿālā
) will make a mistake in something they say; they’re
human beings. 
Li-kull jawād kabwah wa-li-kull ʿālim hafwah
—every horse has
its missteps, and every 
ʿālim
makes mistakes. So there is always going to be
something that a scholar says that wasn’t perfect. Or you won’t agree with it,
even though you’re not a scholar, you decide you don’t agree with this one thing
that he said. This doesn’t take away from all of the good that they did, or they
continue to do. You cannot reduce people to one thing that they have said. You
can’t!
Imagine if people did that to you and me? Imagine if somebody remembered
one thing I said, five years ago, and therefore nobody should ever listen to me
again. We say things. We’re human beings. But to take one thing and to make
the assumption about the character of a person and to completely character
assassinate them! Then on top of that, there are people who don’t even listen to
Islamic lectures, read books or listen to 
durūs
because they want to benefit, they
sit in them waiting for something they can find to attack. ‘I’m gonna write this,
did he say that? Oh! did he say that? Wow!’ They came with 
ẓann
, they came
and sat in this thing that they are supposed to get closer to Allah with, but the
only intention was 
ẓann
. ‘I’m going to take this part out, I’m going to make a
video out of that, then I’m going to write a refutation about this and then I’m
gonna…’
Oh my God! What is wrong with you? Don’t you have anything better to do?
Why so much 
ẓann
? Why seeking out what somebody else said wrong? We are
so busy finding mistakes in each other we have no time left to share something
good with each other. Is the entire ummah already familiar with the Book of
Allah that we have time to talk about what you said wrong and what I said
wrong or what somebody else said wrong? We don’t have time for this, we’re
not worth the energy; we’re not worth the effort. The word of Allah needs to be
spread and we’re too busy just confirming our 
ẓunūn
, that’s what we are busy
with.
This is what Allah says: 
ijtanibū kathīran min al-ẓann
. But that’s not the
entirety of my reminder. This is the last part of it: 
inna baʿd al-ẓann ithm
—no

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doubt about it, some assumptions are sinful. He says: ‘No doubt about it’—it’s
ironic that Allah put that there. On the one hand, assumptions were things that
originally you had doubt over and eventually you became convinced of. But He
says let me tell you something in which there is no doubt. 
Al-Ithm bi-maʿnā al-
jazā’ kadhālik
—
Ithm
can also mean to give recompense or 
jazā’
. 
Ithm
also
means compensation. In other words it’s not just any sin; it is a sin that you will
be seeing the price for. You will pay the price for it and others will see the
consequences of it. It’s not just some sin that the angels wrote down and you
never saw what happened, only on judgement day will you see. No, you will see
the evils of it in this 
dunyā
too.
You will see the evils of making assumptions in this 
dunyā
. The brotherhood
will be destroyed; families will be ripped apart because of people just assuming
what the other meant. Nations, entire nations will be willing to go to war because
of an assumption. How many political scandals happen because of assumptions?
There’s a rumour spread that this politician did this, there is no evidence yet but
riots have already started in the streets. People have already started to die and
businesses have already started to be ruined. It doesn’t matter which country it
is, the fact is that based on a rumour, based on a 
ẓann
some people died!
How serious is this thing? It’s not just something that ruins your personal life
or a community’s life. It can ruin entire countries. It can ruin entire nations. Can
you imagine, for example, the wars that we went to based on assumptions? We
sold the assumption that there are weapons of mass destruction, didn’t we? Now
the reality is known; it’s not a hidden thing. How many millions of lives have to
be lost because people buy into assumption.