Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

parting words; they stay in their head for the rest of their lives.
Now that’s important, that’s one dimension of 
waṣiyyah
that I wanted to
highlight first. There are other dimensions that I’ll highlight but I wanted to start
with this one. Why? Because when Allah says, and we translate, ‘They enjoin
each other to the truth’, then we’re missing one fundamental reality. To tell
somebody about the truth, in keeping with the word 
waṣiyyah
, you have to love
the one you’re telling. You have to have love for the one you are telling some
truth to. A lot of times when we criticize, we criticize under the banner of truth,
‘I’m just speaking the truth brother’. But do you love the one you’re speaking
the truth about? Because if they’re a believer, and you disagree with the other
believer; we disagree with each other all the time, that’s fine. But is your
criticism, even if it is criticism, is it first and foremost rooted in love? In
concern? Do you care about them? And is that what’s driving you to give this
waṣiyyah
?
Then there is the other matter, sometimes we are afraid to criticize—that’s
the opposite problem. On the one hand we’re overly critical and on the other
hand we are not critical at all. In other words we don’t want to speak out and say
the right thing because somebody might get upset. ‘I don’t want to say anything,
I know my uncle has a really bad temper and he yells at his kids and he yells at
his wife, but he’s an elder. So I shouldn’t say anything.’ Or there’s one of your
relatives and they do a lot of backbiting. Every time you see them, they’re
talking bad about somebody else—‘I shouldn’t say anything, I don’t know,
they’ll feel bad if I say something’. So you hold back from saying something;
but actually part of your love for them is that you’re honest to them. This is
something Muslims have to learn, it’s very hard, you know what we do? The
way we show love to our loved ones is we don’t tell them the truth. ‘Er, their
feelings might get hurt.’ That’s not love. That’s deception.
You’re not doing them a favour by not bringing something important to their
attention. You’re not doing them a favour by allowing them to do more wrong
that is being written against them. It’s being reported, it’s not like they are
getting away with it. If you love them, you don’t want them to get into more
trouble. You want to help them, but you know what? The tone that you’re going
to take and I’m going to take; the time I will pick to give the advice; the

---

sentiments with which I will carry it; the words I’m going to choose—all of
them will be governed by the love I have for them. And if love is not there, if
that concern is not there, then we are going to pick some pretty offensive ways
of saying things.
Your uncle has a temper problem and you walk up to him, ‘By the way I
read a reminder today, Uncle, and you have a real temper problem. You have a
serious issue. I just wanted to fulfil my obligation to 
Sūrat al-ʿAṣr
and let you
know. 
Al-salām ʿalaykum
’, and you walk away. No, No, No. You have to
become loving and creative in trying to bring something to others—this is part of
tawāṣī
. ‘Uncle, I was wondering… I don’t want you to be upset or anything but I
noticed your son was really sad the other day. Were you angry with him?’
‘Yeah, well, you know.’ And then you’re like, ‘Uncle, I know you get angry, I
know he does the wrong thing but can you be just a little bit easier because he is
really depressed; and he cares and he doesn’t want to disappoint you’.
You find a softer way of saying the same thing. You’re not so direct and
aggressive, you still said the truth but because it’s coupled with the idea of
tawāṣī
, of 
waṣiyyah
—it’s soft, it’s loving. And by the way the other thing about
waṣiyyah
is, when 
waṣiyyah
is given, it goes right to the heart of the other.
Waṣiyyah
is given to the loved one whose heart is softened, he is already in tears
and that’s when you give 
waṣiyyah
. You have to find a way to emotionally reach
someone. Sometimes when you give advice, you know what happens? People
become more aggressive. And even worse off than they were before you gave
them advice, just because of the 
way
you gave advice. Just because of the way
you talked to them, they’ve become worse. So you’re not making things better
—‘I’m enjoining the truth brother!’ You might be enjoining the truth but you’re
not doing 
tawāṣī
bi-l-ḥaqq
. Those are two different things; maybe you got
caught up in the English translation or something. That’s not 
tawāṣaw
bi-l-ḥaqq
.
So that’s one dimension.
The other dimension of this word that, 
subḥān
Allāh,
is so beautiful is that
the verb 
waṣiyyah
. They in Arabic—
waṣiyat al-’arḍ: iṭṭaṣal al-nabāt bihā—
when the vegetation on the earth like grass and trees they have deep roots and
it’s hard to pluck them out. Sometimes the earth has weak grass and shrubs and
things like that, when the wind blows, they blow away. Other times the earth has
plants that are deeply rooted and connected and can’t be separated easily; that is