Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

afẓaẓtuhū
actually
means I sprayed him or I poured dust on someone. In other words, when
somebody’s yelling at the top of their lungs and there’s almost spit coming out
of their mouth—this is 
faẓẓ
. If you were screaming at the top of your lungs and
you were yelling and scolding them, if you walked into that meeting and said,
‘WHAT HAPPENED? What did you people do?’ If you did that; this is what
Allah is saying: ‘had you been that way…’—
wa-law kunta faẓẓan
.
And sometimes there are people who say, ‘Well I say mean things but I still
love you inside. I mean, I yell at you, and I yell at you at the top of my lungs, but
give me a hug afterwards’. Some parents do that, some parents lose their cool,
they go crazy, they go Hulk on their kids and then afterwards they’re like, ‘I still
love you, it’s okay. You want to get some ice cream?’ You know what? It
doesn’t undo it. The damage is done. Allah (
ʿazza wa-jall
) before He says: ‘You
shouldn’t be hard in your heart’, He first says: ‘You need to watch your tongue’.
Wa-law kunta faẓẓan
—first—
ghalīẓ al-qalb
—second. 
Ghalīẓ al-qalb
means
‘hard of the heart’. In other words, inside you developed a grudge against them,
you can’t have that either.
So there are two problems: one, speaking in an angry way even if it’s ‘I love
you, but you messed up!’ No, no, no, you can’t do that either. First of all, you’ve
got to speak very softly; and second, sometimes people speak softly but they are
holding a grudge inside. The mother is saying, the father is saying, the husband
is saying, ‘I’m not angry’ but he is angry, he’s got something inside, ‘Yeah, I
hate when you do this, I’m not going to say anything but, man, I’m burning
inside’.
Allah adds the second problem: 
ghalīẓ al-qalb
. 
Ghilẓah
in Arabic is
something impenetrable: 
mā lā yadkhul fīhi shay’
—something which you cannot
penetrate. If your heart becomes so hard, you are so disappointed with these
people, that you have written them off. Even if you are speaking nicely to them,
you’ve basically written them off. You’ve given up on them—they are no good
to you. This is 
ghilẓat al-qalb
.
So there are two things here about the 
Rasūl
(
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
):
on the other hand, when you go in there, be nice. Your face shouldn’t look
depressed, you should make them feel comfortable, say good things about them,
calm them down, when they speak listen softly. You need to be able to control
all of your emotions, and all of that sadness; put it away when you deal with

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your followers. And on the other hand, if you didn’t do these things and if you
were like any other leader, who would lose their cool, what would happen? 
La-
nfaḍḍū min ḥawlik
—with the 
lām
of emphasis. Some ulama say about this 
lām
that Allah effectively swears here; Allah swears to the fact that the 
Ṣaḥābah
would have run away from you. They would have run away—this is in the
Qur’an guys, this is in the Qur’an! The 
Ṣaḥābah
would have run away from
Rasūl Allāh
(
ṣallā Allāh ʿalayhi wa-sallam
), Allah swears by it; if he was mean.
If he was mean; the Messenger would still be speaking the truth, he would
still be the recipient of the Qur’an, he would still be saying 
Lā ilāha illa Allāh
,
he would still be teaching, all of the evidences would still be there but one thing
would be missing—his softness. And Allah says, even that much is enough for
these