What do we mean by judgments are a confession of character/personality?
First of all, confessing something means totally agreeing honestly to a certain act. Telling the truth.
So Judgments will tell us the truth about a character of a a person.
Secondly, as they say
You will only know the Character of a person through 3 things :
1) When you live with that person.
2) When you do business/partnership/employer/employee/shareholders with that person.
3) When you travel to a far foreign (unknown to both of you) place with that person.
Knowing the Character of a person is very crucial in terms of business partners, spouse hunting, keeping good company, etc.
Let’s first look at the following Ahadeeths :
The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said:
“If there comes to you one whose religious commitment and attitude pleases you, then marry [your female relative who is under your care] to him, for if you do not do that, there will be tribulation on earth and much corruption.” (Narrated by al-Tirmidhi and classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh Sunan al-Tirmidhi, 1084).
We learn that attitude/character is very important during spouse hunting,so how will we know what kind of a person he is?
Although character is still under deen (religious commitments) but still prophet Muhammad SallaAllahu alayhi wassalam singled out Character as its own criteria for spouse hunting.
Abu Huraira reported: The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “A man is upon the religion of his best friend, so let one of you look at whom he befriends.”
Source: Sunan Abu Dawud 4833
Grade: Sahih (authentic) according to An-Nawawi
Having good company is very important, know whom you choose to befriend, know whom your children befriend in school and Madrassa, know whom your children hang out with in the neighborhood.
Why? Why, my Dear readers ??
It’s because of the above quoted hadeeth.
Your children or yourself or your siblings will be on the religion of that friend of his/hers.
Under deen we get character (like we elaborated above)
They will adapt the Character of that friend so as to be cool and be a part of the “Gang” as they say.
Peer pressure
Birds of the same feather flock together.
Rasullu Allah SallaAllahu alayhi wassalam stressed on Character/khuluq when looking for the Right spouse.
He also stressed on the importance of having good company, but how will we know if this is a good company/friendship? Through character of your children’s friends.
As they say,
Sitting with roses gets you the fragrance of the roses.
When one fish gets spoiled then all fishes get spoiled.
So,
The reasons as to why we chose those 3 things above is as follows:
For one:
Living with a person means spending some valuable time of your life with that person.
It means learning to tolerate each other’s existence under the same roof.
It means no pretense for the rest of your life.
At first, people mostly tend to pretend to be the sweetest, loving human beings on earth but with time their character starts to show and this we term it as “showing their true colors”
my Dear Readers,
Why?
Personality/character is a long term behavior of a person.
As characters develop they build up a Habit
They can’t pretend for the rest of their lives, so with time, true colors start to show. The two faced person has now revealed the other face.
This is the time to either tolerate or give up and look for a better choice.
Your choice
When life pushes you to a corner,
When hardships start to crop into your lives,
When you two are trialed/tested…this is the time that other face gets revealed. That other side of him/her.
The true character gets revealed.
For Two,
Doing business with a person.
This does not mean buying and selling that is the normal day to day business transactions we make.
No.
What we mean is indulging into a business activity with someone either you are the supplier or customer of.
It may mean sitting in the same office layout with that person and indulging in work together.
It simply may mean working together for the betterment of each other’s lives.
It can mean landlord and tenant.
Someone you encounter every now and then for the ongoing work.
This way the Character of that person will soon crop up and get shown.
But how?
Very simple.
Just like one above, two is because of the same thing.
Trials/tests/ hardships.
When things go wrong, how you handle that situation shows what category of a person you are.
For Three,
Traveling with that person shows who he/she is.
It shows what type of a person he/she is.
But how?
Same old way above.
Through tests/hardships/trials.
When situations goes tough, the character gets shown.
In a foreign country, speaking a foreign language which you both don’t know, things can go wrong and someone reacts either positively or negatively.
All the above mentioned examples are results of when you are tested, what judgement do you give?
When given a situation how do you judge that?
The leniency or strictness of your ruling will determine what character you possess.
Let’s throw some light on this topic by giving the simplest example that we may have encountered or may have seen before:
Two people, a landlord and a tenant.
The landlord owes the tenant his rent.
The tenant keeps telling him/her excuses: At the end of month I will give. Or he keeps running away from him when he meets him on the stairs.
Switches off his phone, lies when he knocks at his door pretending he has travelled or he isn’t home yet.
Such excuses that a person gives tells you what kind of a person this tenant is.
It shows what character he has.
Let’s analyze this;
He is untrustworthy, a liar, oppressor.
Negative judgments – negative character.
Well,
How about we tune this example to be positive.
The tenant approaches the landlord and tells him clearly that he doesn’t have money to pay at the moment but he will pay it when he gets it. And they have a written document of extending the rent of that month to next month so that he pays twice next month (i.e present month and past month).
Simple as that, no beating around the bush.
What judgments can we extract from this example?
The tenant is faithful, trustworthy and open.
Positive judgments bring about positive character.
Lastly, we get proposals either from potential spouses or potential business partners.
The question still remains is: How do we know the Character of such a potential most important person in your life ?
We can deduct the following from what we have learnt above.
Since it isn’t possible to live with him/her nor conduct a business transaction with him without knowing him nor even travel with him.
So the only thing we are left with is:
Judgments
1) Ask ! Ask ! Ask!
Neighbours, friends, family relatives, family friends etc.
2) Listen! Listen! Listen!
Listen to encounters that happened, response of people about a certain person, stories of him/her
3) Judge! Judge! Judge!
Be wise, Be smart.
What can you extract from the mentioned stories? What results can you give? What character can you extract?
Be keen to judge the leniency or strictness of the narrator of the story.
Is he/she biased? Or unbiased?
A Big Note:
By Judging here we mean judge what is within our human ability to see, witness, hear.
Don’t go beyond and judge that person’s Niyyah and Imaan, this is beyond us. (This belongs to Allah Subhaana wa Ta’ala,The Judge.)
This ends us with:
Judgments are truly a confession of character.
It revolves around many of the relationships we indulge ourselves into.
For example:
Friendship means having characters that each one bears for the sake of two things.
This takes us to next post bidnillah.
Stay tuned for more to come on next month, In Shaa Allah.
-Friendship For the sake of Allah Subhaana wa Ta’ala.
-Friendship for the sake of benefits.
A note to my Readers:
In Shaa Allah bidnillah, we will be posting a new article in each month.
Please share to get rewards as well.
Written by: Sr. Amatullah B.M.
TEAM IR
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