Cool to Swear?
Listen to yourself and to your friends speaking one
day - nearly every sentence will have a swear word in it,
thinking it's cool and macho to swear, copying the idols of TV
and the cinema. Is it really 'cool' to swear?
The Hellfire is far from being cool. People will wish they
were cool then rather than being cool in this world.
Remember! That every time you speak , an angel writes down
what you say, and that one day you will have to answer for
every single word you ever uttered. So if you swear at
someone then it's written down as a sin against you. You're
only harming yourself.
The Prophet (saw) said that "Abusing a Muslim is
a sin and fighting with him is disbelief." (MUSLIM).
'But sometimes you just have to swear'!
We've all been there - you're just so angry with somebody and
the only way you can express yourself, is to swear at them.
The solution? ...
Don't get angry in the first place
A man came to the Prophet (saw) one day and said "Advise me".
The prophet (saw) said "Don't become angry. Don't become
angry. Don't become angry"....
"When one of you gets angry while he is standing up, he
should sit down. Then anger will leave him, and if not then
he should lie down" (Ahmad). So let us follow this beautiful
advice of the Prophet (saw) and remember that anger is from
shaitan. If someone angers you or swears at you then don't
harm yourself by doing the same but respond in a better way
as Allah says in the Quran "Repel evil with what is better.
Then he who was your worst enemy will become your best
friend."
Pick Your Teeth!
It's one of the greatest sins and yet it's something we do day
after day. Sometimes we don't even realise it. You're just
chatting away with your friends and you begin to talk about
somebody else. Our whole lives are based around 'Home and Away'
and 'Neighbours', soaps based on lying, backbiting etc.
But look at what the Prophet (saw) said about it: The Prophet
(saw) was sitting with his companions one day and one of them
was speaking badly about someone who wasn't there. As the man
got up to leave the Prophet (saw) said to him: "Pick
Your Teeth!" "But I haven't eaten anything." The man protested.
"No" the Prophet (saw) said "YOU HAVE EATEN THE FLESH OF YOUR
DEAD BROTHER". As Allah tells us in the Quran "Would
any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? No, you
would hate it."
But What If It's True?!
The Prophet (saw) told us "Backbiting is to say something about
someone they wouldn't like said about them....If what bad you
said about them is true, then you have backbited and if it is
false then you have slandered them." (MUSLIM)
If you're still not convinced of how big a sin backbiting
really is, then look at the punishment Allah has in store for
the backbiters. The Prophet (saw) described: "On the night of
mirage I passed by some people who had metal hooks in their
hands and were clawing at their faces and their necks with
them. I asked Gabriel 'Who were these people?' He said 'These
are the people who eat the flesh of human beings and disgrace
them' (Abu Dawud).
This is how big of a sin backbiting is looked upon and yet we
continue to backbite without a second thought, next time you
lie, talk about somebody, remember Allah (swt) and the Prophet
(saw) and put them in front of you before you speak.
Just having a Laugh!
May be we think it's all right to take the mick out of someone
so long as we say it to their face. 'We'll make fun of the way
someone talks, walks, or how they look. Allah warns us against
such behaviour: "O you who believe. Let not some men
laugh at others, it may be the that they are better than you.
Nor let some women laugh at others it may be that they are
better than you. Nor abuse each other , nor be sarcastic to
each other by using offensive nicknames..."
Don't forget that Allah made us the way we are, so how can you
even think of making fun of his creation?
"It wasn't me. Honest."
How often do we say such a phrase or say that "I was only
joking". We treat lies as being trivial. However we are told
that "Allah's messenger did not hate anything more than
lying"(Ahmed).
The Prophet (saw) was once asked "Can a Muslim be a coward?"
He (saw) replied "Yes." and then asked "Can a Muslim be a
miser?" and the reply was "Yes." The Prophet (saw) was then
asked "Can a Muslim be a liar?" The Prophet (saw) replied "NO!
A Muslim can never be a liar".
Furthermore, he said "Truth leads to virtue and virtue
leads to paradise...Lying leads to wickedness and wickedness
leads to the hellfire.