5. Would you like to meet him outside the institution? (cont.)

The Bedouins persistedly demanded of the Prophet saying, "Give us our share of the booty! Give us our share of the booty!" How strange! Your share of the booty? Since when do you have a share in it if you did not even fight? How can you ask for a share in the booty when he was calling out to you and you were not responding? However, the Prophet wouldn't scrutinise such issues, for the world did not mean anything to him. They began to follow him and kept repeating, "Give us our share!" They gathered around him, thereby restricting his path forcing him into the trees. Due to overcrowding, he was brushing against the trees as he walked, and in the process his cloak got stuck in a branch and fell off his shoulders exposing his stomach and back. But the Prophet did not become angry. He only turned to them and gently said, "O People! Please hand me my cloak. I swear by the One Who has my soul in His Hand, if I had livestock as many as the trees of Tihamah, I would have distributed it amongst you and then you would have known that I am neither Whip me gently! miserly, nor cowardly, nor a liar." Surely, if he was a miser he would have kept everything for himself. If he was a coward he would have fled.If he was a liar,the Lord of the Worlds would not have aided him. The Prophet had many such great moments. Once he was walking along with some of his Companions as they passed by a woman crying over the grave of her child. The Prophet said to her, "Fear Allah and have patience." The woman was crying and overwhelmed with grief and did not recognise the Prophet . So she said, "Leave me alone! What do you care about my calamity?" The Prophet remained silent and simply walked away from her. He had conveyed to her what he had to and had realised that the woman was not in a state to receive advice more than what she had heard. Some of the Companions turned to her and said, "This is the Messenger of Allah!" The woman felt remorse over what she said. She got up to look for the Prophet and reached his home. She found no one at the door so she sought permission to enter and said, "O Messenger of Allah! I did not know it was you. I will have patience now." He replied, "Patience is to be observed at the moment a calamity strikes." (al-Bukhari and Muslim) Kill gently… "Verily, Allah has enjoined excellence with regard to every40 Whip me gently! thing. So, when you kill, kill in a good way; when you slaughter, slaughter in a good way; so every one of you should sharpen his knife, and let the slaughtered animal die comfortably." Whip me gently! (41) Run away from problems! I think if he were to go for a medical examination in a hospital, he would have discovered ten different types of diseases in his body, the least serious of which would be high blood pressure and diabetes. This poor person used to torture himself because he used to demand perfection from others. You would always find him frustrated with his wife, because she broke a new plate, forgot to clean the lounge or burnt his new garments with the iron. As for his children, Khalid still hasn't memorised his timetables, and Sa'd has not yet achieved an A grade. Sarah and Hind also have their own problems. This is his how he is at home. As for with his friends, for even worse, he thinks to himself, "Abu 'Abdullah intended me when he related the story of a stingy person! Yesterday, Abu Muhammad was talking about me when speaking about old cars. He was referring to my car! I know because he was looking at me." Such thoughts occupy the mind of this poor person all the time." An old adage says, "Either the times obey you, or you obey the times." I remember that a Bedouin, from amongst my friends, used to repeat this maxim he had learnt from his grandfather whenever I would speak to him philosophically. He would take a deep breath and say, "O Shaykh! The hand you cannot twist, you must shake!" If you think about it, you will find that this saying is correct. For if we do not get used to tolerance and letting things go, or in other words, pretending not to notice and not drowning ourselves in what other people mean or think, we would find our lives very difficult. The leader of a people is not the one who is foolish The leader of a people is the one who pretends to be foolish A young man once came to his Shaykh to ask his help in choosing a wife who would be his life-partner.