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My brother says that I’m walking in Midnegah Park. They have cleaned the snow on some of the main roads but not on the others. And the temperature has now dropped a bit so some of the snow is melting but it makes the footing extremely treacherous. Slipping and falling is not a great idea. So I’m not going there. I want to talk to you actually in response to some questions that people ask me about friends. And this is a big thing. This is, you know, friends are important, friends are things that people are proud of having and in some cases justifiably. So who is a friend? What is a friend? What must I look for or look in? What makes a good friend a good friend? What are some people, what are some qualities because of which I should reassess my friends and see whether I should continue to be friends with them or not. And I don’t want to make it sound like a very selfish exercise when I’m picking and choosing for my benefit. I want to also focus here on what kind of a friend am I to others because that’s very important for us to remember because imagine this goes out to frankly I don’t even know how many people in the world because if you look at our global Google footprint it covers every country except Greenland. And no one asked me why it doesn’t cover Greenland but because I don’t know. But the point is that there are others who are going to be listening to this, not only yourself. So what are they as a result of listening to this podcast, what are they going to be saying about you as their friend? Will they want to retain you as a friend? Will they say well you know what I have a beautiful friend or are they going to say oh boy good thing I was I got warned pre-warmed is pre-armed and so time to send Mr. or Ms. so and so to the sandbox. So think about that. Now talking of friends none better than the Kitab of Allah as for advice and Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala said al-akhid la. Al-akhid la is the plural of khalil. In the Arabic language there are many different words to denote and to describe friendship. It’s not just one word and al-khalil is a friend who is the closest. You have Zamil, Rafiq, you know in other words but al-khalil is somebody who is a dear friend to the extent that there are no secrets between the two of you. It’s a friend that completely has your back. It’s a friend who quite literally will if necessary sacrifice their lives to save yours. It’s a friend whose money, assets, everything is there if you ever need it and I’m not exaggerating. I’m not being poetic. Alhamdulillah Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala gave me friends like that. I had one he passed away and that’s the one of the biggest not one I think that is the only one Allah gave me has given me a beautiful life free from tragedy. Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah. But this is one tragedy that I a hole in my heart that will never fill and that is the hole that my dear, dear, dear friend Bhatti Swaras left in my heart when he died. Let’s see, maybe I will tell you his story why I said that. So to me that’s a friend. That’s a khalil. Khalil is somebody like that who has his, who has your back. Now Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala said, Al-akhila yawma eezin ba’duhum li ba’din adu illa al-muttaqeen. Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala said, Al-akhila those who were your closest friends, your absolutely dearest friends, who knew everything about you, who always claimed to love you, these friends on the day of judgment, yawma eezin, ba’duhum li ba’din adu, they will be enemies to one another. Please notice Allah is not saying they will ignore each other, they will not talk to each other, they will not recognize each other, all of which would be bad enough. Imagine somebody who is so close to me, such a dear, dear friend of mine refuses to recognize me, will not come if I call him, will not return my salaam if I say salaam. How painful that would be but that wouldn’t, that still not, that still wouldn’t make him my enemy. The enemy is somebody who wants to harm me, who wants to kill me, who wants to destroy me, who wants me to not just, it’s not just that he wants to have nothing to do with me, he actually wants to harm me, that’s the enemy, right? You fight your enemies. Al-shaytanu adu, fa taqizu adu wa ala sayyidin, shaytan is your adu, he is your enemy, so become his enemy, fight him. Here Allah is saying, al-akhil la’u yawma idin ba’du hum li ba’din hadu, same word, enemies to one another, illa l-muttaqeen, except the people of taqwa, except the people who live their lives to please Allah, who live their lives with only one criterion for decision-making, does it please Allah? Anything they had to do, they applied that criterion, does it please Allah? If it was something that pleased Allah, they did it, if it was something that did not please Allah, they didn’t do it, and if it was something in between and they were not sure, then they did not do it until they clarified. Now illa l-muttaqeen, so obviously the first quality of a good friend is that the person is a person of taqwa, the person who knows Allah, recognizes Allah, a person who lives for the sake of Allah, which automatically means that this person is somebody who is following the sunnah of Muhammad Rasulullah SAW. So that is a pre-criterion, let me tell you from my experience of Bhakti Swaras who passed away, you know what hurts me the most is the fact that today I want to make dua for his maffar and I cannot. So I’m not saying don’t have friends who are non-sister, but remember that if they die without a sab, they will not be with your pleasure, inshallah, if you die with this sab. So make sure that you have friends who will be with you on the day of judgment. Samud Taqwa, people who are people of taqwa, number one. Number two, what Rasulullah SAW said about friends, he said a friend is somebody who reminds you of Allah, so somebody who reminds you by his action, by his speech, so not talk about somebody who criticizes you all the time or on your case at all. Somebody who is on the right path and is serious enough about that, so that you are not in any doubt about this and you when you meet this person you know that okay this person does what is right, he is from the halal, earns halal, spends halal, does not do the opposite and so you are reminded of Allah SAW when you meet the person. Second thing is person who reminds you of the akhir, you get the same kind of process. Why is he doing what he is doing? Because he wants his akhir to be safe and he wants to meet Allah SAW in a time and place where Allah is pleased with him. So somebody who is a mudtaqi, somebody who reminds you of Allah. And third quality that Rasulullah SAW mentioned was that somebody who you learn something from can be anything. We are not talking here about learning some mathura fiqh, learn anything. Some useful beneficial knowledge that this person can teach you. So these are the three qualities of great trends. Number one, person who is a mudtaqi and therefore reminded you of Allah and the akhirah and the last one is that you learn something from that person. Add to that the point that I mentioned about having your back. To me this is the single most important criterion of friendship. A friend who stabs you in the back is not a friend. Anyway this guy is a hypocrite, he is a monastic. Somebody who tries to steal something from you, whatever that might be. I know of people who in the plantation used to have servants so we had cooks and the cook was the most important person in the house and we had some fantastic cooks. One of the things that was in our plantation world, one of the things which was a capital crime that was never forgiven was if you stole somebody else’s cook. And people try to do that. They would try to bribe the cook and say, well you know, come to work for me, I’ll pay you so much more than what you’re getting here. Alhamdulillah none of our cooks ever left. Basically had three and three. They’ve been with us solid and faithful throughout their lives and I’m, I like to flatter myself by saying it’s not really because of the money but because of how my wife, Vanila Sara, treated her employees. But they were her employees, I mean they were I effectively, she worked with them but so they wondered. But the thing was, the point is that if you are stealing somebody’s cook, if you are you know bribing somebody or say come and work for me, that is the reason why in Islam, the Prophet said if a person, if your brother has proposed to a lady, to a woman, do not send your proposal until that is decided. Until she says yes or no to him, she says yes of course you, that’s it, that’s signed and sealed, you have no business there. If she says no, then you can send your proposal. He said when you know that the proposal has been sent, do not send your proposal. Similarly he said that if you go to buy something and that person has already sold or he has a bid which is there, he said don’t go and try to tell the person. For example, you go buy a car and you know that this car, this person has sold the car for 10,000 dollars but the other person hasn’t collected the car yet, so the car is still with this guy and you don’t go there and say I will give you 11,000 to give the car to me. And if the person does that, then you are both sinful in the eyes of, in the sight of Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala. In Islam it says haraab, that you try to undercut that and of course the Al-Frid there is the owner of the car also because he, once he gave his word to the other person, sale done, come tomorrow morning, take the car or the other guy says I’ll pay you tomorrow morning, he says okay and then he comes in the morning, he says no I’m sorry I had a better deal so I sold it, here’s your 10,000 back. No, that is haraab, never do that. That’s miserable, horrible, shows that you are a munafiq, shows that you are a hypocrite because only a hypocrite will do something to go behind somebody’s back and stab them. So if you are, especially if you think that you are somebody’s friend, make sure that don’t fall into these traps. So final recap, friend is someone who has your backs up, a friend is someone who defends you in your absence, absolutely critical, friend is somebody who will support you in everything good and who will show you your, a mirror to your face when there is something wrong, a friend is somebody who genuinely cares for you, who has concern for you, a friend is somebody who will, for whom nothing is barred if you need help and a friend is somebody who will bind you for the asmah and the akhirah and who you learn something from. We ask Allah to give us beautiful friends like that and we ask Allah to make us such that we are such beautiful friends for those who are our friends.
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