Angels In Their Presence | Season 2
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An unknown Companion witnessed the best of angels, Jibreel (as), dressed in white, speaking to the Prophet ﷺ about an essential principle in Islam: the importance of neighbors, regardless of what faith they followed. “Be good to your neighbor” is a common rule of thumb cited by many traditions, but in Islam, it was emphasized to such an extent that he ﷺ thought they may be assigned inheritance next.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. So this is one of those narrations where you have an unknown companion, but clear instructions that we can benefit from as an Ummah of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So the first narration is actually Muslimah Ahmed. It's an authentic narration that there's this man who was looking at the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was standing and speaking to another man for a very very long time. And he said that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was occupied by this conversation to the point that I started to feel sorry for him. Right? So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is a busy man and he gets stopped all the time. You can imagine how many people want to talk to him Alayhi Salaatu Wasalam. So he said, Ashfaqtu alayhi min tuli qiyamihi ma'a. I felt sorry for the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam because of how long he had to stand and talk to this man. So eventually I waited for the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam came and I said, Ya Rasulullah, who was that man that was talking to you because I felt sorry for you for how long you had to stand with him and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam says, Did you see him? And I said, Yes. So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, Thaka Jibreel. That was Jibreel Alayhi Salam. Qala walaw salamta alayhi la radda alayka salam. He said, If you would have come to him and said salam, he would have actually answered your salam. So it was a missed opportunity for you to come to him and say salam. And then he said, mazala yuslini bil jar hatta wanantu anahu sayi warithuhu. He said, Jibreel Alayhi Salam kept on coming to me and telling me, take care of the neighbor, take care of the neighbor, take care of the neighbor until I thought that he was going to assign inheritance to the neighbor. Now, why do I start with that narration? It actually precedes a chapter in the book Al-Adab Al-Mufrad by Imam Al-Bukhari.
Imam Bukhari, of course, Sahih Al-Bukhari has the most authentic ahadith from Imam Al-Bukhari. Al-Adab Al-Mufrad are some of the mannerisms and etiquettes that we can learn. And there's some ahadith that he includes there that might have a weakness in the chain. So this chapter is called Bab Shikayat Al-Jar. The chapter of Shikayat Al-Jar, the complaint of the neighbor. And it's narrated by Jabir radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. That this man comes to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam to complain to him about how he is being mistreated by his neighbor. And while he's sitting between al-rukun and al-maqam, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is between the rukun and the maqam. This man approaches the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and he sees that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is with a man who's wearing a white garment. And he mentions the beauty of this man and the fact that, you know, this man seems completely unknown and out of place. So he said they went to the maqam where they were praying upon the dead. And he said, I asked the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, I said, Ya Rasulullah, may my mother and my father be sacrificed for you. Who was this man that was with you? And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam says, did you see him? He said, yes. He said, ra'ayta khayran kathira, then you have seen much good. And he said, that was Jibreel alayhi salam coming to me. And he said, he kept on speaking to me about the importance of the neighbors until I thought that Jibreel alayhi salam was going to command me to assign inheritance to the neighbors. SubhanAllah, in both of these incidents, and they could indeed be the same incident, you have a situation where the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is talking to Jibreel alayhi salam for a long time. And Jibreel alayhi salam keeps on saying, al jar, al jar, al jar, the neighbor, the neighbor, the neighbor. Be careful with the mistreatment of the neighbor.
You know, warn the ummah about the way that the neighbors are supposed to be treated. And you know, you know that famous story of the woman that used to pray a lot and she used to fast a lot. She used to give a lot of sadaqa, but she had an abusive tongue towards her neighbor, right? All of these ahadith, all of these narrations are coming from a place. And there's a spirit that is often lost in our discourse today because the emphasis on the neighbor is not really there. And that's something that even the sahaba, you know, they took from the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and they didn't just take it with one another. There is a beautiful narration in Abu Dawood that's an authentic narration. That Mujahid Rahim Allah says that Abdullah ibn Amr radiAllahu ta'ala anhuma, and we know who he is. He sacrificed a sheep. And as soon as it was sacrificed, before they could start to, you know, take the portions of it, he said, have you given some of it to my Jewish neighbor? SubhanAllah, I mean, this is, he's sitting amongst sahaba, sitting amongst tabi'een. What do you mean my Jewish neighbor? He said, have you given some of it to my Jewish neighbor? For I heard the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam say, Jibreel Alayhi Salam kept on coming to me and talking to me about the neighbor, the neighbor, the neighbor, until I thought that Jibreel Alayhi Salam was going to make the neighbor an inheritor. And so we learned from this subhanAllah that, you know, if we could listen in on some of these conversations, that much of the conversations we would be able to witness and see from the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and Jibreel Alayhi Salam would actually be about us with an issue that while it is not at the forefront today, is still very much important to us, even if our neighbors are not Muslim as was the case of Abdullah ibn Amr radiAllahu ta'ala anhuma.
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