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Hadith #12 – Whoever Deceives is Not One of Us

May 3, 2017Dr. Omar Suleiman

Abu Huraira (ra) said, The Messenger of Allah happened to pass by a heap of corn. He thrust his hand in it and his fingers felt wetness. He said to the owner of that heap of corn, "What is this?" He replied: "O Messenger of Allah! These have been drenched by rainfall." He remarked, "Why did you not place it on top so that the people might see it? Whoever deceives is not of us."

How can we avoid deception in our daily lives? Sh. Omar Suleiman describes deception in business transactions, deception in marriage, as well as different types of cheating.

Transcript

This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
So, who remembers what we spoke about last week? Cheating with the scales. Okay, the idea of cheating with the scales. So, continuing in the discussion of social justice, we talked about the idea of cheating, and the word was Tawfiq. Tawfiq is to cheat in many different ways. Cheating with the scales. And we said that the proper definition of Tawfiq is what? Shortchanging. So shortchanging someone in business or shortchanging someone in an interaction, it's to shortchange. And we talked about how Tawfiq can really span beyond this idea of cheating with the scales in business. So, weighing something in a way that's fraudulent. But also shortchanging someone in an interaction or shortchanging in regards to the rights that someone has upon you. Claiming your full rights from them, but not giving their full rights upon you. So, we're going to move on to a very similar theme, but it is different. But it does continue along the same lines of that discussion of what Tawfiq is. And there are a lot of stories today, so I'm gonna try to fit them all in in a lot of practical manifestations. So, this narration is from Abu Hurayrah, radhiallahu anhu, that the messenger of God, salallahu alayhi wasalam, was walking through the marketplace. And as he was walking through the marketplace, marra ala subratin ta'am, he came across a stable of food. So, there was some sort of food, corn, barley, flour, dates, the things that you just pick out of the container and you buy. So, think of a fruit market that you go to, you pick up the fruits, you check them, or you put some wheat or some barley into a bag. So, the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wasalam, marra ala subratin ta'am, he walked across one of those containers.
And the narration continues, fa-adkhala yadahu feeha. So, he put his hand inside of it. And as he put his hand inside of it, I want you to imagine that he actually put his hand towards the bottom of it. And when he did that, fanalat asabi'uhu balala. His hand became wet, okay? So, he said, maa hadha yaa sahiba ta'am? He said, what is this, oh you who's selling this food? So, what is it that's in here? What am I feeling at the bottom? So, basically he's feeling something rotting. Or he feels something at the bottom of that container that's not like that which is at the top of the container. So, he said, yaa rasulallah, he said, oh messenger of God, he said, asabatuhu al-sama' that it rains and the food was struck by the rain. So, some of it became wet. So, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam says, athala ja'amtahu fawqa ta'ami kayyaraahun naas? Why didn't you put the part that was wet on the top so that people could see the part that was wet? They could see the part that was rotten. So, basically whatever it was, whether it was dates or barley or flour, he put the better part on top and he sort of hid the flawed part of it. He hid the rotten part of it in the bottom hoping that when people would come and they take scoops of it, they wouldn't notice that they were taking a mixture of the good part of it and the bad part of it. So, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, why didn't you leave the bad part on top? Kayyaraahun naas? So that people could see what they were getting. And the man didn't respond. So, the messenger Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, man ghasha falaysa minni? In another narration, man ghasha falaysa minna? The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in another narration said, man ghasha falaysa minna? They all mean the same thing, but they do have slightly different implications to them that simply intensify the meaning. The first one, man ghasha falaysa minni? Whoever deceives is not from me.
Whoever deceives is not from me. Okay, meaning what? He's not from my followers. Does that mean if a person deceives that they leave the fold of Islam, that they stop being Muslim? I'm surprised that you guys are not answering this question faster. You guys are some serious takfiri, all right? No, they don't stop being Muslim, okay? But they're not living up to the sunnah of the messenger Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. They're not living up to his example. So they're not staying true to what he taught. They're not behaving like the followers of the Prophet. Okay? So, man ghasha falaysa minni? Whoever deceives, then he is not from me. The second one, whoever deceives, he is not from us. So it has the same meaning basically. He's not truly from this ummah. He's not truly from this nation or from this group of people. Because he's deceiving this group of people. Man ghashana, whoever deceives us is not from us. And there's a profound meaning to that last statement too. Whoever deceives us is not from us. How can you claim to be truly part of a people and committed to their well-being when you're cheating them at the same time? So how can you claim any sort of allegiance to those people? You know, laysa minni, he's not from me, he's not living up to my standard, to my example. Laysa minna, you cannot claim to be one of us if you're cheating us. You cannot claim to have a true allegiance if you're really just cheating us, if you're using the position that you've been given to cheat us. This has numerous, numerous, numerous implications. And there are many, many, many different narrations along the same line. So this hadith is narrated in Bukhari and Muslim, and many different narrations. Another hadith, this is a really interesting one, but the idea of cheating and diluting. If you guys remember, we talked about the story of the girl that was poor in the lifetime of Umar that was told to mix the milk with water,
to dilute the milk with water, right? Because everybody else would do that to make it look like it had more volume. So this is a really interesting hadith. And this hadith is authentic, it's in the surah Sahihah. Muslim Imam Ahmed and Imam Al-Albani consider it authentic. Listen to this hadith, it's actually a story. The Prophet ﷺ said that there was once a man who used to sell wine. He's giving you this image. There was a man who used to sell wine. And when he would sell the wine, he would mix water into it to make it seem like it was more. So he would dilute the percentage of the actual wine, the actual khamr. And he went on a ship with these people. So he was someone that used to operate on a ship. He basically used to go out with the people. He used to make wine for them and sell them the wine during the day. Or during the night, it depends when they used to like to drink. But he used to sell them wine during the day and during the night. And the Prophet ﷺ said that a monkey took his money. Can you imagine a qird? He actually said a monkey took the man's money at night. And he went on top of the deck. And he started to throw the dirhams, he started to throw his coins. And he said, one coin in the ship, the other coin in the sea. So the monkey was being used by Allah, basically to purify this man's wealth. The monkey threw one into the ship, one into the ocean, one into the ship, one into the ocean, one into the ship, one into the ocean, until he cut his money into half. Subhanallah. So it's actually an authentic hadith. It's very interesting. So even though the man was diluting wine, he was still cheating people. Meaning if people are gonna buy alcohol, which they shouldn't be buying in the first place, even then there shouldn't be ghush. Even then there shouldn't be cheating. That doesn't mean you can sell alcohol if you sell it pure. There's a lesson, a broader meaning in that. That means that don't dilute your products.
And it's very common obviously with colognes, with perfumes, to dilute and to disguise products. Okay? So there are many different manifestations, and there are many stories. I'll give you another one. This is narrated by al-Tabarani, that Jarir ibn Abdillah radhiAllahu ta'ala anhu, that he freed a slave, and then he told that slave, he asked that freed slave to go and buy a horse for him. So he went and he found this horse, and he found the one who was selling the horse, and he bargained on behalf of Jarir. So now he's not a slave, he was freed. He was asked to do a favor, and he did a favor. He went and he bargained on behalf of Jarir with the guy that was selling the horse, and they agreed on a price of 300 dirhams. So he brought the owner of the horse to Jarir, and Jarir looked at the horse and said, your horse is worth more than 300 dirhams, would you sell it to me for 400? Can you imagine? This is the opposite of bargaining. Your horse is worth more than 300 dirhams, can you sell it to me for 400? So the man said, Yes, ya Aba Abdullah. He said to him, yes, of course. I mean, this is good for him. Then he looked at the horse, and as he examined it, he said, actually, this is worth more than 400 dirhams. He said, would you sell it to me for 500 dirhams? So the narration says Jarir kept on increasing it. Every time he looked at it, and every time he examined it, he recognized that the product, that the horse in this case was worth more than what it was being sold for. So he kept on increasing it until he reached 800 dirhams. And he said, listen, can I give you 800 dirhams for this horse? And the man said, of course. And the man was shocked. So Jarir radhiallahu ta'ala anhu said, that Bayatun Nabiya sallallahu alaihi wasallam, I gave my allegiance to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam that I would be sincere to all of my brothers. So this was out of sincerity to this man
that he didn't recognize the price of that which he was selling to me. Maybe he wasn't experienced with it. And he said, I felt like I'd be cheating him. Now did Jarir have to do that technically? No, it would have been a completely halal transaction if Jarir would have bought the horse for 300. In fact, if he bargained them down to 250 or 200. But this showed you the piety of the companions of the messenger, that he felt compelled to not cheat that man and give him less than what it was worth. And there are numerous stories, perhaps more than anyone else in history, before I get to all of the practical lessons that we can take from this hadith. Probably more than anyone in history, Imam Abu Hanifa rahimahu allahu ta'ala. Imam Abu Hanifa, who was not only the founder of the first of the four schools that we have today of law, but he was also a wealthy merchant. And he was an amazing merchant. And he continued to be a merchant and sell clothes even after he became a scholar. And in fact, he used to buy his students clothes. And he wanted to make sure that all the students look dignified, so he'd buy them all clothes. And he had that wealth, he had that money. So he maintained his business even after he became a scholar. So the description of Imam Abu Hanifa rahimahu allahu ta'ala is that he was the most honest merchant in the marketplace. Which is very interesting because usually honesty in the marketplace is not a good thing. That means you're going to lose a lot of money. If you try to be honest and everybody else is dishonest, then the thinking is that you're gonna lose all of your money, you're gonna lose everything. Especially if you're talking about a soup in the traditional sense. He's not gonna be corrupt, he's gonna make sure he's fair. He's probably gonna lose a lot of money. But what ended up happening was that because Abu Hanifa was so honest, everyone wanted to do business with him, and no one wanted to do business with anyone else. So he basically ran people out of business by being super honest.
And there are numerous stories about him that Imam Abu Hanifa rahimahu allahu ta'ala once as he was buying, he was purchasing, or someone came to him, I'm sorry, to buy from him a garment. And as that woman, I'm sorry, this is a different story, I'm mixing up two stories. Abu Hanifa wanted to buy a garment from a woman in a marketplace. And he asked her, how much is it worth? She said, a hundred. He said, no, it's worth more than a hundred. So she said, okay, then two hundred. He said, no, I think it's worth more than two hundred. So he said, three hundred, four hundred, until it reached five hundred. Okay, because Abu Hanifa also didn't want to cheat the woman. So sort of the same moral, or the same ethic that we see in the story of Jarir, we see in the story of Imam Abu Hanifa rahimahu allahu. But the most famous story about him in regards to deception, particularly in the business sense, in the economic sense, when Abu Hanifa became a scholar, he got a business partner. And the name of that business partner was Hafs ibn Abdur-Rahman. Hafs ibn Abdur-Rahman. So basically Abu Hanifa said, listen, I'm going to focus on learning and teaching. You handle the business. And then he basically became a silent investor. He was a partner. He invested. He continued to maintain the products. But Abu Hanifa no longer could really maintain a presence in the marketplace. So you'd see him in the morning, you'd see him in the evening. And Abu Hanifa noticed in one of the clothes that he had that there was a defect in the cloth. So he told Hafs, he said, listen, if anyone comes to buy this cloth, make sure you show them the defect. Meaning it's not that apparent, it's not that obvious. So make sure you show them the defect in the cloth, in the garment before you sell it to them. So Hafs forgot when a customer came, sold the garment. Abu Hanifa came back and he didn't see the garment. So he said, well, what happened? Did you sell it? And he said, yeah.
He said, did you tell the customer about the defect in the cloth? He said, no, I forgot. Abu Hanifa said, how much did you sell it for? He said, about 500 dirhams. So Abu Hanifa gave the entire day's profits in charity. And then he fired Hafs. So he broke his partnership with Hafs. And then he told his son, Hammad, to go and find that, if you can find that customer, so that we can inform them about the garment that was sold to them and was a defect. And this was another honest, another story. And there are many stories about Abu Hanifa as a merchant. But one time someone came into his store and saw a shirt on the rack, basically, and asked for the shirt to be brought to him. So his son, when he went and he got the shirt off the rack, he went, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So he's basically, you know, like, if you can think of an employer, if you can think of a businessman, as they're selling their product, and they start praising the product in front of the customer, what are they doing? They're making, I mean, they're basically raising its price, all right? Like, oh, this shirt is one of our best. I always found that funny. Like, when you go to a store and, you know, you show interest in something, and the salesman is like, this is such a... And then as soon as you show a lack of interest, yeah, this one's not... This one's kind of old-fashioned, not a style, but this one. And moves you over to the next one. So Hammad, he said, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, which is good to say salawat, to send peace and blessings on the Messenger, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. But he said it in a way that he was showing his appreciation for that garment. So Abu Hanifa, rahimahullah, said, Alayhi salatu was salam, laqad madahtahu. He said, laqad madahtahu. He said, Indeed upon him is peace and blessings, but you've praised the garment, la bay'u wa la shira. I'm not selling this garment. Okay?
Because of the way that you praised it, I'm not gonna take advantage of the customer now, because you made them think that it was something it's not. Okay? You raised its price by the way that you acted. Again, halal, haram, this isn't about halal, haram, this was principle. That Abu Hanifa, rahimahullah, held himself to an extremely high standard. All of that is for inspiration. At a very practical level, what's considered injustice? What's considered wrong? And Imam Ibn Hajar, rahimahullah, said, It's to sell something, deception in a sale, is to sell something and to hide a defect, that if the person knew of that defect, they would not want to buy it for the price that they bought it for. I'm gonna say that again. Ibn Hajar said, it's to sell a product and to hide a defect, that if the customer was aware of that defect, they would not want to pay the same amount that they paid for it. Then it becomes ghush. It becomes a form of deception. And deception now, as we understand it, outside of the economic world, it spans many, many different spheres, just as we talked about tatfeef last week, to shortchange. The Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, mentioned that every trader on the day of judgment would be holding a banner that said the word trader. And it would say on that banner that this is the betrayer, or this is the one who betrayed so and so. This is the one who betrayed so and so, khiyana. Khiyana is a form of deception. You deceive the person and you betray them. So this is the person who betrayed so and so. The Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, mentioned in another hadith in Al-Bukhari, he said that Allah has said there are three who I will oppose on the day of judgment. A man who gives his word and betrays that word.
A man who captures a free man and sells him into slavery and consumes the money of that. And a man who hires someone, benefits from his labor, but does not pay him his wages. So there are three people that he said Allah would oppose on the day of judgment. God will oppose on the day of judgment. A man who gives his word and betrays his word. There is deception in that. A man who captures a free man, sells him into slavery, and then keeps the money for himself. Not that capturing a man and selling him into slavery would be okay, even if you gave the money in the charity. But the element, the intensity of that deception. And then third, someone who hires a man, benefits from his labor, and then does not pay his wages. So all of that comes under the chapter of deception. What's the worst type of deception that can exist in Islam? Anyone know? The worst type of deception, Ibn Hajar Rahim Allah mentions this, the absolute worst type of deception is deception done with religion. Deception done with religion. That can be at a very minor, in a very basic sense. So when you're selling a product, and you say, Wallahi, it is this and this, I swear by God it's this and this, and it turns out to not be that. Or you appear, and believe it or not, this is actually a thing. Till now in some places, right? But now most of buying and selling takes place behind a computer. People don't even buy their groceries in person anymore. We're becoming very robotic, and everyone just orders everything. So it's becoming increasingly less likely to show this. But I'll show you how we can apply this classical rule in a modern sense. One of the things that you find that Imam al-Qurtoobi Rahim Allah writing about,
really interesting, he wrote about people that would appear religious in the marketplace, so people would want to do business with them. So it's not even like he's saying anything or she's saying anything, but that person just appears really, really religious. So it's like, mashallah, he just looks so trustworthy. Or she just looks so, you know, I really want to do business with that person, because they just look so trustworthy in the marketplace. Religious and pious, right? And then quickly, mashallah, becomes astaghfirullah, and la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah, and what did I do with myself? And who is this person? Right? So people that cheat like that. So what's a modern sense of that? Like a false appearance of the person, not the product. A modern sense, for example, would be a seller on Amazon, boosting up their ratings or putting in fake reviews. That's a false appearance of the seller to them. So there are modern applications to this too, right? False appearance of the seller, not just the product, in order to make the product more desirable, also falls under al-ghush, falls under the concept of deception. And then outside of the basic sense with religion, the Prophet ﷺ mentioned, this is a hadith from Abu Huraira in a Tirmidhi, radhiAllahu ta'ala anhu, he said, alayhi salatu wa salam, yakhruju fee aakhiru al-zaman, that towards the end of time, you would see a person come out, rijal yakhtiloon ad-dunya bid-din, yalbisoona lid-naasi jurud, and he said, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, and it's a long hadith, I was thinking about whether I read the whole thing, but I'll just read it here, yakhtiloon ad-dunya bid-din. The translation of this would literally mean a person who swindles with the religion, or who cheats people using the religion for means of dunya, for means of world, of the world, for materialistic means.
In another hadith, the Prophet ﷺ said, yaltamisoona ad-dunya bi'amali al-akhira, that people would seek the material world with deeds that are meant to seek the hereafter. So swindling people or cheating people in the name of religion. So the worst type of deception is deception done in the name of religion. So there's this book that's actually called al-ghish, which means deception, by Zahir al-Shahri. And Zahir al-Shahri goes through all of these different manifestations. So just go through some of them and think about some applications that would work more in our society. So he says, if you think about cheating and buying and selling, what that would look like. So he said, how does ghish manifest itself in buying and selling? He said, for example, imagine a fruit seller or someone putting a lot of paper under the product to make the basket look like there is more volume in it than there actually is. Or putting the most attractive of the product on the top and hiding the facet part of it, hiding the rotten part of it in the bottom. He said, imagine a person taking food oil, so this is actually one of the examples he gives, taking food oil and mixing it with perfume. And then putting it in glass bottles and then selling it like it's perfume. So people mixing water or mixing some other substance. He said, think of a trader that wraps their product with either a very light wrap or a very heavy wrap or a thick wrap so that it weighs a certain way or so that it looks a certain way. Have you guys ever gone to buy food and the sandwich looked like it was this big and then you unwrapped all the foil and it was like this skinny? So that could be a form of ghish too, all right? But the point is that the false appearance of the way that the wrapper is.
So think about the way that products are wrapped or think about a product that's from one country but then the tag is replaced with another country's tag on it to make it look more attractive. I'm pretty sure Donald Trump does that with all of his products. But you think about that, replacing the tag or replacing the wrapper, replacing the packaging to make it look like something it's not. He said, imagine a trader, someone that sells clothes and something happens to the cloth and then they sew it up in a way without telling the person they're selling to that there was something that happened here and they had to sew it up and they were able to disguise that flaw. Or he said a person might wear a garment, they might buy something and wear it until it loses its value. And then they would make it appear like it's new and they would tell a person they're selling it to that it's a new garment. He mentions the different colorings that could be put in some products. He mentions, he even says ghish, he says think about a person who has a store and they leave the lights at a certain radiance. So that the products look a certain way and then once they get out of the store they don't look that way, right? Or goldsmiths that mix gold with copper or someone that buys something second hand, so a refurb but sells it as if it's never been refurbished, that's ghish. And says that it's new, that's listing your product online, right? He goes, we should have a whole fiqh of Amazon. I'm serious, I was actually thinking about it as I was preparing this. I was like, there needs to be a whole fiqh of Amazon. What's the fiqh of online, e-trade, buying and selling because there's so much of this stuff that modernly manifests itself in a different way. Or he said think about a person who sells their car and then adjusts the odometer. That's like a very common practice, right?
Especially when you're buying from the mashallah sellers. And instead of a hundred thousand miles you bring it down to eighty thousand, you sell it as if it's eighty thousand. You put a different type of mileage or you try to disguise that it's a salvage vehicle, clean title, all this type of stuff. And buying and selling cars that takes place, disguising these types of things or disguising an accident, right? So painting it in a way that no one would be able to tell that it was hit. He says, think about a person that sells a product and says, wallahi it is this. I swear by Allah it's not knowing that he's lying about that product. He says, or think about a person, and this is really interesting, superficial bidding on a product. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam actually forbade, it's called in sharia, I remember when I studied this in fiqh finance, I was like this is so amazing, it's like the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam saw it coming. It's called a najsh, noon, jeem, sheem. I was like what is a najsh? Najsh is to actually induce a superficial bidding war on a product, so there is artificial inflation on the price. Alright? So, you know, the way that a najsh was practiced, you guys are terrified, good. This is exactly what I want, so that you think about these things as you go into buying and selling. But think about it outside of the realm of buying and selling as well. Think about najsh in the traditional sense, what it meant was, I'm in my store and I'm selling something, and then I know that this customer is coming in, so I've got my friend who's in there, and my friend comes in and my friend starts acting like he's interested in the same product. So when I start bargaining, and I bet you they still do this in the stores around the haram. I just, well I don't bet you literally, alright, but figuratively. Think about this, right? So someone else starts arguing for the same product,
so it's like no, I'll pay this much for it, and then you pay for it. But think about how this happens in the online world, superficial or artificial inflation, by portraying an interest in the product that's not actually there. So he talks about a najsh, and he talks about, subhanallah, this is in some countries, this was also an early practice, when you would sell an animal and you wanted to show that the animal had more meat on it, you'd actually put, and don't do this if you sell animals, please, alright, there's enough cruelty towards animals, but make them eat salt or taste salt so that they become very thirsty and they drink a lot of water, and they would appear to be bloated, or they would appear to have more meat on them than they actually do, and then sell it at a higher price. All of these practices, like we've been very creative as humankind, that cheating people and deceiving people and putting on false appearances, whether it's with animals or with cars or with clothes, right, and whether it's online or it's on-site in the traditional sense, okay, we're very good at deception, and then it sort of helps you understand why the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, forbade so many things that were false appearance, even as people, the false appearance of people, so doing things to our bodies, or doing things to our, before we talk about plastic surgery, doing things to our bodies, doing things to ourselves that would give a false impression or a false appearance about who we really are. Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, forbade all of that because deception is a habit. The person learns deception, then they will deceive in newer and more unique ways, alright, so you've learned to cheat in one way, then you'll say this works pretty well, it's convenient, it's a fast track, it's to earn something that's not really yours, you'll start to cheat in other realms of your life. So, for example, cheating in affairs of marriage, in regards to marriage, deceiving the person that you want to marry or deceiving a potential spouse,
or deceiving your actual spouse, okay. How can you deceive? So the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, forbade, for example, concealing a sickness or concealing something that might affect a suitor, might affect someone that you're going to marry, outside of the realm of spirituality. Meaning what? I'm going to be very specific here. If I did things in my past that were forbidden and I don't want people to know about them, and I repented to Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, and I've changed my life, I'm not obliged when I'm going to marry someone to tell them about every relationship I've had in the past, and everything I've done in the past, okay. However, if I had an illness or if I had something, something that I know would sway this person in the other way, for example, deception in hiding debts. One of the things that people used to do, and they still do actually, is hiding debts, hiding financial troubles, hiding some sort of physical issue. Something that could sway the spouse or sway this potential spouse in the other direction, and they come to find out about it, and it's like, hey, you're stuck. That's deception. It's a form of ghish that the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, forbade. So, disguising things, disguising things for the sake of trying to sway that person, and then once you get the commitment, it's done. Or it's very difficult then to back out. That's a form of ghish. So, the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, talking about the importance of disclosing everything that you possibly can before a marriage, that could potentially lead to bitterness or resentment later on. Unless it's a spiritual or something that you stumbled with in the past that doesn't have any present implications because tauba, repentance, does away with everything before.
So, I'm not obliged there to talk about those things before I get married. One of the things the scholars talked about in ghish, they said that if the wali, if the guardian in marriage did not do the proper homework on the suitor for their child, that's a ghish to their child. It's a form of ghish to their child. You should have done your homework and actually studied that person and seen their religious commitment, seen, you know, asked the right questions and done your part. It's ghish if a person praises someone for business or for marriage and they hide things about them that they know could lead to major problems. Example, we talked about domestic violence. If someone is in a violent, abusive marriage, they get out of that marriage and then someone else comes and asks and says, Hey, what do you think, I know you're, well, actually I don't know many people that would speak positively about that. But you know of someone else that did that. You know of someone else that abused their wife. And it was not public information. But you know about it for whatever reason. And someone comes to you and says, Hey, what do you think about this person? And you don't say anything. You're deceiving that person. That's why the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, when a person came to him, when a woman came to him and said, What do you think about these two men for marriage? The Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, said, Well, as for Muawiyah, not Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan, another Muawiyah, he carries a stick on his shoulder. And the other one is cheap. So the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, was dissuading them. He was dissuading her from these two suitors. Because he said, Look, I'm not going to lie to you. Think about the hypocrisy here. If this person was coming from my actual sister, from my daughter, or someone that's actually related to me, no way. But, hey, you know what? It's just this person. I can afford to cover this. I can afford to disguise this. Or a fraud in business. So the scholars mention its ghish, its deception. If a person praises someone who's fraudulent, without exposing their fraud.
Why? Because you're allowing other people to be consumed by their fraud. So fraudulent business in all of its different manifestations. Another form of ghish that the scholars talked about, they said, to praise someone in a way that's not befitting to them, as a means of putting them forth for a job or for a marriage or whatever it may be. You know, it's funny, Bilal had a brother, and his brother from the Ansar, meaning his brother from Medina. It wasn't really his blood brother, but they were paired off. And this brother went to marry into a family, and they didn't want to marry their daughter to him, so he said, I'm Bilal's brother. They said, Really? Can you prove it? He said, Yeah, I'll go get him. So he went to Bilal radhiallahu anhu and he said to Bilal, he said, Listen, I'm gonna need you to come and talk to this family for me, because I told them I'm your brother, and they're reconsidering me for marriage. Bilal said, Okay, fine, but if I come, I'm gonna tell them the truth about you. I'm not gonna lie about you. I'm going to tell them what your shortcomings are, because at the end of the day, this is a sacred bond that's about to be formed. They should know. So don't expect me to lie about you. So he said, That's fine anyway. And Bilal radhiallahu anhu went and he said that we were slaves, so Allah freed us. Because Bilal was from Ethiopia, he was a freed slave, he was from Habesha, as was his brother. He said, We were a people who were slaves and God freed us. We were a people who were humiliated and God honored us and dignified us. He said, This here is my brother. And he basically said, Look, he's not that religious. He's basic, he's not that religious, and I can't say many things about him. But if you want to marry him, then marry him knowing who he is and accepting him for who he is. And if you don't, then we'll walk away. And they said, No, no, he's your brother, we'll take him.
So it's funny, so he married anyway, just by Bilal being present there, which showed you the position that Bilal radhiallahu anhu had in society. Lying about or deceiving a person, ghish within a marriage, within a contract, deceiving people about extra-marital relationships or the quote-unquote second or third or fourth or fifth or sixth or seventh wives that all get called second wives, that people are not aware of and don't know of, hiding people from the public, all of these things. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam mentioned that the marriage should be publicized. Why should the marriage be publicized? So that everyone knows the huqook of this person and the rights of these people can be guarded. So the hidden secrecy of extra-marital affairs are even halal, mikhaah, right? Because the idea is that there's ghish, there's an element of ghish involved. So the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said, Publicize it. That there have to be shuhud, there have to be witnesses to this, so that the rights of the people involved can be guarded and protected. Otherwise it's ghish, deception. Deception to the spouse, deception to the other person, deception to the public, deception. I mean there are so many different elements of deception. Cheating in nasiha, in giving advice, or giving a fatwa. This is really interesting. So the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said, that if anyone gives a legal decision, a legal opinion, meaning a fatwa, in ignorance, the sin is upon him, then he bears the sin of it. So you give advice to someone because you don't want to say, I don't know, la adri, when they ask you whether this is halal or haram, or I should do this or not, permissible, prohibited, and you tell them something that's not true, and you do it in ignorance. You give a misguided fatwa. So the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said, the sin is upon him. Whether he was right or wrong, you shouldn't be speaking in ignorance about the matters of the religion. You have to be careful with that.
And Suleiman al-Mahri, who narrates on this hadith, if anyone advises his brother, knowing that guidance is truly in another direction, meaning you purposely, intentionally give wrong advice to your brother or to your sister, faqad ghasha, then verily he has deceived him. Then that is a form of deception, ghish, to give advice, the wrong advice intentionally to a person, to misguide them. I'll tell you guys a story. Those of you that took behind the scenes, you heard this story. It's funny, but then it's not so funny. Maimun ibn Mahran, he said that, I saw a woman and I wanted to marry her, so I commented about that to a friend of mine, and he said, she's no good, I saw her kiss a man before, so you shouldn't marry her because she's kissed a man and you don't want to be involved with a woman like that. So Maimun says that I came the next day or a little bit later and I saw that he was married to her. So I was like, what happened? He said, I thought you told me that you saw her kiss a man. He said, yeah, I saw her kiss her dad. So he told the truth, misguided him so that he could win the girl's hand in marriage. So cheating with advice, I know that's a really mean one. Cheating in advice or misguiding a person or telling them something in your business field or in your trade that would misguide them so that they could fall and you could do better. Someone asks you for sincere advice, and advice has to be sincere, and you tell them to do something that you know is detrimental to them because you don't want them to interfere with your own success. I've seen this in da'wah, in activism. Someone asks you advice and they give them the wrong advice or they try to direct them in another direction
because they don't want them to occupy their market share. They don't want them to come into their space. You know, you'd be much better over here, or you should do this instead, or do that instead. It's not sincere advice. That's not who we are as people. We give the best and most loving advice to people that we possibly can. The Prophet ﷺ mentioned an authority cheating their subjects or deceiving their subjects. So he said, عليه الصلاة والسلام ما من والن يلي رعية من المسلمين that there is no ruler or authority that's given authority over the Muslims or over the people. فيموت وهو غاش لهم And he dies while he is deceiving those people. He's cheating those people إلا حرم الله عليه الجنة except that God will prohibit paradise for him, forbid that person from entering paradise. So the rule of the Prophet ﷺ is, you are the authority that cheats their subjects or cheats those that are in their care. And again, expand this to people that you have authority over outside of the governing sense. You cheat those that you might have authority over, or you deceive them with something that you have or that you don't have. غش in our exams or our tests, and I know that that's very hard as I mentioned, غش as well in an exam or when you cheat on your test or you cheat on an application or you deceive. It's one thing, and this is actually something that the ulema talk about, perceiving, so this is before the days of a CV or a resume. Can I exaggerate about my virtues when I apply for a position? What do you guys think? If the exaggeration is within acceptable bounds, it can be permissible. Meaning what? I'm a strong leader.
I'm not talking about applying for a religious post or debt, I'm talking about just applying for a job. And I have strong character building skills or I believe I have this. If you really do believe that you have those skills, and you kind of put a little bit of, you know, sprinkle a little bit on top of it, as long as you're not lying or cheating with that description of yourself, then it's not impermissible. It becomes impermissible when it departs from the truth. And you might ask yourself, well, how do we know? It's a gray area. Exactly. The gray area is governed by taqwa. It's governed by piety. So I should know that, you know, when Yusuf alayhis salaam presented himself for the post of a minister in the government of al-Aziz in Egypt, the pharaoh of his time, he said, اجعلني على خزائن الارض اني حفيد عليم. He praised some of his skill sets, that he's a strong, capable leader, and he's knowledgeable about this particular craft and about this particular area. He didn't exaggerate or go too far, but he did what was acceptable. And this is where it goes back to bil ma'ruf. So if you're lying about a degree that you have to get a position, or you're lying about some qualification that's not really there, or you're lying about a quality that you... Like, you know that you're not a patient person. You know that you're a person that's always losing their temper, that always screams, that always is angry, and you put, I'm a very patient and calm mannered person. Because you think that that's what the employer is going to want to hear, that can become deception. So don't outright lie about a character, a characteristic or a quality, and especially don't lie about a qualification that you don't have. But instead, you present yourself in the most pleasant way, in a way that's acceptable to that norm, that's fine. It's okay to do that. It's not impermissible. You don't have to send in self-defeating applications to jobs out of taqwa, and say that I'm a horrible person, and I'm working on myself, and I'm trying to pray Qiyam al-Layl. And it's like you're applying for a position at Target, why are you talking about Qiyam al-Layl?
It's within acceptable bounds. Don't lie or deceive the employer or that which you're applying for when you apply. Finally, what the scholars mention here, and I think that this is very important, is that the problem with deception is threefold. Number one, you're not paying attention to the one who watches you. You think that by deceiving the people, you've deceived Allah in a way, that you've gotten away with it. So it represents a lack of piety, a lack of God consciousness, an awareness inside of you, that as long as I can cheat that other party without ever being held accountable in this world, then I'm fine. I'm not going to have any trouble losing sleep at night. And some people get away with it for their entire lives. Or they seemingly get away with it for their entire lives. 10, 15, 20 years pass by and they've gotten away with it. And they sleep fine because they did not perceive or they did not take into consideration the sight of Allah upon them. That Allah was watching them too. So it represents a significant weakness in faith and understanding that you're being watched not just by the people, but you're being watched by Allah as well. The second thing is the cheating to the person. So you're harming a person, whether you're selling them a defective product or you're selling them yourself in a defective manner, a false appearance, but you're deceiving that person that you're selling to or that you're dealing with by deception. The third thing is that you suffocate honesty. You suffocate honesty. It becomes too impossible because not everyone's going to have the business of Abu Hanifa or the barakah and the blessings of Abu Hanifa or Jarir or some of these other glorious examples that we read about.
You suffocate honest competition. You suffocate honest tradesmen in that trade. You suffocate people that try to do things in an honest way outside of the capacity of trade. You make it too difficult for people to be honest, so you create a culture of cheating. And that goes back to two hadiths ago, where it becomes the standard of the people and everybody cheats and says, well, they all cheat too and you've got to cheat to get by. So you make it acceptable culture for the people to cheat. You give them an excuse to cheat because, hey, everybody else does it and you can't get by in this unless you cheat, whether it's in the affairs of marriage or it's in the affairs of business or it's in the affairs of trade or whatever it may be. You make it too hard for the honest competition. So those are the three problems with it. So again, man ghashsha falaysa minna. Whoever cheats or deceives is not from amongst us. And by the way, notice the narration. There is man ghashshana, whoever cheats us, but the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, whoever deceives. Meaning what? It doesn't say whoever deceives the Muslims is not from us. You can't deceive people that aren't Muslim and say, that's okay. But then, I'm not gonna deceive other Muslims. Man ghashshana, whoever cheats, deceives, is not from amongst us. May Allah protect us from portraying of ourselves that which is not true or cheating in our capacities or deceiving with appearances or shortchanging anyone and creating a culture thereby of injustice. May Allah protect us from that and forgive us for our inevitable shortcomings and guide us to best practices in our individual and community lives. Allahumma ameen. I know I have a lot of questions, so questions.
Yes, oh, it's only one question. Go ahead. Yes. So that is still deception, even if it's not monetary, if it's not financial. It's still deception, false portrayal for the sake of some sort of gain, because gain is not always monetary. And look, in this day and age, it's so easy to falsify, because people don't verify. It's so easy to falsify anything, because people don't do verification of anything. And sometimes people are not capable of verifying certain things.
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