Address People According to Their Minds and Souls

Occasion: Transcription of a Fajr khatira delivered on 5 August 2025 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

The Doctor opened with a supplication: O Allah, make life an increase for us in every good, and make death a rest for us from every evil. Envelop us in Your mercy and pour out Your bounty upon us. O Allah, we ask You for safety in this world and the next, and for well-being in our bodies and our religion. We ask You, our Lord, to empty our hearts of any rancor, envy, malice or hatred toward any of the Muslims, and to fill our hearts with certainty in what You have promised, O Lord of the worlds.

Address People According to Their Minds and Souls

We had been speaking about dealing with people and how to be patient with them, and today we want to conclude this subject. There is a saying circulated as an athar (a transmitted report): "Address people according to their minds."^[1] And I want to add: according to their minds and their souls.

We agree that people do not all grasp things to the same degree. Not everyone is intelligent, not everyone is dull, not everyone catches it on the fly, and not everyone, may Allah honor you, is like cattle; there is an enormous difference between people.

But the important point is that any one of us may at times be extremely sharp, understanding you and reading what is on your face; and at other times, may Allah honor you, be like a brick, not understanding anything, not knowing where Allah put his mind. How does that happen? It is a difference of mood, a difference of temperament at that moment, a difference of psychological state: is there money in my pocket or not? Am I cheerful or upset? Sometimes he catches your word quickly and I am in the best of states with you, and sometimes you say to him: do not try with me, your brother is down.

This fluctuation inside human souls is in itself an influence on that mental responsiveness. How is it that your wife responds to you in one situation and does not respond in another? How does she answer you with intelligence and speed and give you an idea, so that you wonder where she got it from? As for us, we are not used to saying sweet words to them, of course, I seek Allah's forgiveness! And sometimes you find she has a good idea, and sometimes your friend talks to you and you say to him: what is wrong with you today, man? Are you disconnected? Is this brain not working? And the point in all of this is what follows.

Patience with People: Worship or Test?

Let us say: dealing with people, do you consider it a kind of worship? Patience with creation, patience with people in their condition as they are, do you consider it a kind of worship? It is a kind of the tests with which Allah, Blessed and Exalted, has tested us.

He related that one of the sisters spoke to him complaining about her husband and his ways. He said to her: Sister, I see that you are from a good, well-bred family, and you are raising your children in a home. Then he asked her, by Allah: if this man, whom you say you love very much, and yet you come complaining about him, unable to be patient with him, wanting to throw him off the top of the building, if he were struck by an incurable illness, cancer or failure, we seek refuge in Allah, what would you do? Would you leave him and go on your way? She said: No, on the contrary, I would give my own neck to ransom him. He said to her: O daughter of good people! You would ransom him with your neck while he lies sick, and you cannot be patient with him for a little while when he is standing on his own two feet? Enjoy even the movement with which he goes back and forth, and be patient with him a little.

And he said: I need to say these words to myself as I deal with my brother and my sister, my mother and my father, my brothers, my family, my neighbors and the people in the street. Patience is part of worship. When Allah commanded people to come to the mosques, to take on the effort of this walking and this journey and to attend the prayer, we are patient with the shaykh even if he goes long, and this patience does not weigh on us; this is a kind of patience. So why do I practice this patience? Because through it I am training myself to be patient with the rest of the people.

And imagine that Allah, Blessed and Exalted, gives His Prophet ﷺ a direct command of obligation: ﴿وَاصْبِرْ عَلَىٰ مَا يَقُولُونَ﴾ (And be patient over what they say). This is an obligation, this is a command from the Lord of the worlds.^[2] And our Lord, glory be to Him, even as He tells him that He knows that what they say grieves him^[3] — for He, glory be to Him, knows that the speech constrains him, angers him and pains him — nevertheless commands him to patience and more patience.

And is it patience only over the words of the believers, or over the words of the believers and the disbelievers at the same time? Over the words of the believers and the disbelievers together. And you look at the environment around you and see that among them are the sincere, and among them the hypocrite, and among them the show-off, and among them the one who flatters, and so on.

Treating People Gently

We have a term called "treating people gently" (mudārāt al-nās). If we speak about treating people gently, we ask: what is the meaning of mudārāt? Its meaning, in its definition, is that you deal with a thing according to its nature. Imagine that we are sitting at a table full of blessed good things, and you took a good morsel, a nice piece of meat (and the shaykhs love meat very much), and put it in your mouth and it was very hot. So what do you do? You turn it, may Allah honor you, to the right and to the left until you can stand it and swallow it. And the people who are tossing before you on the embers, you should deal well with them as you deal with this morsel, preparing their nature so that you digest them well and take in what they have.

Then he asked: how many of the people who trouble you in your life do so deliberately? How many of them is evil? For the most part people are simply poor souls to begin with, but each one has enough of the ailments of time and place to occupy him, so he is not patient with others. If you were to spread the rule of patience among people, they would be in harmony with one another and happy in their lives and would not suffer in any way at all. Why? Because they would have grasped that dealing with persons is a kind of worship.

The Mentality of the Policeman, the Judge and the Doctor

And there are some souls that are fed up with creation to begin with and are not patient with anyone, because in their belief everyone around them is either a disbeliever, or a transgressor, or an outlaw, and so on.

Imagine, for example, the mentality of a police officer. We may have dealt with this mentality before. He says to you: why were you running? And you say: By Allah, my wife is in the hospital, or: I have a stomach cramp. What is his rate of believing? He stops you and says: where are you going? Why are you running? And you say: By Allah, I am in great pain, I have a pain in my stomach. Does he believe you at first glance and say: No problem, my dear, go ahead? For the mentality of a police officer, the default is accusation.

And the judge, what is his mentality? He does not accuse like the police officer, but he does not believe you; he does not accuse you but does not believe you, it is not enough for him that you take out the paper, he wants proof. The judge deals with you on the basis that you need proof to clear yourself before him, for the default with him is that, since you have arrived at this state, you must have done it.

And the doctor, how does he deal with people? He looks at your face and says: what is the matter with your eyes today? What is the story? You say: I am fine, by Allah, standing in front of you complete. He says: Fine, come by me, I want to look into a few things. You say: Go ahead, may Allah make it easy for you. Why? Because this is his mentality, and it is built that way.

If I deal with the doctor as a doctor, and with the judge as a judge, and with the policeman as a policeman, and with the shaykh as a shaykh (may Allah help you with us), then I will be able to understand people's psychology.

Treating People as We Expect of Ourselves

But the problem that happens with us, and I will conclude with it now, is that I treat people as I expect of myself: if I were in this situation, what would I do? I would do such and such, and if he did not, then you are stupid, you cannot, what is wrong with you, man, you do not understand! No, he understands, but he understands according to his conception of the matter. And in many situations, if we review our lives, we judged people and issued decisions about them, and after ten or fifteen years we discovered that we had been wrong; I was the one who was wrong and he was in the right, but I was treating him as stupid, and at that moment I was saying about him that he is stupid and does not understand.

So the matter of mental perception and the differing levels of people among themselves makes you very much at ease. The one in front of you is a burning ember, and this does not mean that he came to be hostile to me; rather he is upset about something and needs someone to give him a painkiller. How is the painkiller? A kind word, sweet advice, a smile in the other's face, a soothing of the heart, or he is in need of money and you do him a favor according to your means and capacity.

So deal with people according to their minds. And when you see a report like this, it develops in you the ability to assess creation and assess their levels, for you are the sensible one, you are the elder, O Hajj. And seek help from the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, the Exalted.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: The speaker did not attribute the report to anyone. A statement similar in meaning is narrated from ʿAlī (may Allah be pleased with him): "Speak to people of what they know; do you want Allah and His Messenger to be denied?" in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī as a suspended report (taʿlīqan); as for the wording the speaker mentioned, the editor has not verified its authenticity, so there is no certainty in attributing it to the Prophet ﷺ or to a Companion. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Muzzammil, verse 10. The speaker did not specify the location. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: It appears that the speaker is referring to the words of the Exalted in Sūrat al-Anʿām, verse 33: ﴿قَدْ نَعْلَمُ إِنَّهُ لَيَحْزُنُكَ الَّذِي يَقُولُونَ﴾ — and the transcription at this point is garbled ("lā yaḥsūnaka"), so the verse was not set in the body text.