We Remember People's Merit After Losing Them, and We Fix Our Gaze on Paradise

Occasion: Transcription of a Fajr khatira delivered on 3 August 2025 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

Yesterday we were speaking about the matter of pleasing people, and how the Muslim's aim and concern is to please Allah, Blessed and Exalted, and that people's hearts turn about as their eyes turn about, and they see a person in different states just as they see night and day in their whiteness and blackness.

We Remember People's Merit After Losing Them

And as an extension of this talk: people die. And whoever is sensible and realizes that tomorrow he may not be here is keen to leave behind a good reputation. And a good reputation requires of you that you always be patient, always seeking reward from Allah.

One of the very strange things is that we do not acknowledge one another's merit except after we lose one another. You always, always see people saying: By Allah, he was a good man. But rarely do you find them saying that he is a good man while he is alive; when he dies they remember his goodness, his noble deeds, his virtues and his good works, and they lament his death. He was in your midst, people, he was there, and it was possible for us to benefit from this goodness.

And this is a trait we see even in the matter of knowledge during our lives, glory be to Allah the Almighty: you see a man who speaks well, his tongue flows, he speaks the truth, and people do not acknowledge him; then when he dies they are keen to gather his legacy, compile his books and arrange his notes. Glory be to Allah! He was among you; had you knocked on his door and asked, he would have poured out more good upon you; he was still alive. But now that he has died, you will get from him nothing but what he left.

If You Want to Avenge Yourself

The point is that whoever wants to avenge himself should know the following. If people's behavior enrages you and you want to avenge yourself, pay attention to two things.

First: know that when you avenge yourself you are at your weakest. For the son of Adam, when he flares up and gets angry for himself and avenges himself, is in one of the states of his weakness. The strong person is always master of himself, able to rein in his words, his tongue uttering only what pleases Allah, Blessed and Exalted. When a person flares up in this way he goes beyond the frame of control, beyond mental, intellectual and verbal discipline, and instead of being on the higher level he will be on the lower one, he will not control himself, and people will hold against him mistakes that were not in him at all.

The other matter: whoever wants to avenge himself, let him picture himself standing, and let him picture himself under the soil. Now when I get angry and talk to you and avenge myself, I am standing on my feet, I have command of my voice, my health and my thinking, I speak and act. But one day I will be under the soil. So for which of the two states do I want to avenge myself: for the temporary state or the permanent one? Do you avenge yourself while you are alive, standing for a few numbered days, and Allah the Exalted knows best, then we will be under the soil together? Or are you keen on the future of yourself when you are in that state?

Do We Always Give Up Our Rights?

Well, are we required to give up our rights always? The matter here is relative, not absolute. Whatever is within the frame of pardon and seeking reward from Allah is required and beloved. But what is by way of enabling others over yourself and their dominating you is making a fool of yourself. And here matters differ: if the one who does this is my father or my mother, then how is the case? And if the one who does this is my brother or my sister, then how is the case? But if it is a person who wants to have power over you and has no authority over you, then you want to establish yourself.

But let it not escape our minds that the Lord of Might, glory be to Him, the Exalted, said: ﴿أَذِلَّةٍ عَلَى الْمُؤْمِنِينَ﴾ (humble toward the believers),^[1] and this is the general rule in every place. A person can be humble before his brothers, and there is no harm in that.

Weeping Over a Few Coins

I see people quarreling, their voices rising and their tones growing loud, getting angry, and perhaps hands begin to move in preparation for a fight, over empty talk, trivial talk, and we speak about trivial, petty sums and numbers, and between us there is kinship, or blood, or faith, or religion. We do not weep over all of this, and we weep over a few coins that go or come, that are or are not! There is a defect in the system of thinking and the ordering of priorities.

We Fix Our Gaze on Paradise

In any case, once again: we want to fix our eyes on heaven, and to look at Paradise and how it is being prepared. By Allah, besides whom there is no god, imagine that you are extremely, extremely hungry, what is said in Egyptian colloquial as "dying of hunger," and there is a great table laden with good things, filled with everything the souls desire, and a few steps from it, someone pulls at your foot, or pulls at your robe. Do you see yourself turning to that trivial person who wants to delay you from going to your table? We are fixing our gaze on Paradise, so we have no time.

And I say these words to myself before anyone else, I admonish myself first. By Allah we are fixing our gaze on Paradise, and the sensible person who fixes his gaze on Paradise has no time to turn to the foolishness of people, or their triviality, or their lack of sense. Whoever fixes his gaze on Paradise sees nothing but Paradise, and does everything he can, and gives up anything in an attempt to obtain this great station in the gardens of the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, the Exalted.

I ask Allah, the Most High, the Almighty, to make us see our faults, and to preserve for us the soundness of our eyes and our insights.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: From Sūrat al-Māʾida (54); the speaker confined himself to this part of the verse, so it was not completed in the body text.