Enjoy Your Life

Respond to mistreatment with kindness

Most commonly when you deal with people, they treat you how they want to treat you, and not how you want to be treated. Not everyone you meet with cheerfulness is cheerful to you in return. Some of them may even become angry, think badly of you and ask, "What are you laughing at?"

Not everyone you present a gift returns your favour. You may give gifts to some people only to find them backbiting you in various gatherings, and accusing you of being foolish and wasting money!

Not everyone you are kind to in speech or praise generously or use kind words with responds to you in kind. Allah has divided up manners for people, just as He has divided up their sustenance. The divine way to deal with the people dictates: "The good deed and the evil deed are not alike. Repel the evil deed with one which is better, then lo! He, between whom and you there was enmity (will become) as though he was a bosom friend."

Some people have no solution to their problems and nor is there a way to reform them. You can only deal with them in accordance with their own wishes. In that case, you can either have patience with them, or leave them.

It is mentioned that a man once travelled with a businessman. This man would do all the work while travelling, such as serving his companion, offloading the luggage and feeding the camels, until he would become exhausted.

On the way back, the two of them stopped to have their meal. They made their camels kneel and dismounted. The man laid down outstretched on the ground while his businessman companion laid out a sheet, offloaded the luggage, and then turned to him and said, "Why don't you gather the wood while I cut the meat?"

He replied, "By Allah, I am very tired after riding the camel all this time!"

The businessman then stood and gathered the wood, and said, "Can you make fire?"

He replied, "The smoke stings me if I come near it", so the man lit the fire himself.

The busineesman then said, "Can you please help me in cutting the meat?"

He replied, "I fear that I may cut my hand", hence, the man cut the meat himself.

The businessman then said, "Could you put the meat in the pan and cook the meal?"

He replied, "It is very tiring for me to watch the meal before it is properly cooked". The businessman then began to cook himself.

When he finally finished cooking and felt very tired, he lay down on the ground, and said, "Could you please lay out the dining mat, and pour the meal out onto the plates?"

He replied, "I am feeling really heavy, and I don't have the energy to do that right now." The businessman then got up, prepared the meal and laid it out on the mat.

The businessman said, "Would you come over and eat?"

He replied, "By Allah, I feel very embarrassed at constantly making excuses, so I shall relent this time!" He then got up and ate the meal!

You might meet people who are like him. Do not be saddened by this. Rather, be firm like a mountain.

Our model educator, the Prophet Peace Be Upon Him ,would deal with people rationally and not emotionally. He would bear other people's mistakes and still be gentle with them.

Just imagine! There he was, sitting in a blessed gathering, surrounded by his companions, and in came a Bedouin asking him for his help with paying off blood-money. This man − or an acquaintance of his − had killed someone, and so he wanted the Prophet Peace Be Upon Him to help him financially to enable him to pay the blood-money to the victim's family.