قال الصادق (ع):أيما مؤمن نفّس عن مؤمن كربة ، وهو معسر ، يسّر الله له حوائجه في الدنيا والآخرة
Today, I’m going to speak about the benefits gained from good conduct. What is the role of the good manners in making life easy for you? This hadith from Imam Sadiq (A.S) focuses on a very important lesson in our life. The Imam says, “when a believer who experiences difficulties, removes the grief, distress and agony from another believer, Allah (S.W.T) will make his life easy and all the rewards from Allah in the hereafter will be given to him”. What does it mean? Normally, when we advise a child for example to brush his teeth, he says why? What is the benefit of that? Why should I do it? And you as a parent explain to him or her, that in this way your teeth will remain clean, they will not decay, and you will not have difficulties to go to the dentist every day, or every week. When you ask a person, why did you not leave your money in the saving account and chose to go to the stock markets and to buy shares in certain companies? They say because I searched, and I understand that greater benefit will be in what I’m doing. So, brothers and sisters normally in our lives, everybody is after the benefit or more benefit, success or increase in what they get and that is something which the minds of many people are preoccupied with it. Now, when the Imam (A.S) says that you are in difficulty, you don’t have much ability to handle the cases either financially or otherwise, but you notice that a fellow believer is in grief, in agony or distress, you spend time to remove that stress or distress from the fellow believer. You try to create some sort of relief from what they are experiencing. The Imam says here that Allah will make his life in this temporarily life and the hereafter easy, smooth and one shouldn’t face any difficulties. So, the benefit of helping others (نفّس عن مؤمن كربة) removing the atrocities, difficulties, afflictions from a believer, even if you are experiencing some difficulty too, this would make that advantage lead to the result and that is something very good. Another thing we read in the Quran in Surat Al-A’raaf, Aya 96, about when you act piously, Allah will increase your provision and that is the Aya which says that if people believe and act piously, we open the blessings of the heaven and earth for them. When you act piously, when you observe the commands and prohibitions by Allah, mentioned in the Quran, this is piety. If you do so, Allah will open the blessings (the barakat) from the heaven and the earth for you. This is again another benefit from good conduct, good manner and when you behave in a way admired by Sharia.
Another thing which is good for us to remember as tonight and tomorrow reminds us of the birth anniversary of (سيدة نساء العالمين) Lady Fatima, the 20th of Jumadi Thani, where she entered the mosque of the Prophet (S.A.W.W) after his death she addressed all the Muhajareen and Ansar, and one of the great things of that speech and that address was regarding the philosophy of 20 principles of social conduct and religious obligations. She answered this why 20 times, why do I do that? Why Allah ordained this? Why Allah wanted us to do and to act this way? And when she comes to maintaining the bones and relationship with the kin which is (صلة الرحم) This means that you maintain your relationship with kin, a relative and you don’t cut it off. Lady Fatima (A.S) said that if you do so, if you observe this, this will lead to prolonging the life. So (صلة الأرحام منسأة في العمر و منماة في العدد) for prolonging the life you have the longer life, and this is another benefit. You pick up the phone, call your brother, your sister, nephew or niece or cousin and talk to them, continue to tell them that you are there for them, they can count on you. This is for itself (صلة الرحم) and for this we find some hadith that someone Allah has ordained for him to have the span of life of 30 years, he cut his relationship with his relatives, Allah reduced that to 3 years. Opposite to that, in the hadith, someone who was ordained for him to have a span of life for three years but it was prolonged to 30 because he was good to his family, to his relatives, to his kin and that would increase and prolong the span of life. Another good result and benefit as we are after and everybody is after benefits in many action and effort, is to treat your neighbours well. Again, we read from the hadith from Imam Sadiq (حسن الجوار يزيد في الرزق) which means when you treat your neighbours well, and here believe me brothers and sisters, it is not restricted to the believers, the neighbours who believe, the good manner and good treatment when you do it to a neighbour regardless of them being believers or not. This will lead to increase in provision. You may ask what is the link between these two? Is it some sort of causality? Normally when we have a cause, the effect comes after it automatically. So, what is the link between I treat my neighbours well, and in that I have some expansion and increase in the provision from Allah. Imam Sadiq tells us that this is the blessing of Allah, that to reward you in this life forget about the hereafter, we are talking about this life, so you get the reward and benefit in this life for your good manners and good conduct.
Another thing which is very important as a key for success in life, if you’re a student you hope and wish to succeed in your studies. If you are a businessman, of course you want your business to be flourishing and becoming stronger and stronger. If you have any plan in life, this is what we meant by the key for success. In social relationship with others, to be successful. So, the Imam says (بالرفق ينال المرء ما يريد من الناس) that to treat others with kindness, gentleness, to be kind and gentle to others, this is something very important and is the key for success and others wish you every success and cooperate with you. The word (رفق) here brothers and sisters it is nice to remember, that to treat others well is not restricted to human beings, even to animals. The Prophet ordered the Muslims to be kind to animals. Do not kill or do not cause any damage to animals at all. In our time there are societies for prevention of cruelty to animals as something new in the West, they spend a lot of money to do that(جمعية الرفق بالحيوان) , but it is not the cultural approach of the West, it is one of the principles and one of the teachings of Islam. So, (رفق) for itself is to be kind to others, this kindness, to be gentle, the treat others smoothly and in a very good manner, it is the key for success in life and the last thing here to mention is particularly to your family and your dependents, the hadith from Imam tells us that(ومن حسن بره بأهل بيته مد له في عمره) Those who treat his family and dependents well, his life will be prolonged. This prolonging of life is one of the benefits one gets from treating his family well.
Let’s conclude that when a person acts in a way that proves himself or herself in a good manner, his main objective is good conduct, being civilised and kind to others, this will result in many worldly benefits, in addition to the rewards from Allah in the hereafter.