Loving Your Brethren, as You Love Yourself
Do You Love Yourself?
Rasulullah صلى الله عليه وسلم said: “None of you believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.” [Sahīh al-Bukhārī and Sahīh Muslim]
– How do you love another, if you do not love yourself?
– How do we proportion self-love?
It is the syariah in Islam, that we attend to ourselves, before we attend to another.
While we are mindful of our duties in friendship, we must also be mindful of our duties to ourselves.
Allah protects through the Syariah: our right to:
1) Spirituality,
2) Life and Physical Health
3) Sanity and Mental Health
4) Family Relationships
5) Financial Stability
6) Dignity and Self Worth.
When we understand and honour the pain and fatigue in striving to achieve these for ourselves – we learn to be self-motivated; we learn to value effort and avoid dependency on others.
We then relate better to the pain and discomfort in others; are able to motivate and value their efforts; and more able to forgive and be less judgemental.
This is Compassion.
It is from here that we learn, what it means, to want good for others, as much as we want good for ourselves.
The highest level of ihsan, is in the privilege of helping people find success, being happy for them, and allow them to grow continuously and joyfully – and we can allow them to journey on without us, because we too, have our own journeys to fulfill.
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