Page 74 - The Mercy of Believers
P. 74

72
                                 THE MERCY OF BELIEVERS

             ing or staggering can be made a mockery of.
                 However, believers never descend to such behaviour.
             After all, they know that mockery is severely condemned in
             the Qur'an and that it is conduct disapproved of by Allah:

                 You who believe! People should not ridicule others
                 who may be better than themselves; nor should any
                 women ridicule other women who may be better
                 than themselves… (Surat al-Hujurat: 11)
                 The criteria taken into account by believers while as-
             sessing others are their faith, good values and sincere ef-
             forts to draw nearer to Allah. This being the case, they
             never humiliate or provoke anyone because of his physi-
             cal weaknesses. On the contrary, these weaknesses evoke
             feelings of mercy in believers and thus they make a sin-
             cere effort to eliminate them. Similarly, believers never
             embarrass others because they mispronounce a word,
             stumble, or fail to deal with the kind of unfavourable sit-
             uation which one may encounter at any time.
                 Moreover, believers never indulge in offensive behav-
             iour, such as mockery, just to amuse themselves. They
             take no pleasure from a joke, conversation or attitude
             which is intended to offend people. They never lapse into
             such behaviour. Furthermore, in any incident in which an
             individual is mocked or humiliated, they can never re-
             main silent. Believers are entirely on the side of the per-
             son who is being harassed and never let others hurt him.
             As a matter of conscience, they can imagine how such be-
             haviour as they would never like to experience them-
             selves, can also cause offence to others.
                 All this meticulous attention to proper behaviour is
   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79