“How will the Almighty God be kind to a community which does not give the poor in their midst their rights except only when they are forced to do so”! – Prophet Muhammad (Salla-llahu Alehi Wasalam)
Reading this prophet Muhammad’s (saw), statement has revealed to me one of the reasons why this nation has remained besotted, beleaguered and without direction!
From this hadith, I have come to the realization that the tyranny of the people in government has been the reason why the blessing of God eludes their handiworks!
Here, those at the helms of affairs as well as others who are managing one business or the other and some who are wealthy enough to hire cooks or maids,have not been kind to the common men beneath them!
They maltreat, shout, hit, maim or even hold the salaries and emoluments of the poor people at their beck and call. Most times, the incentives needed for the jobs these people are doing are not given to them by the government and those that have employed them in the first place while those on whose hands they are, including the government still go ahead and demand that they be hundred percent productive!
Coming down to home fronts, we see how the wealthy of us, who have the wherewithal to employ maids, are using them! Drivers, in some homes, are used as gate men of which they are not initially employed to be one!
Not done, the salaries of these people are reduced at a slight opportunity, may be ,for an atom of mistake or error ,on the part of these poor labourers while in some cases, such as in the case of the government workers, wages and salaries are not paid for many months while the leaders of the government are accruing money to their own accounts every minutes, enjoying government’s perks as well as good health system free of charge!
Another good instance of using labourers anyhow is the way the national government is using the university teachers these days! After many a month on strike for the funding of universities, increment of their poor salaries and renumeration and sundry issues, when men and women of good will had come to plead with the teachers to suspend the strike and when the government had gone ahead and obtained a force injunction from the court to suspend it , and when the universities’ teachers had suspended it, the government still went ahead and pay them the last month’s salary pro-rata, though this system of payment was not part of contracts when the teachers were being employed earlier!
But, a critical study of the golden saying of the prophet above will make those who reflect to have a rethink on their dealings with those beneath them!It is inferred from the above Hadith that a people, tribe, society and nation may be dealt with negatively if it does not care and show kindness to the people at the lowest rung of the leather in this life!
It seems also that the blessing of God is much more with those that are humane, kinder,beneficent and benevolent to the helpless and people of little means of the earth than with those that are unkind,callous and bestially with the poor
It then follows that we should be kind with one another at this critical time in our life.Virtually every one of us living now is in need of good words, food,water and cash for our nourishment! To me, this is the best time which best illustrates the axiom “nobody is an island”!
Whatever one possesses these days needs to be sharing with other; if it is water, now Africa nations need drinkable water more than in the past with the rising in the population in this part of the globe ; if it is wealth you possess in abundance, you need to give a part of it out for the upkeep of the commoners and if it is the good words you are very much at home with,please, spread them for the betterment of the animal called man!
The people of the past were distinguished from those that live today in many fronts which made their life easier, comfortable and blessed despite the lack of refined science and technology that make life more easy today!
Comparing life these days with the people of the past despite every finer technology at our commands, this time, man is blessed with every fine things science and technology can proffer but despite this, the intangibles that help the tangibles go well, are lacking!
These our days, it seems so, are the time of Money without Morality, Life without Soul, Commerce without integrity , Religion without Love and Government without Governance!
And of the intangibles the men of the past enjoyed that made their life easier was kindness from the leaders to the followers, from husbands to the wives, from masters to the apprentices and from man to animal!
This life, to emphasis the above hadith of our noble prophet (Salawatu-llahi alehi) will only be blessed with the God’s kindness, only when those that are placed above others as heavens on those who are the similitude of earth, are kind to those under them. The prophet would say again:
“He will not be blessed those that don’t bless others”
The Abu Hanifah’s Example Of Kindness
Nuʿmān ibn Thābit ibn Zūṭā ibn Marzubān ( c. 699–767), commonly known by his kunya Abū Ḥanīfa (or reverently as Imam Abū Ḥanīfa by Sunni Muslims, was a Persian Sunni Muslim theologian and jurist who became the eponymous founder of the Hanafi school of Sunni jurisprudence, which has remained the most widely practiced law school in the Sunni tradition, predominates in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran (until the 16th century), Balkans, Russia, Chechnya, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Muslims in India, Turkey, and some parts of the Arab world.
Born to a Muslim family in Kufa, Abu Hanifa is known to have travelled to the Hejaz region of Arabia in his youth, where he studied in Mecca and Medina. As his career as a theologian and jurist progressed, Abu Hanifa became known for favoring the use of reason in his legal rulings (faqīh dhū raʾy) and even in his theology. Abu Hanifa’s theological school is claimed to be what would later develop into the Maturidi school of Sunni theology.
Imam Abu Yusuf was the esteemed and dedicated student of Imam Abu Hanifah. He attained the rank of being the second eloquent Imam of the Hanafih school of thought as he had gained a lot of knowledge and fine insight from Abu Hanifah himself!
Abu Yusuf had described the practice of Abu Hanifah in a fair concise and comprehensive words while Hafiz ibn Hajar Al-Makki, reports this in his book, Al-Khaeraatul-Hisan fi Manaakibil Imam Abi Hanifah An-Numan as follows:
“If a person expressed his gratitude to Imam Abu Hanifah, when he had given him a gift, he would be upset and would say;” express your gratitude to God, for He had just blessed you through me”
He continued:
” He saw to my needs and the needs of my family for twenty years and when I said to him that I have never seen anyone as generous as him, he replied, ”what would you have said if you had seen my teacher, Ahmad bn Abi Sulaiman?!”
No one possessed more virtuous qualities than him. People would say that Allah Ta’ala beautified Imam Abu Hanifah with the qualities of knowledge , practice , generosity and good character directly from the Qur’an!
On one occasion, Ibrahim bin Utbah was imprisoned because of a debt of more than four thousand Dirham. His brothers sought to raise the money and asked various people for assistance!
When they arrived at Abu Hanifah’s door, he instructed them to return whatever they had taken from others and he paid the entire debt on his behalf!
What is inferred from the Abu Hanifah’s story above is his kindheartedness to the low and mighty in his days! This had gone along way to edify and positively situate his deluge of knowledge!
Abu Hanifah had been good to those under his authority and suzerainty in particular and this had aided his spread of the knowledge of Allah’s Book and the Sunnah of the prophet (salla-llahu alehi wasalam), on one hands while it had helped his students in their mastery of knowledge Abu Hanifah was imparting ,on the other hands!
More over, his kindheartedness has also cemented his place among the pantheon of Islamic law and jurisprudence practitioners for more than a thousand years after his death for through it, his students were able to face their studies squarely without having a recourse to extra labours in ekeing out their livings which could have hampered their mastery and spread of Abu Hanifah’s knowledge to the nook and cranny of the world as Abu Yusuf, his erstwhile student had done afterwards!