‘Do
you know what the rights of neighbors are?’ Asked the noble Prophet. And he
went on to give a list.
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Help him if he asks your help
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Give him relief if he seeks your
relief
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Lend him if he needs a loan
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Show him concern if he is distressed
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Nurse him when he is ill
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Attend his funeral if he dies
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Congratulate him if he meets any good
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Sympathies with him if any calamity
befall him
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Do not block his air by raising your
building high without his permission
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Haraas him not
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Give him a share when you buy fruits,
and if you do not give him, bring what you buy quietly and let not your
children take them out to excite the jealousy of his children.
This hadith shows that
you must at least know who your neighbors are. In big cities nowadays, there
are many people who live in blocks of flats or on the same street who do not
know one another. Moreover, in Islamic terminology, a neighbor is not just the
person who lives next-door to you or in your own neighborhood. A fellow student,
your colleague at work or a fellow-traveler on a journey are all regarded as
your neighbor. In terms of preferential treatment, the neighbor who lives
closest to you has priority.
There is no distinction
between a Muslim and a non-Muslim so far as the human needs and rights of
neighbors are concerned.
You are not only required
to have goodwill to your neighbor but should offer practical care and help when
he is sick or in need. Nobody can be a believer, said the Prophet, if his
neighbors pass the night hungry while he has his stomach full.
You also need to give
emotional support by sharing in his joys and sorrows. Naturally, you also need
to refrain from causing any harm or injury, any verbal or physical harassment
or emotional stress. Nobody can be a true believer unless his neighbors feel
secure form his hands and tongue, warned the noble Prophet.
Be sensitive to your
neighbors’ feelings, for example by not causing embarrassment by indulging in
conspicuous consumption. The advice about taking in what your purchased quietly
shows how sensitive you must be to the feelings and economic situation of
others. No boasting or flagrant display of wealth. There should be no such
thing as ‘keeping up with the Jones’s’.
Give help to neighbors
and others in society of course is not addressed to the rich or the strong
only; it extends to the poor and the weak and indeed to everyone. This is
further shown by the Prophet’s definition charity or sadaqaah. He was reported have said, ‘There is no person
who does not have the obligation of doing charity every day that the sun
rises’.
When he was asked,
‘Wherefrom would we get something to give in charity (so often)?’, he replied,
‘Indeed the gates to goodness are many: glorifying God, praise Him, magnifying
Him, saying ‘there is no god but Allah’, enjoining the good and forbidding the
wrong, removing any source of harm from the road, listening to the aggrieved;
guiding the blind, showing the seeker his need, striving as far as your two
legs could carry you and with deep concern to give succour to him who asks,
carrying with the strength of your arms the burdens of the weak. All these are
acts of charity which are an obligation on you’.
‘And your smiling in the
face of your brother is a charity, your removing of stones and thorns from
people’s paths is charity and your guiding a man gone astray in the world is
charity’.
We can see that two main
concern of the Prophet: to awaken the springs of goodness in the human heart;
and to strengthen the society with the bond of love, affection and brotherhood.
Material and economic
help is often crucial in relieving people’s distress. But to limit charity to
tangible things like money and clothes and food is to divide people into
receivers on the one hand and givers on the other hand. This may rise to
humiliation on the one hand and pride and conceit on the other. The Prophet
emphasizing that ‘smiling is charity’ has shown that feeling and sensitivity
from the core of human relations. So this should be how callousness, hatred and
envy are removed and a caring, tender and beautiful neighborhood and society is
created. (top)
Supervising
Neighborhood
No one can pretend that
everyone on a neighborhood will act with such care and tenderness to everyone else.
Even within a family, and so too even in the closet-knit communities and
neighborhoods act motivated by greed or hatred are committed. There is evil and
crime. There is malicious gossip and backbiting. There is envy and jealousy.
There is suspicion and spying. That is why Islam does not stop at appealing to
each individual to be good. Nor does it stop at only commanding or promoting
good on a collective basis. It requires the individual and the community to
combat evil. But this is not done in any arbitrary manner. It is also not done
with vengeance and vindictiveness.
In combating evil, there
are three things which are essential: knowledge, gentleness and patience.
Knowledge must come before command and prohibition gentleness accompanies it,
and patience follows, although all three really go hand to hand. As the Prophet
said, ‘Gentleness beautifies everything; harshness disfigures’. If one is not
forbearing and patient one will do more harm than good.
Individual initiative
With this in mind, you
can understand and act on the frequent order in the Qur’an ‘to enjoin the good
and prohibit the bad’. There are many sayings of the Prophet in this regard:
‘Whoever sees something
bad, let him change it with his hand; if is not able then he should do so with
his tongue; if he is not able, then he should hate it in his heart and this
last shows the weakest faith’
‘Help your brother
whether he is a wrong-doer or is wronged’
‘You must prevent him
from wrong=doing – that will be your help to him’.
There is a place for
individual initiative in dealing with petty instances of bad behavior and
conduct. In seeking to prevent a person from such conduct, your first duty is
to offer gentle advice, to point out using reason the consequences of a
particular wrong-doing, and to try to
bring about a change for the better in the person concerned. In this process, a
soft and gentle approach is required for just as you are not allowed to enter a
house without first knocking and asking permission, so you cannot get access
into a person’s heart by barging in and using violent means.
The aim of correcting
should not be to create embarrassment and it should no be done in a manner as
to alienate a person. Correction must involve imparting knowledge and the
reason and wisdom behind a ruling.
Change to be meaningful
and permanent often needs to be gradual. It may involve changing years of habit
and ways of thinking and doing things. This is why patience is so important in
bringing about change and reform. (top)
Public supervision
Other more reprehensible,
petty offences and other crimes in a neighborhood or society cannot merely be
left to individual initiatives. When for example, the problem of
durg-trafficking and drug-taking is as organized as it has become in many
neighborhoods and communities, it needs collective action and the sanctions of
the law to deal with such a problem.
In organized Muslim
neighborhoods and society, there is the institution of the hisbah or public supervision which is there to see that
individual and public conduct of people conform the moral and legal injunction
s of Islam. The person who is responsible for the hisbah is the muhtasib.
The mustasib has three main sets of functions:
1. to see that
the community as a whole had proper facilities for the performance of worship,
like the maintenance of mosque and arranging the daily and other congregational
Salaat. He would see to it that no one willfully stays away from the compulsory
Prayer;
2. to see that
justice was maintained in the neighborhood or community, to ensure that public
law and order was maintained, to protect people from dishonesty and
malpractices like bad workmanship, faulty measures, fraud, extortion, hoarding
of essential supplies and so on;
3. to
supervise various municipal services like hygiene conditions, removal of
garbage, water supply, architectural design of buildings and the local
environment as a whole.
There are the
institutional means for a neighborhood or a community to watch over its affairs
and for immediate action to be taken. If a person was found guilty, sanctions
were applied on the spot without any recourse to any lengthy judicial procedures.
A sanction may either be a fine, or a decision to impose a total social boycott
on a person so that none speaks to him, buys from or sells anything to him, or
visits him.
Matters of a serious
nature must necessarily be referred to judicial authorities in a community.
Respect for the moral and legal code of Islam and the equality of all before
the law are essential for the security and well-being of a society.