Being Neighborly – Abdal Hakim
Timothy John
Winter also known as Sheikh Abdal Hakim Murad is an English Sunni
Muslim scholar, researcher, writer and academic. He is the Dean of the
Cambridge Muslim College. This video is all about the rights and status of
neighbors according to Islam. He tells us the importance of neighbors and how
should we treat them according Islamic teachings. As we move towards the
fasting days and nights we reconnect with our biological dependencies, we realize
our brokenness and weakness, our ta'af and inkisar we basically realize our
dependency on the Creator which is Allah. We also see our engagement with
others which makes us understand us better. Religion is fundamentally interaction
with others. One cannot live in pure solitude. Infact we are social animals.
None of the five pillars of Islam and Iba'adah are solitary except for the
nawafil, taha'jjud and optional fasting. While all the other involves
engagement with others, all compulsory prayers in Islam are done in a
collective act like Zakat, Iftaar, Taraveeh, and Salah. But essentially all of
our basic purposes are engagement with others.
Even
though fasting is a solo act but it is experienced as the most collective time
of the year. The families come together to support and offer prayers also to
break the fast, the Iftaar, the taraveeh and later the Eid itself where the
whole Ummah jubilate together. Islam considers the rights of the neighbor to be
extremely important; it puts a deep emphasis on our individual duty to our
neighbors. The quality of Ramadan is that it brings us together apart from the fact that fasting is a solo act but it still engages us with the soul of others.
The basic Abrahamic principle is that, "Religion is shining treasure that
should be radiant on not just neighbors but the whole humanity". Besides
sharing food, ensuring security, and giving presents to one`s neighbors, as a
Muslim, one should keep the most excellent possible conduct with them under all
circumstances. One should always be at its best in keeping just behavior with
its nearby residents including both physical and verbal actions. In Islam there
is this immense importance of dealing with one`s neighbors properly that
Rasulullah (PBUH) felt if they would even be given the rights in inheritance.
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