WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:17.856 Someone younger than you mentions, kindly enough, that something you have been saying for years is not quite right. Before you have really taken in what they said, a sentence has formed: I have been doing this since before you were born. That may be true, and it still answers the person rather than the correction. 2 00:00:18.356 --> 00:00:26.972 So here is the question for this whole reflection. When someone corrects me, do I consider whether they are right — or do I dismiss them because of who they are? 3 00:00:28.022 --> 00:00:40.478 Assalamu alaikum, and welcome to this reflection from IMATX. We are staying today with one sentence in Surah Al-A'raf, spoken by Iblis: I am better than him. 4 00:00:40.978 --> 00:00:55.930 The setting is early in the surah. Allah says that He created us and gave us form, and then told the angels to prostrate to Adam. They all prostrated, except Iblis. Then Allah puts a question to him, and Iblis answers it. 5 00:00:56.430 --> 00:01:02.046 Here is that answer — verse twelve, recited by Mishary Rashid Alafasy. 6 00:01:03.196 --> 00:01:21.065 [Al-A'raf 7:12] 7 00:01:22.215 --> 00:01:34.719 In the Saheeh International translation: Allah said, "What prevented you from prostrating when I commanded you?" Satan said, "I am better than him. You created me from fire and created him from clay." 8 00:01:35.219 --> 00:01:46.379 Two things before we go on. The first: this is not the only place the exchange appears. Surah Sad, verses seventy-five and seventy-six, tells it again, with the same answer. 9 00:01:46.879 --> 00:01:57.991 The second is what the answer actually is. It is not a denial, and it is not a question. He refused, and then defended the refusal by claiming he was the better of the two. 10 00:01:58.491 --> 00:02:09.099 The verse after it says what became of him: descend from here, it is not for you to be arrogant in it, you are of the debased. The claim went up; the sentence came down. 11 00:02:10.149 --> 00:02:29.805 Ibn Kathir, in his commentary on this verse, makes one point that the rest of this reflection rests on. I am paraphrasing him here, not quoting. He says the excuse is worse than the offence itself — because Iblis was not confessing to anything. He was explaining why the command should not have applied to him. 12 00:02:30.305 --> 00:02:47.873 Consider the shape of that. A command was given, plainly, by the One who gave him existence. And instead of obeying, he set his own rank against it, and the rank won. The superiority was not an observation made on the side. It was the reason he gave for not doing what he was told. 13 00:02:48.373 --> 00:03:01.141 Ibn Kathir also says where the comparison goes wrong. Iblis looked at what Adam was made from, and did not look at what Allah had just done for him. He weighed the material and ignored the honour. 14 00:03:01.641 --> 00:03:12.705 That is the mechanism, and it travels. A claim about who I am, used to settle a question about what is true. Once that works, we never have to hear the thing being said to us. 15 00:03:13.755 --> 00:03:27.363 So where does this show up in us? Almost never in those words. What we produce is a reason — usually accurate, quick to arrive, and arriving after the decision has already been made somewhere further back. 16 00:03:27.863 --> 00:03:49.511 There is a narration in Sahih Muslim, ninety-one a, from Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, that puts a definition on this. The Prophet peace and blessings be upon him said that whoever has in his heart the weight of a mustard seed of pride will not enter Paradise. A man in the gathering heard that and asked about it — he said that a person likes his dress to be fine, and his shoes to be fine. 17 00:03:50.011 --> 00:04:04.171 The answer came: Allah is Graceful and He loves Grace. Pride is disdaining the truth, and contempt for the people. That last line is the translated wording of the narration, and it is the definition. 18 00:04:04.671 --> 00:04:18.591 The Arabic word being defined is kibr. Notice what it leaves out. Liking good clothes is not it. Kibr is those two things: refusing the truth when you hear it, and looking down on the person in front of you. 19 00:04:19.091 --> 00:04:28.307 Now, a boundary, because this can be turned against people. A person correcting you is not the same as Allah commanding you. People are often wrong. 20 00:04:28.807 --> 00:04:38.623 You are allowed to ask someone what they are basing that on. You are allowed to disagree, respectfully, and to keep reasonable limits on your time and your attention. None of that is kibr. 21 00:04:39.123 --> 00:04:55.491 The question is narrower, and harder. Is their age, or their newness, or their standing quietly stopping you from giving what they said a fair hearing at all? That is the test — not whether you end up agreeing. Whether you actually considered it. 22 00:04:56.541 --> 00:05:07.005 So here is one practice for this week, in three steps. First: when a correction comes, pause before you defend yourself. Just that — do not answer in the first moment. 23 00:05:07.505 --> 00:05:15.905 Second: ask what is true in what they said. Not whether they had the right to say it, not whether they said it well. What in it is true. 24 00:05:16.405 --> 00:05:28.573 Third: if it is right, acknowledge it, and change one concrete thing. It does not need a speech. You're right about that. Let me fix it. That is the whole sentence. 25 00:05:29.073 --> 00:05:54.921 And this is where the surah gives us something to hope in. A few verses later, Adam and his wife also do what they were told not to do. But their answer is the opposite one: our Lord, we have wronged ourselves, and if You do not forgive us and have mercy upon us, we will surely be among the losers. No claim of rank, no defence. They name it and ask for mercy, and that door stayed open. 26 00:05:55.421 --> 00:06:16.277 Let me close with a du'a of our own — not a transmitted supplication, just words for tonight. O Allah, when the truth reaches us, let us recognise it, whoever carries it. Take the weight of kibr out of our hearts. And when we are wrong, make us quick to say so, and quick to turn back to You. 27 00:06:16.777 --> 00:06:20.689 Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.