Advising Others

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate
Assalaamu alaykum

Dear Friends

I pray that you are well.

A relative or an old friend comes on a weekend to visit you, and you enjoy a good meal together. You then sit down to have tea and talk about old times. You finish the tea, and the time for the `Asr prayer enters. You tell your relative or friend that it's time to pray and he says, "Sure, go ahead and pray. I'll just wait for you here until you're done." What would you do?

Do not proceed reading until you answer this question to yourself.

Advising others needs wisdom and tact. Each one of us need to understand something about ourselves. How do we react in a situation like this.

Generally speaking, there are two kinds of people: those who hesitate from advising others, and those who do it eagerly. Each kind of person has their own advantages and disadvantages.

The shy and hesitant person needs to work on being brave (i.e. fearing no one but Allah) and not shying away, but when they actually do give advice, they'll normally have made a conscious effort to do it for the sake of Allah. So their actions will often be more sincere.

The eager person already has a character that can easily advise other people. What they need to work on is to make sure that they are doing it out of slavehood to Allah Most High. One way to bring this thought to the forefront of one's mind is to consciously take steps to do what one does with excellence. For example, by reading books that teach one how to talk to other people with tact and effectiveness. Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence Poeple, is a good book for such a person to read.

InshaAllah, you can figure out which kind of person you fit best by your answer and work on improving it.

May Allah Most High guide us in commanding good and forbidding evil. Ameen. Please don't forget us in your night prayers. Jazakallahu khairan.

And Allah knows best.
Wassalaam