Era of Arrogance

The Creator has created the human beings unique and full of miracles.

Throughout history, philosophers and scientists have tried to find out the reality of the human body, soul and psyche, but they couldn't reach its essence and reality. The more research they do about it, the more they feel that it is an endless ocean.

Our Nafs (soul) is fashioned in a strange form. We have in ourselves opposite feelings. We have love and hatred, sacrifice and selfishness, patience and anger, kindness and cruelty, arrogance and humility and so on.

We are full of positive and negative feelings.

Those who restrain their negative feelings, and demonstrate and develop positive feelings reach to the highest levels of morality and respect.

They become role models, spiritual gurus, and source of light for humanity. 

The difference between a successful person and a failure is the control of desires and negative feelings. 

A successful student, sportsman, professional has achieved success because he controls his desire, and sacrifices his sleep, rest, comfort etc for achieving his goals, and at the end he gets what he plans while others fall behind him.

One of the most important instinct of human beings is self respect but often it is confused with arrogance and pride. Arrogance is totally different from self respect. Self respect is respecting your self without any comparison to others. And it is respecting the others, loving the others, and in return getting the same from others. While Arrogance is considering and perceiving oneself as better than others.

It is natural that actions stem from thoughts and perceptions. When one considers himself better than others he starts humiliating others, belittling others, considering them insignificant, useless, burden, and much more. Not compulsory to show all such feelings in words or actions. Sometimes it is subtle and indirect. It can be seen in one's smile, gesture of eyes,  movement of eyebrows, play of fingers, style of nodding, way of walking, facial expression etc.

This arrogance generates a negative environment, and spoils the relations. All those around him  avoid him or neglect him, which leads to battle of ego, jealousy, hatred, backbiting etc. Gradually such a person loses his near and dear ones, and is compelled to live alone, which creates many psychological diseases such as isolation, depression, boredom, anxiety, etc; which are becoming more and more common nowadays.

Due to social media, the modern generation is obsessed with likes and followers. Everyone is endlessly pretending to be better than others. Hence, everyone is developing characteristics of arrogance instead of humbleness. 

They are always trying to hype their beauty, body, degree, knowledge, ideas, clothes, even their flaws and want the others to acknowledge it. If it is not acknowledged, it leads to deprssion and other psychological and social issues.

This is why Allah the creator has informed us that the one who protects himself from the evil of himself he will be successful.

"Indeed, he succeeds who purifies his ownself. And indeed he fails who corrupts his ownself." 

(91:9-10)

The Prophet (PBUH) always used to seek refuge from the evil of the nafs in each sermon.

He used to say: "Verily, all praise is for Allah. We praise Him, we seek His assistance and we ask for His forgiveness. And we seek refuge in Him from the evils of our selves."

Arrogance is a very heinous crime in Islam.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “One will not enter Paradise, if one has an atom's weight of arrogance in his/her heart.”

Hence, one should always seek refuge from this evil and try to avoid it.

May Allah protect all of us from this bad characteristic.

 Sheikh Abdus Salaam al-Madani

Founder,

Aspire College of Excellence