He also said, “Beyond that there is not even a mustard seed of faith.”
Someone asked Ibn Masʿūd, “Who is the dead among the living?” He replied, “The one who recognizes no good and condemns no evil.” Such a person is the “misguided victim” mentioned in the report of Ḥudhayfah ibn al-Yamān.
At this point two groups of people err:
- A group who abandon the duty of enjoining right and forbidding wrong by misinterpreting the verse. Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq—may Allah be pleased with him—said in one of his sermons: “You recite this verse,
‘O you who believe, take care of your own souls. Those who go astray will not harm you once you have been guided’ (Q 5:105),
and yet you apply it where it does not belong. I heard the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—say, ‘When people see wrongdoing and do not change it, Allah is on the verge of inflicting a general punishment upon them.’”
- A second group want to command and forbid—whether with the tongue or with the hand—without knowledge, forbearance, or patience, and without weighing what will set matters right or corrupt them, what they can do and what they cannot. In the ḥadīth of Abū Thaʿlabah al-Khashanī, I asked the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—about this, and he said:
“Continue to enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong until you see miserliness obeyed, desires followed, the world preferred, and everyone delighted with his own opinion. When you see a matter that you have no power to change, attend to yourself and leave the masses to their ways. Ahead of you are days in which patience will be like grasping a live coal; whoever acts in those days will have the reward of fifty men who do as he does.”
Thus a person may proceed to command and forbid, imagining that he is obeying Allah and His Messenger, while in reality he is overstepping