Tuesday, July 8, 2008

"Don't Rush Into Conclusion"

THINK TWICE
One night there was a woman at the airport who had to wait for several hours before catching her next flight. While she waited she bought a book and a pack of biscuits to spend the time. She looked for a place to sit and waited.She was deep into her book, when suddenly she realized that there was a young man sitting next to her who was stretching his hand, with no concern whatsoever, and grabbing the pack of cookies lying between them.

He started to eat them one by one.Not wanting to make a fuss about it she decided to ignore him. The woman, slightly bothered, ate the cookies and watched the clock, while the young and shameless thief of biscuits was also finishing them. The woman started to get really angry at this point and thought "If I wasn't such a good and educated person, I would have given this daring man a black eye by now."Every time she ate a biscuit, he had one too.


The dialogue between their eyes continued and when only one biscuit was left, she wondered what was he going to do. Softly and with a nervous smile, the young man grabbed the last biscuit and broke it in two. He offered one half to the woman while he ate the other half.Briskly she took the biscuit and thought, "What an insolent man! How uneducated! He didn't even thank me!" She had never met anybody so fresh and sighed relieved to hear her flight announced.


She grabbed her bags and went towards the boarding gate refusing to look back to where that insolent thief was seated.After boarding the plane and nicely seated, she looked for her book which was nearly finished by now. While looking into her bag she was totally surprised to find her pack of biscuits nearly intact. "If my biscuits are here", she thought feeling terribly, "those others were his and he tried to share them with me." Too late to apologize to the young man, she realized with pain, that it was her who had been insolent, uneducated and a thief, and not him.How many times in our lives, had we know with certainty that something happened in a certain way, only to discover later that it wasn't true?


How many times has our lack of trust within us made us judge other people unfairly with our conceited ideas, often far away from reality. Abdullah bin Abbas (radi Allahu anhu) reported that the Prophet(sallAllahu alaiyhi wassallam) said:do not be envious of one anotherdo not artificially inflate prices against one another do not hate one another do not shun one another do not undercut one another in business transactionsand be as fellow-brothers and servants of Allah. A Muslim is the brother of a Muslim. He neither oppresses him nor humiliates him nor looks down upon him. Piety is here - and he pointed to his chest three times. It is evil enough for a Muslim to hold his brother Muslim in contempt. All things of a Muslim are inviolable for another Muslim: his blood, his property and his honour.

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