A 24 year old boy seeing out from the train's window shouted... "Dad, look the trees are going behind us!" As his Dad smiled, a couple sitting nearby, looked at the 24 year old's childish behavior with pity, when suddenly he again exclaimed... "Dad, look the clouds are running with us!" The couple couldn't resist and said to the old man... "Why don't you take your son to see a good doctor?" The old man smiled and said... "I did and we are just coming from the hospital, my son was blind from birth and he just got his eyes today."

The negative news is popular. Whatever is the goal behind them, those may not be guided by honorable intent. Always the intention is decisive.

O ye who believe! Avoid suspicion as much (as possible): for suspicion in some cases is a sin: And spy not on each other behind their backs. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? Nay, ye would abhor it...But fear Allah. For Allah is Oft-Returning, Most Merciful. (Quran 49:12)

Most kinds of suspicion are baseless and to be avoided, and some are crimes in themselves: for they do cruel injustice to innocent men and women. Spying, or enquiring too curiously into other people's affairs, means either idle curiosity, and is therefore futile, or suspicion carried a stage further, which almost amounts to sin. Back- biting also is a brood of the same genus. It may be either futile but all the same mischievous, or it may be poisoned with malice, in which case it is a sin added to sin. No one would like even to think of such an abomination as eating the flesh of his brother. But when the brother is dead, and the flesh is carrion, abomination is added to abomination. In the same way we are asked to refrain from hurting people's feelings when they are present; how much worse is it when we say things, true or false, when they are absent!

In addition to negative news, we have to talk about negative attitudes and views. When we see the world like this, we project the negatives of our own spiritual world on it:

A young couple moves into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the laundry outside. "That laundry is not very clean", she said. "She doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap." Her husband looked on, but remained silent. Every time her neighbor would hang her washing to dry, the young woman would make the same comments. About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean laundry on the line and said to her husband: "Look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this." "The husband said, "I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows".

Lesson: If our windows are dirty so will we see others as dirty too. What we see in others is indeed a reflection of our inner-selves! So, it is with life that what we see when watching others depends on the purity of the window through which we look. It is easy for us to discuss other people, their lives & things that really doesn't even concern us and we tend to forget - our windows may not be that clean after all! If we are good we will see good...

In life we often tend to be judgmental and very often look down upon others without exploring deeper as to why the person is behaving in such a way.

Abu Hurayra said: "A believer is the mirror of his brother. When he sees a fault in it, he should correct it."

Grade: Hasam
Reference: Al-Adab Al-Mufrad 238