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Suspicious Minds
By Ibrahim Naseem
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In a well-known hadith, we learn that one day the Prophet (God’s peace and blessings be upon him) was walking with his wife and passed by a group of his Companions. The Prophet stopped and told them the woman accompanying him was indeed his wife. He did this so that no one would suspect anything ill of him, like consorting with a strange woman.
The Companions told him that they would never suspect anything evil of him. But then the Prophet said that it is important to block the possibility of suspicion, for Satan endeavors to whisper evil thoughts in people by any means necessary and that Satan can flow in the veins of the Children of Adam with ease.
This hadith reveals something about one of Satan’s goals and methods. Satan craves to create dissension between people, even those who know one another well, whether they are life-long friends, spouses, siblings, neighbors, colleagues, parents and children, or even casual acquaintances. His method is to construct suspicion by using facts and aiming them toward an evil conclusion. For it was a fact that the Prophet was walking with a woman. It was a fact that it would not be customarily possible to be sure who the woman was, given her mode of dress. Applying these “facts” Satan can whisper into one’s mind false assumptions. In other words, he creates the seeds of suspicion from the material of observable facts. Also, it reveals the reality that Satan can indeed whisper ideas and create false thoughts about people and, more paramount, false notions about religion, namely, lies about Allah, the Prophet (peace be upon him), the Quran, and the need to cling to their teachings.
The hadith speaks of our obligation to prevent suspicion, and it shows how to do so when the possibility presents itself. In this case, the Prophet took the initiative and blocked the opportunity for suspicion to take footing.
But there is another side to this hadith that is often neglected. The Companions told the Prophet that they would never think anything ill of him and that they would not suspect him. We should believe them. The Companions were of high character and spiritual maturity, so they would naturally prevent suspicion from entering their hearts in the first place. We are not like that. For some reason, we are attracted to suspicion and rumor.
We live in a day in which suspicion is the meat of the media, an essential nutrient, the glue that attracts its audience. And even in our personal experiences, each one of us can recall episodes of our own suspicion and can relate to the fact that suspicion is a terrible product of the human mind that has damaged relations. Not a single person reading this has escaped being caught with false ideas of another person. We all know how it feels. We remember the shame of it and the potential or real damage suspicion can afflict on otherwise beautiful relationships with friends, relatives, and spouses. Scholars have said that suspicion is like “ghiba”, that is, backbiting or slandering another person. They say that suspicion lodged in the heart may easily effect one’s thoughts about others. This is forbidden. And a hadith states, “Beware of a bad opinion [about others] because it is the most false of speech.”
Suspicion is something that does not go away by itself. It requires address and, better yet, proactive measures. Scholars in the science of the purification of the heart have said that “knowledge” and “purity of heart” deter suspicion and make its presence unwelcome. They lead people to good deeds and good thoughts. The chief elements of “purity of heart” are regular and frequent engagements in the remembrance of Allah and attachment to learning about His religion, for these things build one’s psychological security which sweeps away the fuel of suspicion.