{"id":20011,"date":"2019-07-03T16:13:18","date_gmt":"2019-07-03T16:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mezquitadesevilla.com\/correcting-an-evil-cannot-cause-a-greater-evil-sheikh-ahmed-bermejo\/"},"modified":"2019-07-03T16:13:18","modified_gmt":"2019-07-03T16:13:18","slug":"correcting-an-evil-cannot-cause-a-greater-evil-sheikh-ahmed-bermejo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mezquitadesevilla.com\/en\/correcting-an-evil-cannot-cause-a-greater-evil-sheikh-ahmed-bermejo\/","title":{"rendered":"Correcting an evil cannot cause a greater evil, Sheikh Ahmed Bermejo"},"content":{"rendered":"

In these last few days I have been remembering a lot of one of my teachers, a man with whom I shared a lot and from whom I learned even more, a man of a unique character, of a high behavior, far from evil and close to good, whom I always remember with a smile ready to explain things to me as many times as necessary, with countless examples and situations until my hard head understood them.
\nFor a long time I had the gift of being his translator, that allowed me to spend a lot of time with him, I saw his reactions to the questions in the classes, some made with treachery and trying to “catch”, trying to put his finger on the sore spot with accusations that this is an evil, that it is Bida<\/em>‘ or is Makruh <\/em>Or is it Haram<\/em>\u2026 and no matter how much I saw him in action, I was always surprised by the ability he had to temper those spirits and give a majestic response, fully grounded in our Din, and make that one who had been on fire accusing, leave like a raft of oil and not only that, but he managed to make him leave with a smile on his face and what is even more difficult, with his heart full of love and mercy.
\nHow did he achieve this, you may ask?
\nAnd you may also be wondering: Why is Ahmed coming with this now?
\nThe two questions go hand in hand and are the reason why I sat down in front of the computer today to write these words.
\nAs the son of a Galician, I am going to start by answering the second question: Why do I mention this now?
\nI do so because in recent days I have received several questions and complaints that had a common denominator, and that is not at all far from those questions and questions that were posed to my teacher and that he so admirably “bullfighted”.
\nThat common denominator is the accusation of other Muslims for secondary aspects in our Deen, all dressed up in a “false” piety and puritanism, of a misunderstood goodism, which make the arrogant one mistreat another person, to accuse him of doing things wrong, that he is “sinning”, that his prayer is not valid and the most daring even dare to say that he will rot in the Fire of Hell, Because, for example, such a girl, a noble, good girl who with her best intentions has gone to the mosque, has done the salat <\/em>with pants… My God!
\nBut what is happening with us?
\nAre we so bad?
\nHave we reached these extremes?
\nWell, I’m sorry to say it, but yes, we’ve reached these extremes.
\nAnd what does this achieve?
\nWe all know it, instead of bringing closer it moves away, instead of increasing the desire it is lowered, instead of increasing our pride in being Muslims it goes down and little by little, we are losing our identity.
\nThis is happening among us Muslims and this is the reason I am writing these lines.
\nIt is a behavior that we must not tolerate, we cannot allow ourselves to give lessons, looking at the speck in other people’s eyes and forgetting the beam we have in our own.
\nThis is totally different from the teaching of Islam, from the teaching of the Qur’an, from the Sunnah of Messenger Muhammad, Salla Allahu Alaihi wa Salllam.<\/em>, and remember that we have spoken at length about it and what our behavior should be in the two previous articles that I have written. And now I return to the first question and the example of my teacher; How did he manage to put out that fire from which he came with this type of accusation? Or rather, what was it that he always told me in this type of situation? He would tell me, “Ahmed, apply this rule in your life: Never ever, for trying to fix a Munkar<\/em> cause a Munkar <\/em>elder.
\nNever, ever, to try to fix something that is wrong, cause a greater evil.”
\nThis is a rule that I have always tried to apply in my life since then and I think we would do much better, generally speaking as an ummah<\/em>, if each and every one of us applied it.
\nBut of course, it is not easy to do it if what we like is to always go around giving life lessons, saying how things have to be done, accusing others of doing this or not doing that, that it is wrong and that it is right. Our business is not to demean, on the contrary, it is to elevate, it is not about blaming, it is about forgiving, it is not about attacking, it is about defending, our business is not to impose things, it is that they are done out of love and conviction, it is not about looking at others, it is about looking at oneself.
\nAnd how beautiful in this regard is the story of the two grandsons of the Messenger of Allah, salla allaahu alaihi wa sallam<\/em>, al-Hasan and al-Husayn, may Allaah be pleased with them, when on one occasion they saw a man who was doing wudu <\/em>wrong.
\nWhat did they do?
\nHow did they correct that munkar? <\/em>Did they cause a greater munkar<\/em> , how could it be that this man turned away from Islam?
\nDid they tell him, brother, are you doing it wrong?
\nDid they go to tell him that he was doing wudu <\/em>wrong and that because of it his prayers were not accepted and that he would then burn in Hellfire because his prayers were not valid?
\nUnfortunately this is what many people would do nowadays… But no; They, who had been brought up in the best of houses, who were steeped in their grandfather’s love and mercy, went to this man and said, “We apologize to you, but my brother and I have a dispute about how wudu<\/em> is done, and seeing how well you did it, we wanted to ask you to act as a judge and to tell us who is doing it right and who is doing it wrong.”
\nThe man accepted.
\nAnd the two young men did wudu<\/em>, one after the other, in a correct way, just as they had learned it at home.
\nWhen the man sees them, I cannot help saying: “By Allah, that you both do it correctly, it is I who until this moment did it wrong.”
\nAnd in this wonderful way, full of mercy and wisdom, they managed to correct a munkar<\/em>.
\nThis is part of what my teacher taught me and if among all the lessons he gave me, all the knowledge he transmitted to me, all the treasures he bequeathed to me, I had to keep only one, without any doubt I would choose this one: “Ahmed, apply this rule in your life: Never again, by trying to fix a munkar<\/em> cause a munkar <\/em>elder.
\nNever ever, in order to try to correct an evil, cause a greater evil.”
\nThis is mercy, this is a true understanding of Islam, this is knowledge of truth, this is true wisdom, this is real hikma<\/em> ; it is not to spout a string of hadiths and verses of the Koran, it is not to fill one’s mouth with grandiloquent sayings and threats, it is not to accuse, it is not to demean, it is not to mistreat; it is forgiving, it is uplifting, it is the best behavior, the highest wisdom, and filling the heart with love for Allah and His Messenger. I am sorry if I have exceeded my words, but unfortunately it is a behavior that is too common among us and it is something that saddens me greatly and that has been hovering inside me for a few weeks, and therefore, and hoping that Allah will enlighten our intellects and hearts, I have decided to write it down and share it with you.
\nAnd every mistake in it is the result of my inability and ignorance and every right comes from Allah.
\nO Allah we ask you to give us the ability to transmit Islam correctly, more by our behaviour than by our words.
\nO Allah, we ask You to make us one of those who by fixing an evil never cause a greater evil.
\nAmin.
\nSheikh Ahmed Bermejo www.ahmedbermejo.com<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In these last few days I have been remembering a lot of one of my teachers, a man with whom I shared a lot and from whom I learned even more, a man of a unique character, of a high behavior, far from evil and close to good, whom I always remember with a smile …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11906,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-articles","category-ahmed-en","category-conocimiento-en"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mezquitadesevilla.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/aa-copy.png?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mezquitadesevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mezquitadesevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mezquitadesevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mezquitadesevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mezquitadesevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mezquitadesevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mezquitadesevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mezquitadesevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mezquitadesevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mezquitadesevilla.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}