Lessons from Nahjul Balagha [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Sermons
Sermon
165

SERMON 165

Advice for observing courtesy
and kindness

and keeping in and out of the
same

The young among you
should follow the elders while the elders should be kind to the
young. Do not be like those rude people of the pre-lslamic
(al-jahiliyyah) period who did not exert themselves in religion
nor use their intellects in the matter of Allah. They (1)
are like the breaking of eggs in the nest of a dangerous bird,
because their breaking looks bad, but keeping them intact would
mean the production of dangerous young ones.

A part of the same
sermon

About the autocracy
and oppression of the Umayyads and their fate

They will divide after
their unity and scatter away from their centre. Some of them will
stick to the branches, and bending down as the branches bend,
until Allah, the Sublime, will collect them together for the day
that will be worst for the Umayyads just as the scattered bits of
clouds collect together in the autumn. Allah will create affection
among them. Then He will make them into a strong mass like the
mass of clouds. Then he will open doors for them to flow out from
their starting place like the flood of the two gardens (of Saba')
from which neither high rocks remained safe nor small hillocks,
and its flow could be repulsed neither by strong mountains nor by
high lands. Allah will scatter them in the low lands of valleys
and then He will make them flow like streams throughout the earth,
and through them He will arrange the taking of rights of one
people by another people and make one people to stay in the houses
of another people. By Allah, all their position and esteem will
dissolve as fat dissolves on the fire.

The cause of tyranny

O' people! If you had
not evaded support of the truth and had not felt weakness from
crushing wrong then he who was not your match would not have aimed
at you and he who overpowered you would not have overpowered you.
But you roamed about the deserts (of disobedience) like Banu
Isra'il (Children of Israel). I swear by my life that after me
your tribulations will increase several times, because you will
have abandoned the truth behind your backs, severed your
connection with your near ones and established relations with
remote ones. Know that if you had followed him who was calling you
(to guidance) he would have made you tread the ways of the
Prophet, then you would have been spared the difficulties of
misguidance, and you would have thrown away the crushing burden
from your necks.

(1).
The implication is that the outer Islam of these people required
that they should not be molested, but the consequence of sparing
them in this way was that they would create mischief and
rebellion.