Taking Islam in Its Entirety

For example, there are some parents who are very happy about Islam when it comes to the part of Islam that talks about children being obedient to their parents, and respecting their parents, and the rights of the parents being second to Allah (swt), and all of those ayāt in the Qur'an and hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) that tell children to take care of their mothers and fathers. They love that part of Islam. However, when it comes to the part of Islam that tells their son to go and, for example, fight fī sabīlillāh, no: they don't want that part, and they don't want their children to hear about that part. The attitude is: I love Islam when it is going to tell my sons to be submissive, but I don't like it when it tells them to go and give up their lives.

Or, for example, there is the husband who loves the hadith in which the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said that if he were going to tell anyone to make sujūd to anyone other than Allah, then he would tell the wife to make sujūd to her husband (Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 1159); and the hadith that if a husband calls his wife to his bed and she refuses, and he goes to sleep upset with his wife, then the angels will curse the wife until the morning (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 5194; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 1436). He would repeat all of those hadith. But when it comes to the hadith of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) being kind to his wives, when it comes to the stories of the Companions being kind to their wives, he wants to hide those away.

Some scholars, for example, love to talk about how one should respect the scholars, and how one should obey the scholars and listen to their fatwā and not disagree with them, and how one should honour them; but then the same scholars would shy away from the parts of Islam that tell them that they need to speak the truth, that they need to speak the whole truth, that they should hide nothing from it, and that they should speak the truth even if they are going to have to pay the price with their own lives. This duality of wanting to be a Muslim when it is convenient, and trying to cover up the other parts, isn't a good thing; and, as is seen here, it is a sign of nifāq. One needs to be careful, and make sure that one doesn't belong to this category of people. Allah (swt) says:

Take Islam in its entirety. One doesn't take some parts and leave others. That is a sign of the People of the Book: they believed in part of the Book and they rejected other parts (2:85). We have to accept it all. When the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) took the bayʿah from the Anṣār, as al-Bukhārī and Muslim report from ʿUbādah ibn al-Ṣāmit, the bayʿah was to hear and obey, al-ṭāʿah fī al-manshaṭ wa al-makrah, in what is liked and in what is disliked: "You obey me in times of ease and in times of difficulty." It isn't when one likes it, and then one neglects it when one doesn't. One has to take the whole package as it is.