Two, Two and One

ʿAlī (may Allah ennoble his face), addressing the Muslims in a khuṭbah, says: remember from me five things — two, two and one.

First: none should fear anybody except his own sins. In a different saying of his, he says: wallāhi, I swear by Allah, I have never done any harm to anybody, and wallāhi, I have never received any good, any khayr, from anybody. Taken at face value this hardly seems to make sense, but he explains it: whatever sharr, whatever sin, he did, it is going to pain him — it is going to cause him punishment in the Hereafter, so it is his own doing; and whatever goodness he did, he did for himself, so that on the Day of Judgement he alone will receive the reward for it. Whatever a person has done, it is all his own doing. So he says, in his first piece of advice, that none should fear anything in life except his own sins, his own transgression against Allah (swt).

Second: none should ask for anything from anybody except Allah (swt). When something is wanted, it should be asked of Allah (swt). The Ṣaḥābah (may Allah be pleased with them all) used to say innā lillāhi wa innā ilayhi rājiʿūn even if their shoelaces broke, and they would say, O Allah, give us something better. That is the sunnah of Rasūlullāh (peace be upon him): if anything bad happens, the adab, the etiquette, is to say innā lillāhi wa innā ilayhi rājiʿūn — from Allah (swt) we came, and unto Him we shall return — and then, O Allah, give me something better. It has happened so many times that something better followed. So when asking, what is asked, and of whom? From Allah (swt).

Third: none should be ashamed of acquiring Islamic knowledge on any given topic. The most common excuse today is: I am too old; I am not going to sit with a little child and learn alif, bāʾ, tāʾ, thāʾ — that is for kindergarten children, too late for me. This is nonsense. Imam Abū Ḥanīfah (may Allah have mercy on him) was once asked how he came to such knowledge, being such an ocean of learning. His answer was that he was never ashamed of asking questions. The majority of people do not ask questions because they feel ashamed — somebody might laugh at them, or think they are saying something stupid. The question, regardless, is the key to knowledge.

Fourth: none should be ashamed of saying, I do not know, when asked something to which he does not know the answer. When a professor appears in the public arena, on television, and is asked a question on a topic he knows nothing about, what does he typically do? He begins with, I think, in my humble opinion — while knowing nothing about the issue. A true Muslim is never ashamed to say, I do not know; I shall learn, inshāʾAllāh, on a topic where he has no knowledge. Some of the Jews once came with questions, and asked who was the most learned among the Muslims. They were told it was Imam al-Ghazālī, Ḥujjat al-Islām, the Proof of Islam, so great an ʿālim. They put to him some sixty-four or sixty-five questions, set down in their own hand, and he answered about four of them; the rest he could not answer. What kind of scholar are you, they said — supposed to be the best, and you could not answer any of our questions? He was such an ʿālim that he was not afraid to say, I do not know, when he did not know. That is ʿilm, that is knowledge; the alternative is a display of arrogance together with a display of ignorance. So none should be ashamed of saying, I do not know, on a topic he does not know.

And fifth — related directly to the matter of this chapter — ʿAlī (may Allah ennoble his face) says that the position of ṣabr, set against the other qualities a person should possess, is like the position of the head upon the body: when the head is separated from the jasad, the body, that body can no longer live; and in the same way, when ṣabr leaves a Muslim, his īmān cannot survive for long.