The Book of Marriage, Breastfeeding, Divorce, Mutual Oath-Swearing, and Manumission-08a

The reciter: And Ibrahim ibn Musa al-Razi narrated to me, saying: Isa—meaning Ibn Yunus—narrated to us, saying: Abd al-Hamid ibn Ja'far narrated to us from Imran ibn Abi Ans from 'Umar ibn al-Hakam from Abu Hurayrah, who said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: .

The Shaykh : This is, in reality, a hadith that includes women and others. That is, a person must weigh the balance between good and evil, and between satisfaction and anger. Meaning, he should not hate her or dislike her merely because she wrongs him once. If he does so, he joins the women [in this behavior]. But he must weigh the balance: if he dislikes a trait in her, he should be pleased with another trait. So let him weigh between this and that, between the benefits and the harms. This assessment of people is obligatory: if a person dislikes a trait, let him be pleased with the other trait. If he wants to speak about a person, let him mention his virtues and his faults if there is a need to mention the faults; otherwise, the virtues are sufficient. This is unless he is speaking about the person to refute an error he committed. If that is the case, there is no need to mention the virtues, because if you want to refute a person who said something incorrect and you mention his virtues along with the refutation, it weakens the side of the refutation. And you do not want to assess him, but you want to clarify the error he is in. For this reason, some people err in this matter and say, "We must mention the truth and the error." We say: every occasion has its own speech. If you want to clarify his error, it is not good to clarify his truth and virtues, because this weakens the side of the refutation. But if you want to clarify that you are assessing the man, then here you mention the virtues and the faults if there is a need to mention the faults; otherwise, mentioning the virtues is better. Look at the words of the scholars in the biographies of men, and you will find the matter is like this: if they wanted to assess a person and mention his life, they mentioned what was in him of good and evil. But if they wanted to refute him, they did not address his virtues, but rather mentioned the refutation, which is the intended purpose. Yes.