Preface

1- Prayers for Noble Conduct

            Among the authentic prayers of the prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) are:“ O. Allah, guide me in the best of conduct for none but You guide anyone (in) good conduct. Remove from me the worst of conduct, for none else but You can remove the worst of conduct. I am at Your service and grace is to You and the whole of good is in Your hands and evil cannot be attributed to You. My (power as well as existence) is due to You and I turn to you (for supplication). You are blessed and You are exalted” (Muslim 1/535).

            “ O. Allah, I ask You to protect me from reprehensible deeds, actions and whims” (AlTermithi 5/563).

            “ O Allah, I ask You to guard me from disability and laziness, cowardice and avarice, senility and cruelty, negligence and poverty, lowliness and submissiveness, and I ask You to guard me from indigence and unbelief, dissolute actions, disunity and hypocrisy, dissimulation and false reputation, and I ask You to protect me from deafness and dumbness, insanity, leprosy and the worst of diseases” (Al-Mustadrak 1/530,531).

2- To Perfect the Noble Conduct

            Conduct occupies in Islam a great position to the extent that it is reported that the prophet (peace be upon him) said in one of his authentic hadeeths “ I was sent only to perfect the best in conduct” and in another report “ to perfect the noble of conduct” (Ahmad 2/381, Malik 2/904, AlBazzar in AlMujamma 9/15).

            It sounds like the prophet (peace be upon him) has confined his message to this matter. This is not strange. If we perceive "conduct" as the relationship between the servant of Allah and Allah, and between the servant of Allah and other people then the matter is clear. This is what religion is all about; How you define your relationship with the creator, how to worship him, acknowledge his oneness and avoid what discontent him and how you define your relationship with the created beings, included are the angels, the prophets, the righteous people, the relatives who have the right of love and affection. Also included are the other class, the devils, unbelievers, hypocrites, and people straying away from the straight path doing dissolute actions. We hate this class of beings for the sake of Allah either totally like the unbelievers or only because of their bad actions like the sinful even though they are still holding to the original belief. But if we perceive "conduct" in a more restrictive sense that has to do with only the relationship with other human beings, then the hadeeth of the prophet (peace be upon him) is an indication of the greatness of good conduct and its high rank in religion. This hadeeth resembles “ The pilgrimage is Arafah” (AlTirmithi 889, Abu Dawood 1949 and others) and “ Religion is sincerity” (Muslim 55, Abu Dawood 4944, AlNisai 4197-4198 and others). The two hadeeths do not confine the pilgrimage to only Arafah and do not confine the religion in only sincerity, but the objective is to declare that staying in Arafah is the greatest pillar of pilgrimage and that sincerity holds a high rank in religion.

            This clarifies that there is no confusion in either of the two meanings of the hadeeth and that both of them emphasize the importance of conduct in Islam.

3- A Muslim and a Da'iah

            From this starting point a Muslim must beautify his character with good conduct, whether he is a Da'iah or not because this is an objective of the message of our prophet (peace be upon him), this message by which Allah honored the whole humanity and by which the believers have the exclusive favor of being guided to the straight path, having their souls purified, and being taught what they knew not. “ It is He who has sent amongst the unlettered a messenger from among themselves, to rehearse to them His signs, to purify them and to instruct them in the Book and wisdom, although they had been, before, in manifest error” (meaning of Quran 62:2).

            The purification mentioned in this holy Ayah includes the purification of the soul, upbringing it with noble manners and cleansing it from the bad ones. In the previous Ayah as in the previous hadeeth, good conduct manifests itself not only as one of the objectives of the prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) but one of the most eminent.

            If an ordinary Muslim has to beautify his character with noble manners, then the Da'iah, who carries the flag of Da’wah and propagates it amongst the people, must be more committed to noble and good conduct. To him looks are more attentive, from him mistakes are graver and at him criticism is harder. His Da’wah should manifest itself through his character first then through his words.

            A Da'iah committed to noble manners and good conduct is fulfilling the responsibility laid upon him by Allah, protecting the Da’wah and its followers from the words of hating biased opponents and from the allusions of the hasty and the ignorant.

4- The Noble Manners of the Da'iah

            If I am to write about all noble manners it will consume a lot of time and the result will not be comparable to the work that already have been written by great scholars, like The Manners of the Prophet by Abi AlShaikh AlAsbahani, The Noble Manners by AlTabarani and AlKharaiti, Manners and Biographies by Ibn Hazm, The Code of ethics in Quran by Mohammad AbdAllah Darraz and many others.

            This treatise -- my dear brother -- is not a research in ethics and its philosophy but it is a mere display of a collection of noble manners that I felt have great importance for the Da'iah besides the abundance of Quranic and prophetic texts about them. I will emphasize the important aspects of these manners and leave the remainder to be found in the appropriate references for whoever want to expand on the subject.

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