Emotional Intelligence from an Islamic perspective | Shaykh Mikaeel Ahmed Smith at WVMA

[0:00]Bismillah Rahman Rahim. Alhamdulillahi rabbil alamin. Wasatu wasalamu ala Sayyidina wa Nabiina wa Maulana Muhammad waala alihi wasahbihi wasallam. Allahuma inna nas'aluka hubbak wa hubba mayyuhubbuk wa hubba amalin yuqaribna ila hubbik ya arhamarrahimin. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to make this a gathering that is beneficial. A gathering by which we grow to love and appreciate the Sunnah of our Habib Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam more. Um, a gathering by which we take knowledge from his life and use that knowledge to better the relationships that we have. Our relationships typically we can look at them at three levels. Um and this is what I wrote about in when hearing becomes listening that um the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam taught us about connection. Connection. Um he he wasn't sent to split up people but to bring people together. And he didn't um and he brought people together in the sense of he taught them how to be whole first. And then he taught those whole people how to make whole families and those whole families made whole societies and civilizations. And so typically we can look at the Rasool sallallahu alaihi wasallam teaching connections on three levels. Three levels. Connection to one's self. Connection to those around you. And and last but not least, of course not least, connection to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. These are the three levels of connections that he taught people. Um and and subhanallah Abdullah bin Salam, he was a Jewish rabbi at the time of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam when he arrived in Medina. Um and when he when the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam was coming into Medina, uh he came to watch the parade. I mean it was it was a parade. Y'all know what parades are in Cali, right? No, okay, bad joke.

[2:16]He came to watch the parade. Because the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam was coming from Quba to Medina and it was a big deal. Everybody was, you know, happy. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is here. Ja Muhammad ja Muhammad. People had never seen him before. It's not like now with Instagram you know someone before you meet them, you know their face. Many of them had never seen his face before. And Abdullah bin Salam was one of those people. He heard the qualities, he knew what he was like. He saw the signs. And so before he arrived he was ready to take the Shahada. And he was a Jewish rabbi. And so he goes that I went to go see the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and the first thing he says is I looked at his face and I could see this wasn't the face of a liar. Yani the Noor from his face, the light from his face, the serenity from his face, all of that, he said it communicated so much to me just looking at his face. But then he said the first words that he said were, Afshu Salam, spread peace. This is important, write this down. The first words meaning, hold on let's get the the importance of this. The significance is this is the foundation of a new Islamic society. This is the first, you know, like beginning of the society of Islam that will come for the next until Qiyamah. And it's the first day he's coming into this new city and he says the first words that I hear him repeating are four things. Spread peace, Afshu Salam, Afshu Salam, spread peace. Wassilu'l-arham, Wassilu'l-arham. Wa at'imu-t-ta'am, and feed people, feed people. And wasallu bil-layli wan-nasu niyam, and pray at night, pray at night when um people are sleeping. The prayer at night is to bring connection with God. The feeding and the Salam all of these are to connect us to other people but the prayer also connects one to themself as well. So my my point here was to say that he taught us connection, he came to bring us together. And the first thing I think all of us need to appreciate is that when we embody and learn his teachings, the first thing that we gain is a clarity of self. A sense of self, my purpose, my purpose in this cosmos, what am I doing, who am I? Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawzi, he says that one of the the natayij or natijah, one of the consequences of disobedience of God is what they call al-wahsha fi nufus. Wahsha means like a lack of familiarity with your own self. So you'll notice when you've been in these bouts of sin and you look in the mirror, you low-key don't recognize yourself, you're like, yo, that's not me right there. That, yo what's going on? And and and and what happens is over time you could become so familiar, unfamiliar with yourself that you hate being alone with yourself. You hate being alone with It's awkward. It's like when you're in the elevator with some strange weirdo in San Fran. Just you and the weirdo in the elevator. And that that like it you're only going up three flights but it feels like you pick your phone up. You you you pretend like you're talking to someone because you feel weird. They say that's what happens with your own Nafs. You become so distant from yourself that you no longer um feel comfortable alone. So I always need something to listen to, I always have to listen to something, I can't be by myself, I need white noise, I need all of this stuff so I'm not with myself and my own thoughts. And that's not a that's not a good place to be. And so when I look at what we're going to talk about tonight, um I'm very encouraged by all the brothers here number one, because I think it's a it's time that we reclaim masculinity in a prophetic way. I mean I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone because compassionate has become a trope. Yo that dude's compassionate right there. That's a compassionate Imam right there. I was like are we in the Twilight Zone? Like when did compassionate become like because last time I checked Ra'uf al-Rahim was the sifah of Rasool sallallahu alaihi wasallam. He was gentle, he was compassionate, he was strong, I mean he was strong, he was brave, but compassion? Compassion is a quality that that I think in our day and age we need to reclaim prophetic masculinity. And so when we talk about prophetic EQ typically our cultures make emotional expression and understanding and even talking about emotion a feminine thing. But it's not. That's not that's not fair. That's not that's not doing justice to what he sallallahu alaihi wasallam put so much work into. I I'll share a narration with you. This is one of the last narrations, but I really want to preface what we're doing. I'm going to spend a little time just so we understand. There's a narration that is um Yeah there's a narration of a man his name is Aqra ibn Habis. Um he was a he was a rough man, Bedouin, Arab, um leader of his people. He accepted Islam but later on. And um and he the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is talking to him. He's a leader by the way, very like like masculine, right? Very masculine guy. And um and in front of in front of this man Hasan and Hussein the grandchildren of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam grandsons they come running. They're they're little babies. And the Prophet alayhi salatu wassalam he picks them up and he kisses them.

[9:05]And Aqra he goes, he goes, I have I have 10 sons and I've never kissed one of them. You know what I mean?

[9:20]Like what? He was he was flexing, he was flexing. This inability like I've been a stone wall for so long that I've gone through ten sons, ten children crawling, ten babies looking me in the eyes, ten sons that say, Baba, Baba, Baba. I've had ten sons. Think about those critical moments with your sons, the pictures you look back at, now they're knuckleheads, right? But you look back at the pictures and you're like, I remember this little thing right here. Remember this little dude? He went through ten of those and he goes, I never kissed one of them. And he was flexing.

[9:59]Yeah. I mean I mean low-key that takes work. It takes work to be hard-hearted, yo. And the Prophet looked at him sallallahu alaihi wasallam and he said to him, ama amlik in naza Allah min qalbika al-rahmah? Is it my fault if God has snatched mercy from your heart? As if to say, why are you flexing? Meaning, as if to say, I feel sorry for you. You haven't kissed your your sons, ten of them? Now what's most troubling in our day and age is somehow we've gone back to that. Somehow we have people in this room who say, yeah, I can't remember the last time I told my son I loved him or my daughter I loved them. Or my wife I love her. Now Shaik Micaiah, where's that in the Sunnah? I mean there's a clear Hadith. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam he said, if you love a person tell them you love them. Tell them you love them. You know that guy next to you? You know him? Do you love him? Tell him you love him. Oh that was good. That was easy. That was easy. Typically it's a little bit more awkward. Oh it's San Francisco!

[11:30]I thought I was in Texas, man.

[11:36]The problem, the problem of the Prophet's time is that men, so this is so funny. The Prophet that that at the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam's time is men saw emotion as weakness, but here's the deal. He had to teach these people how to feel again. He had to teach them how to feel again because and this is the thing I want you to write down. You cannot pass on this message except that you have a heart that can feel and you can communicate with other hearts. Bal huwa ayatum bayyinatun fi suduril ladhina util ilm. This message is from heart to heart. The scholars they say they say, al-'ilm laysa ma fi s-sutur wa lakin huwa ma fi s-sudur. Knowledge isn't what's in the lines of paper, knowledge is what's in heart. And so and so communication of this message necessitated people that understood hearts, but they were brick walls. They were they they they committed what's it called, uh they they murdered their daughters alive. Like, I mean that's cold-hearted. Now it wasn't they the scholars they say it wasn't as as vastly practiced as we would think it would be, but it was still practiced nonetheless. But Aqra ibn Habis his example to us shows us what was the general understanding. Another man um another man came to Medina and he literally said, I'm looking for that man who kisses his grandchildren, where's he at? Meaning, he had become so known for emotion that people in the other side of the Arabian Peninsula if they want to highlight who he is, he's that guy. I'll give you another example. When his son Ibrahim died. His son Ibrahim died as a as a young child, one and a half years old. And he's holding the baby and the baby's passing away in his arm and he sallallahu alaihi wasallam is crying, he's weeping. And here he taught us a very important Hadith. And it's it we could spend the whole night talking about it, we won't but we could. The Sahaba saw him crying and they said, even you ya Rasoolullah? See, look at the mentality. The mentality in the room in in their time was, when you get to a certain level of spirituality, you should be unphasable. Oh, yo, when I get to that level, I could lose children, nothing going to hurt me, I'm good. My wife passes away, I'm good, I'm good. Something happens to my children, I'm good. Meaning, meaning they thought, oh, when you get to this level of spirituality, you should never feel pain anymore, emotional pain. And this man who we call our Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he over and over again was telling me and you that it's okay, it's normal to feel that pain. And not only feel it, but then he taught us, here's the Hadith I wanted to share, he says, in that moment, they said, you too, ya Rasoolullah? He said, and most of you know the Hadith, he said, innal aina tadma, wal qalb yahzan, wala naqulu illa ma yarada rabbuna. He gave what would be this psychological blueprint for centuries to come. He says, the eye will cry, the heart will hurt, but we will only say that which pleases God. Oh. Validation of emotion? Validation of expression of the emotion? This isn't some woke 2025 American Imam up here talking, these are the Hadith. He said these words, these aren't my words. He said, indeed the heart will hurt, validation of the emotion. You should hurt right now. Something happened, you should hurt. That's normal. If you don't hurt that's abnormal, then we need to see somebody. Why don't you feel anything? And then he said, innal aina tadma, oh, and there will be a actual physiological impact of that. Now why am I so sincere, why am I so thing on this? The reason why this is so important to me is you you won't believe it, it's still in, take this off. This, alone. Okay. The reason why this is so clutch is um I was at a funeral. And I won't say the culture. How many of these I don't have enough space.

[16:44]Hold, I can't just hold it. Bismillah, we're good. I'm loud anyway. Bismillah. Um the reason why this is so important is I was at a funeral. No, no I got it. There was a a friend of mine from a certain culture, from this room, in this room that culture is in the room. What?

[17:06]And and um his grandmother passed away. He's a very educated man, he studied Islamic studies extensively and Westernly studied as well. Extremely uh aware, literate of the of the of the deen. And he said that we were at the funeral and I was crying, my grandmother died. And my father came over next to me and he kind of elbowed me. Now pull it together. Pull it together. Like your your brothers are looking at you, everyone's looking at you, pull it together. And he's literate, he knows the Hadith. And he sees that the culture here somehow has gone back to the Jahili, the pre-Arabian mentality of, we don't cry. And so until we have these Majalis where we talk about this and reclaim prophetic masculinity and prophetic expression of emotion, slowly, slowly, um these things creep back up. There was another a Imam told me this. We were at the Janazah of Imam Kashif. Imam Kashif was in Cali, wasn't he? Imam Kashif's daughter passed away like four years, three years ago. She was only 12 years old. We were all at the Janazah, they were in Dallas by that time, they left Cali, they came to Dallas. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. It's a good place to search your life out, you know what I mean? Gas is mad expensive, bro. So we um we were at the Janazah. Every Imam of Dallas is there, we're all standing there. And there's this one Imam who's Imam in a Masjid. And um the casket is being brought towards where we're going to pray and he can't hold it, he starts crying, he has children. And this this this person from the Jama'ah, he doesn't even realize that the guy is is a big Imam of one of the Masjids. So he leans over and he goes, brother, hold it together. Brother, hold it together. And and the Imam said to me later, he said, man, if it wasn't because of where we were, I would have told him off. But this mentality of masking, holding in and covering up of emotions is something so far away from what the Sunnah is. And and and it's time that we reclaim that. And so my first, like where I started on this journey of emotional intelligence was for me, I wanted to understand why scholars like Imam Ghazali said that he was the most intelligent of God's creation, sallallahu alaihi wasallam. To me the question was, well, how are they um qualifying intelligence? If they, you know, 900, 800 years ago, a thousand years ago, they looked at him and they said, that's the peak of intelligence. But if I was to walk up to you in the cafe, you know, in a quick interview and I was like, who's the most intelligent person you know? Many of us immediately go to stem. We go, Einstein. That's the first thing we all, Einstein. But aren't there more intelligences than just the intelligence of of of stem and things like that? I mean I grew up in a hood, we we there's something called street smarts that I needed just to get home. You can't test that in an exam. You just have to read faces and read the okay, it's shady over here, I'm going the other way. So we all we we we all understand there's different types of intelligences. And so I came across a statement of Imam Sha'rani. And I'll share it with you, it's long. I typically put this up as a presentation but I'll read it to you inshallah. Imam Sha'rani and I want you to listen closely and I want you to think when I read this to you, I want you to think to to yourself, what are the key words that stick out to you? Okay? This is a quote, this is Imam Sha'rani from 700 years ago. This is what he says, his quote.

[21:37]Whoever contemplates the Prophet's excellent management of the Arabs, who were like wild scattered beasts, who had repulsive and aloof natures, and how he led them and bore patiently with their boorishness and harms until they began to follow him, rally under him and fight against their own families and fathers and sons for his sake, and how they preferred him over their own selves. Indeed if you contemplate these things, you will come to the realization that he sallallahu alaihi wasallam is the most intelligent of Allah's creation. What sticks out to you about that? What sticks out to me is that he took this very rough group of people. He wasn't in the Burbs. He was in the trenches. And he took these rough people with troubled past. Case in point, Omar. And he took them like diamonds out of a mine and he cleaned them up until they shined. And then they shined so much that they showed other people their worth. Not their worth, other people, other people's worth. Do you understand what he did? He took these rough people. Case in point Omar. Omar says, I was addicted to alcohol. I was a alcoholic. I was rough. I he beat his sister. But here's what's crazy, you don't know. Later on in life he tells about his dad, he said, my dad was abusive, he used to beat us bad. My dad was abusive, he used to beat us bad. So when brother when when we're when we're when we're talking about Omar being so strong, maybe you're celebrating something he almost grew out of. You you you feel me? Like you're like, oh Omar was like this, this, this. But the end Omar, the last Omar was a different man. It was a different man. But the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, Imam Sha'rani is saying, look at how he sallallahu alaihi wasallam dealt with these rough people. Uneducated, rough people, very eloquent people. Poetry. They could they could spit poetry like that. Similar.

[24:06]He took these rough people and he transformed them. If you just study how he transformed these people, he says, you'll realize he was the most intelligent of God's creation. And so what that told me was, well, maybe I need to look at intelligence different. Maybe I need to look at intelligence from the perspective of my impact on people positively around me. Wow, that's that's profound. My my intelligence, prophetic intelligence would be a scale that would qualify, quantify how much of a positive impact I have on the people I interact with.

[24:50]Now I wonder how many of us would be doing really well, how many of us would be very intelligent if that was the scale by which we judged intelligence? It's just something to think about.