Arrogance As A Human Nature Vice

A very important characteristic that everyone has to be cautious about, especially those people who are seeking knowledge: who have been blessed by Allah to have knowledge and involved in da`wah work. These people have to be very careful about a disease that often afflicts people of this nature, unfortunately, and this is the disease of kibr, of arrogance and pride. And sometimes the way this is reflected is where the person refuses and does not want anyone to correct him, or at least he will not accept correction from certain people.

He may accept correction or be told that he is wrong by someone who is from his group, someone who is a close friend of his, but if it is anyone else, he will look down upon, and he will not accept any kind of criticism, and this is pride and arrogance, as described in the Hadith of the Prophet (pbuh).

The Prophet (pbuh) said that no one who has even a mustard grain seed weight of arrogance in his heart, will enter paradise.

When someone asked the Prophet (pbuh), he said that a man loves to have nice clothing on, put shoes…, and he shows off this is arrogance; the Prophet (pbuh) said, “Allah is beautiful and loves beauty,” viz this is not arrogance, but arrogance is “to reject the truth and to look down upon the people”, to reject the truth for example when it comes to you from a source you do not like, when it comes to you from someone perhaps who is not as much upon the right path as you think you are, and to look down upon other people and to disgrace them, this is arrogance.

You have to realize that, I don’t care if you are the biggest scholar in the world, you could make a mistake sometimes, that some child could come up to you and say, you know, that was a mistake. This is something that we have to be very careful about especially as I said when we are involved in da`wah and in imparting knowledge.