The Book of Miscellany

Riyad as-Salihin · Chapter 24

Chastisement for one who enjoins good and forbids evil but acts otherwise

باب تغليظ عقوبة من أمر بمعروف أو نهى عن منكر وخالف قوله فعله

Having urged believers to enjoin good and forbid evil, the book now sounds a sharp warning to the one who preaches it but lives the opposite. A single, unforgettable hadith carries the whole chapter.

The point is not that calling to good is worthless, but that it places a claim on you first. Knowledge that the tongue announces and the limbs betray becomes a witness against its owner, not for him.

Hadith 198

Usamah bin Zaid (May Allah bepleased with them) reported:

وعن أبي زيد أسامة بن زيد بن حارثة، رضي الله عنهما، قال‏:‏ سمعت رسول الله، صلى الله عليه وسلم، يقول‏:‏ ‏ "‏يؤتى بالرجل يوم القيامة فيلقى في النار فتندلق أقتاب بطنه فيدور بها كما يدور الحمار في الرحى فيجتمع إليه أهل النار فيقولون‏:‏ يا فلان ما لك ‏؟‏ ألم تك تأمر بالمعروف وتنهى عن المنكر‏؟‏ فيقول‏:‏ بلى، كنت آمر بالمعروف ولا آتيه، وأنهى عن المنكر وآتيه‏" ‏ ‏(‏‏(‏متفق عليه‏)‏‏)‏ ‏.‏ ‏‏قوله‏:‏ ‏ ‏تندلق‏ ‏ هو بالدال المهملة، ومعناه تخرج‏.‏ و”الأقتاب”‏:‏ الأمعاء، واحدها قتب‏.

Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said, "A man will be brought on the Day of Resurrection and will be cast into Hell, and his intestines will pour forth and he will go round them as a donkey goes round a millstone. The inmates of Hell will gather round him and say: 'What has happened to you, O so-and-so? Were you not enjoining us to do good and forbidding us to do evil?' He will reply: 'I was enjoining you to do good, but was not doing it myself; and I was forbidding you to do evil, but was doing it myself". [Al-Bukhari and Muslim].

In plain words

A vivid warning against hypocrisy: one who urges others toward good and away from evil while doing the opposite faces severe consequence. What we preach lays a claim on us first.

Reference : Riyad as-Salihin 198 In-book reference : Introduction, Hadith 198