Iḥtiqār al-Nās · Looking Down on People

Imagine the cleaner of your masjid. She or he comes after ʿishāʾ, when the congregation has gone home. She wipes the marks from the wudūʾ area; she mops the carpet stains; she empties the small wastebaskets in the women's section that you did not even notice were there. You probably do not know her name. You probably have never said salām to her. If she died this weekend, you would not be told, because you would be considered too important to be informed about a cleaner's death. This is exactly the scenario Allah arranged in the Prophet's ﷺ Madinah, and the Prophet's ﷺ reaction is one of the most piercing in the Sunnah. There was a woman, a poor Muslim, who cleaned the masjid. She died. The Companions buried her without telling the Prophet ﷺ, thinking the matter too small to bother him. When he heard, days later, he was visibly upset. He asked: 'why did you not tell me?' Then he asked to be taken to her grave. He stood at her grave and prayed over her. And he said something the Companions never forgot: 'These graves are full of darkness for their occupants, and Allah, the Mighty and Sublime, illuminates them by my prayer for them' (Bukhārī 458, Muslim 956). Read that sentence slowly. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ, the most exalted of creation, was bothered that he had not been told about the death of the masjid cleaner. He went to her grave, in person, to pray for her. He illuminated her qabr with his duʿā. And he taught his Companions, by his action, that there is no Muslim too small to mourn, no funeral too obscure to attend, no station too low to honor. Now contrast this with the small hierarchies your chest runs every day. The colleague whose ethnicity you internally rank as 'less'. The relative whose financial struggles you mention with a pity that is not pure. The neighbor whose accent your family imitates at the dinner table for a laugh. The migrant worker at the construction site you would never invite to your gathering, even though he prays five times a day in the dust while you pray once at the masjid. The masjid janitor whose name you have not learned. The single mother in the community you keep at arm's length. The convert whose new practice you patronize. Each is a small ghamt, a small looking-down, a small mustard seed of the disease the Prophet ﷺ named. And each is, possibly, someone Allah has hidden a station with Him for. The Companion ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd, the famous reciter of the Qurʾan, was once seen with his thin legs sticking out from his robe, climbing a tree, and some Companions began to laugh at how thin his legs were. The Prophet ﷺ was nearby and heard them. He said: 'Are you laughing at the thinness of his legs? By the One in whose hand is my soul, those legs are heavier in the scales on the Day of Resurrection than the mountain of Uḥud' (Aḥmad 3991). Read that. The Companions, who knew Ibn Masʿūd, who heard him recite the Qurʾan, who had spent years with him, still saw his outer thinness as something to laugh at. The Prophet ﷺ redirected them to what they could not see: the inner mountain. This is the lesson. The structural cure for iḥtiqār al-nās is to train the heart to see what the eye cannot. The man in front of you, no matter how outwardly small, may carry mountains in the scales. The cure has three movements. First, the recognition. Every Muslim in your day, no matter how 'beneath' the dunya placed them, may be a walī you cannot identify. Allah hides His friends from the doors of the world on purpose; the Prophet ﷺ said many of them are dust-covered, disheveled, turned away. Walk through your day with this lens. Treat each Muslim as if Allah may have lifted him while you slept. Second, the inward sentence. When contempt rises, say to yourself: this person may be heavier in the scales than I am. Ask Allah's forgiveness for the silent ranking. Third, the structural acts. Sit with the worker on his break. Eat from his bag of food. Greet the cleaner first. Visit the sick believer no one is visiting. Attend the funeral of the disheveled brother whose family will not call you. Each act burns a small portion of the disease. And then, finally, pray the duʿā the Prophet ﷺ made for himself, which is the cure embodied: Allāhumma aḥyinī miskīnā wa-amitnī miskīnā wa-aḥshurnī fī zumrat al-masākīn (Tirmidhī 2352). O Allah, let me live as a poor one in need of You, die as a poor one, and gather me on the Day with the company of the poor. The Prophet ﷺ, who could have asked for any station, asked to be of those his ummah would learn to overlook. Pray the same. The mustard seed of contempt leaves the chest one act of inclusion at a time.