Friendship

Asalamu Alaikum

I recieved this message online and subhannallah it called for great reflection:

Today I'd like to share with you the following verse from Surah Qaaf (verse number 28)
[قَالَ لَا تَخْتَصِمُوا لَدَيَّ وَقَدْ قَدَّمْتُ إِلَيْكُم بِالْوَعِيدِ ]
[He (ALLAH) said, "Dispute not with each other in My Presence: I had already in advance sent you Warning"]

This verse depicts a scenario likely to occur to any of us who make the wrong choices in this world.ALLAH has created man with a multitude of dimensions, including a social one. We need companionship and friendship to get through this life, share its joys and sorrows.

Friendship is a beautiful thing. Friends give you support. The bring joy to your life. They can often be a shoulder to cry on. But, unfortunately, friends can also devils in disguise and drag you down in to the hell fire.

The Prophet Mohammed PBUH said, "A man is on the path of His friend, so let one of you be careful as to whom they befriend".

There are friends who bring to you temporary joys. They guide you to vulgarity and sinful engagements. They encourage you to be 'cool' and 'rebellious', and advise you to stay away from the 'unfashionable' worship of ALLAH. They would encourage one another to indulge in sinful speech and actions, and burn hours upon hours displeasing ALLAH together. They may have laughs together, but when they stand before ALLAH, they will certainly not be laughing.

When the hour comes upon them and the angel of death drags their souls out of their flesh, and they find themselves before ALLAH SWT with the blink of an eye, they will be quick to blame one another and betray that friendship. That relationship which was held together by mutual desire for lustfulness and sinfulness, my brothers and sisters, is fragile, and it perishes on the day of judgment. At that moment, the insincere friends will be quick to lay the blame one another for their heedlessness, hoping that it will save them and burn their "friend". But no, and certainly no; ALLAH is most fair and just. He will remind them that His message to them was clear, illustriously scripted in His book. Every soul shall bear the consequences of its own actions, and they shall be dragged together in to the fire.

But not all friends are disloyal. Some will remember their good moments and remain true to their worlds companions in the hereafter. These are the elite of the elite, those described in ALLAH's book as, "the friends on that day (of judgment) will be enemies to one another, except the muttaqeen (God fearing)".

So do we want firm and true friendships, or are we satisfying with 'fake' friends who will smile to our faces in this world and betray us on the last day? Certainly no one in their right mind would want the latter type of 'friends'.Be selective with whom you befriend. Go for the one who may be mocked by a few for being god fearing, and stay away from the 'cool' dudes who don't find it befitting of their class to fear their creator. Why? because on the day of judgment the tables will turn, and there is no escaping that reality. Those who laughed in lustfulness will cry blood misery. Those who weeped to ALLAH in fear will cry tears of happiness when they see the reward of their earnings...

Find the friend that will remind of ALLAH, find the friend who will join you to Jannah...