Bad examples

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From my observations, there are three groups of Muslims in our society today. We all have the same religion of course, but we practice Islam on different levels.
The first group would be the group of people who absolutely do nearly everything for the sake of Allah, and to only get His pleasure. They follow all the rules, all of Allah's commands, many of the Prophet's sunnahs and they try to preach to the other two groups to also be good Muslims. Alhamdulillah that this group exists, though i think nowadays they are a minority. Without this group, the other two would probably have no hope at all to get back on to the right path.

So let me elaborate on the third group before i talk about the second one. The third group from my observation is the rebellious group, those who absolutely don't practice Islam and constantly do all the things we as Muslims shouldn't be doing. Sometimes this group knows about Islam but chooses to not follow it because it doesn't suit them, or maybe they just don't know much about this religion to be able to practice it properly. These people are mostly influenced by the environment that they are exposed to; the people they are always around and such.

Then there's the second group, the one in the middle. This is the group that is sometimes stuck in a neverending dilemma in choosing where exactly they want to stand. I think it's the group that wants to be good, they want to follow Allah's commands but sometimes they tend to forget and accidentally or maybe even on purpose, go astray. They still do some things like pray and fast,but ignore other things like covering their aurah properly and ignore the limitations about the girl-boy interactions that are allowed and not allowed in our religion. We're better on some days and worse on other days. I think many people in our society are stuck in this group. Our faith is still not quite there yet.

No matter which group you're in, i know i cannot judge your faith in Allah, because that is only between you and Him. But at the same time, as Muslims we already know that Allah has commanded us to do and not do certain things. How we portray ourselves as Muslims is extremely important, because believe it or not, it's how Islam these days is being judged by other people; by both Muslims and non-Muslims.

For example for Muslims who are still learning, they may look at another Muslim who does not practice Islam properly and may get influenced by something they're not supposed to do and think that it's okay to do that. I myself thought that before when i was younger. I was still learning how to cover my aurah properly, and i saw some other sisters wearing a headscarf but were not covering themselves properly according to Islam. I thought that it was okay, because they were wearing a headscarf and followed their actions until i realised later that they were not setting the best example.

Then there are the non-Muslims. My teacher once told me a situation about how she tried to explain about the truth about Islam to some Chinese students, and they became very interested to know more about it. So the possible conclusion from that is that maybe non-Muslims look at Islam not mainly from what the true practicing Muslims do, but they mainly look at the bad things that the other Muslims portray,and then they go judge Islam as a whole. So that's why i think it's important that we show good examples to everyone, be it Muslims or non-Muslims. Our actions do influence others whether we realise it or not. Could we bear to hold sins for what other people do because they were influenced by our bad examples?
I personally can't, and i hope that nobody follows any of my bad examples. Please forgive me if you think i'm setting bad examples and i beg that you inform me about it so that i can change that about me.

The first group i believe, has the responsibility to keep guiding the second and third group, especially the second one, towards the right path. Why i say the second group especially is because they still have that light, that faith, that sign from Allah. But they're a bit lost. WE are a bit lost and we need the guidance from the first group. Before they get fully pulled away from the right path, let's try to pull them back.

(wrote this a while back)