Pride and Arrogance

Assalamu Alaikum every one

This is Romana Hoque

Welcome in my short series today I am going to start new topic.

Pride and Arrogance

I am going to discuss this topic in two or three episodes. I will start from how literary define these human characteristics and also discuss from Islamic point of view very details.

Today I am going to explain what pride is and what is arrogance and in Islamic point of view how Islam define these human characteristics what are the terminology use for these.

Pride  simply means having a feeling being good and worthy .

Pride in positive way means having a feeling of self-respect or people can satisfied with their achievements. They can feel proud of something good that they done.

For example we are very aware of the pandemic spread all over the world. Its start from China Wuhan city but the effort Chinese people gave they become success to minimise the spread in china and decrease the new infected case. This achievement they earned by good effort of their medical team, their govt official and all sect of people of the city. For this success people of Wuhan feel proud and it is positive way pride.

I mentioned about positive way pride that means there is also negative way pride .

When someone has no respect for other people opinion, what other people do or achieve , only respect for own opinion and achievement or work and become so proud and over confident for own self start diminish other people.  This is negative way pride.

This negative pride open the door for Arrogance which is destructive for persons who inflicted by this arrogance.

Because arrogance most of time makes people blind.

Arrogance literally means the quality of being unpleasantly proud for own self and show off he or she  is the most better than others in every sector.

Now we will see in Islamic point of view about pride and arrogance.

In Islam the positive sense pride which considers as a part of the Izzah.

The root word for Arabic word Izzah is Azz which means to be or become strong, powerful and respected. Izzah is used positively for praise and Allah attributed for Himself, For His messengers and to the believers.

On the other hand, Arrogance which is consider in Islam as a Al-Kibar.

Arrogance or Al-kibar in Islam is a blame worthy characteristic and it is considering the characteristics of Iblis or devil. As iblis showed his arrogance against Adam(as) and out of his arrogance he disobeys Allah and decree of Allah.

Al-kibar means when one person looks down others and hold them in low esteem.

Rasul Allah (saw) defined it as:

‘’Bataru al-haqqi wa ghamtu an-nassi..’’

‘’Disregard for the truth and contempt for people..’’

Arrogance is of several types, but Islamic tradition focus on two main categories:

1.     When a person does not accept the truth and produced falls arguments against it, as Rasul Allah (saw) mentioned in the hadith of Abdullah ibne Mas’ood ,’’Arrogance means reject the truth and looking down on people’’.

It is the  feeling, ’’I am better than him’’

The first  who felt this it was Iblis when Allah command him to prostrate to Adam (as) , he refused out of arrogance  and said to Allah-

‘’ I am better than him, You created me from fire, and  You created him from Clay’’.

Second category,

2.When a person admires him/herself for his/her beauty or handsomeness or fitness of his food and clothing , so he start feel excessive proud and become arrogant and consider own self superior from others.

It was narrated that Abu Hurayrah (ra) said-

‘’ Rasul Allah (saw) said – a man was walking , dragging his garment with pride, with his nicely combed hair, Allah caused the earth to swallow him and he will go on sinking in it until the Day of Resurrection’’

Narrated by Al-Bukhari, Muslim.

I should clear one point here Islam doesn’t forbid to wear nice cloth be clean and fit . Islam always encourage to be clean use nice cloth make hair comb and take nice appearance.

So what actually this hadeeth means, in this hadeeth Rasul Allah (saw) indicates some people become so proud about bleesings they got from Allah and become arrogant and start unnecessarily boosting own self and diminish others which is forbid in Islam. Enjoying blessings of Allah and using good things is not forbidden at some point Rasul Allah (saw) encouraged.

So today we learn what is pride and what arrogance and how Islamic tradition define these human characteristics.

In my next episode I will explain harmful impact of a Arrogance in person personality and how severe it is for a believers.

In sha Allah I will be back very soon till that stay with me by subscribing my channel.

And if you find this series will benefit u and others don’t forget to give like and share .

Stay bless and happy.

Jazak Allah khair.Assaalmu Alaikum