Prophetic sayings:

“The Messenger of God said: ‘None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother … what he loves for himself.” (Sunan Ibn Majah Vol. 1, Book 1, Hadith 66)

And

“None amongst you believes (truly) until he loves for his brother … that which he loves for himself.” (Sahih Muslim Book 1, Hadith 72)

Islamic scholar, Shaykh Faraz Rabbani was asked “According to a commentary I read on Hadith 13:

“None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.”

– This hadith is very broad and includes Non-Muslims. Should we then consider Non-Muslims to be our brothers and sisters?”

Shaykh Faraz Rabbani answers this question:

Excerpt from the clip:

… This Hadith is very broad and includes non-Muslims.

So the questioner asks, should we consider non-Muslims to be our brothers and sisters?

The short answer is yes!

The Hadith in Arabic states, “none of you believes, until you love for your brother, what they love for themselves.”

The brotherhood that is meant here according to the consensus of commentators is not the brotherhood of lineage. Right! Because Brotherhood, can be literal … or it can be metaphorical.

Someone who is your brother in a metaphorical sense, a brother is someone who shares closeness to you. And who shares some meaning of closeness to you.

And in that sense, who is close to you, we see very clearly from so many verses of the Qur’an and Hadith of the beloved Messenger (p) that brotherhood or fraternity that is mentioned in this Hadith is the fraternity of humanity.

Right! Because brotherhood is shared meaning, in a literal sense blood brothers or sisters are those who share a common biological parents. But, the brotherhood or sisterhood is that shared meaning, and what is the shared meaning?

Well, you have a range of shared meanings, you have the fraternity of being a human being. You could argue this wider fraternity of being from God’s creation. But we know that we normally – (we) – do not have ongoing interactions with rocks, or plants or animals. Although we do have a relationship of love, mercy, and concern in all of God’s creation. In that broad sense.

But the fraternity being referred to can be the fraternity of humanise, we all share the fact that we are God’s creation. God’s honoured creation. We have certain responsibility. And there is also the fraternity of faith. Right!

‘The believers are but brethren’. So there is, so both fraternities are considered, fraternity of faith and the fraternity of humanity.

There is a broader fraternity of being God’s creation. And there is Hadith of caring for ‘ghalkullah’ you know, that Allah’s creation, so the answer then is, yes we consider non-Muslims our brothers and sisters in humanity. And we have this, we looking at them as being God’s, as being Allah’s creation.

Allah has honoured creation … Allah says (in Quran): “we have truly honoured children of Adam”.

So we look at them with that Divine honouring, every human being has a potential to believe, has a potential to do good. Has a potential to be of the people of fraternal facility and we have a responsibility to deal with love, with mercy, with care, with concern with respect. To think well of them and in that sense thee social rights of a non-Muslim are akin to the social rights of a Muslim.

All the virtuous, with respect to good social dealings, whether it be upholding good character. Acting with good manners (adab), having excellence in ones dealings, upholding the social beauties, social sunnahs. Such as visiting the sick, honouring one’s neighbour, maintain family ties. Maintaining ties of friendship. Excellence with those ones who interacts with and deals with and works with.

All these social rights and responsibilities broadly apply to non-Muslims as they do to non-Muslims.

And this very, very clear and manifested from the example of our beloved Messenger (p).

…