Nawawi Pair 35 & 36: Brothers Who Ease Burdens

Part One: What Must Die Between Brothers

Brothers,

Today’s khutbah covers two hadiths from Imam Nawawi’s collection, the 35th and the 36th. They belong together. One tells us what to stop doing to each other. The other tells us what to start doing for each other. Together they describe the full shape of brotherhood: the poison we must remove, and the medicine we must give.

We begin with the first hadith, narrated by Abu Hurayrah and recorded by Imam Muslim:

Do not envy one another. Do not inflate prices against one another. Do not hate one another. Do not turn away from one another. Do not undercut one another in trade. But be, O servants of Allah, brothers. A Muslim is the brother of a Muslim: he does not wrong him, nor does he fail him, nor does he lie to him, nor does he hold him in contempt. Piety is here, and he pointed to his chest three times. It is evil enough for a man to hold his brother Muslim in contempt. The whole of a Muslim is inviolable to another Muslim: his blood, his property, and his honor. (Muslim)

Read that list again slowly. Five things named, one after another, like a doctor naming five symptoms of the same disease.

The Five Diseases Named

Do not envy one another. Do not inflate prices against one another. Do not hate one another. Do not turn away from one another. Do not undercut one another in trade.

Envy is wanting what your brother has, or worse, wanting him to lose it. Inflating prices against one another means bidding up a sale you have no intention of buying, just to trap another buyer into paying more. Hatred is the settled ill will that sits in the heart long after the argument is over. Turning away means the cold shoulder, the silence, the refusal to greet a brother you are angry with. Undercutting in trade means swooping in on a deal your brother is already negotiating, taking food from his table to put a little more on yours.

Five different behaviors. One root. Each of them starts with the self and ends by harming the brother standing next to you.

Concrete Behavior, Not Vague Advice

Notice something about how the Prophet ﷺ teaches here. He does not say “have good character” or “be kind.” He names five exact actions. Envy. Price manipulation. Hatred. Estrangement. Undercutting.

This is deliberate. Vague advice is easy to agree with and easy to ignore. Nobody thinks of himself as a man with bad character. But naming the specific act closes the loophole. You cannot say “I have good character” while you are still turning your back on a brother in the yard, still speaking ill of him behind his back, still glad in some hidden corner of your heart when he stumbles.

The Prophet ﷺ deals in specifics because specifics are what we actually do. Character is not a feeling you have about yourself. It is the sum of these small, nameable choices, repeated daily, toward the men around you.

The believers are but brothers, so make peace between your brothers. And be mindful of Allah, so you may be shown mercy. (Al-Hujuraat, 49:10)

One verse, one sentence, and the entire ummah is described in a single word: brothers. Not competitors. Not strangers sharing space. Brothers. Everything commanded in the hadith flows from this one fact Allah establishes here.

Piety Is Here

After naming the diseases, the Prophet ﷺ said something remarkable. He pointed to his chest, three times, and said: “Piety is here.”

Brothers, this is not a small detail. Taqwa, the God-consciousness we speak of so often, is not a badge you wear. It is not the length of a beard or the cut of a garment. It is not how loudly you speak of religion in front of others. It is something internal, something between you and Allah, that no camera and no cellmate can see directly.

But here is the test: if taqwa is real inside your chest, it will show on the outside in exactly the five ways just named. A man who says his heart is pure while he envies his brother’s good news, while he refuses to speak to him, while he cheats him in a trade, is lying to himself. Piety that never reaches your hands, your tongue, and your dealings with other men is not piety. It is a private story you tell yourself.

The chest is where taqwa lives. But the proof of it lives in how you treat the brother beside you.

It Is Evil Enough

Then comes the warning: “It is evil enough for a man to hold his brother Muslim in contempt.”

Think about what this sentence is actually saying. The Prophet ﷺ does not need to list ten sins to describe a man as evil. Contempt alone is enough. Just looking down on your brother, just carrying that quiet sense that you are better than him, that he is beneath your respect, is by itself a sufficient evil to condemn a man.

O believers! Avoid many suspicions, for some suspicions are sinful. Do not spy on or backbite one another. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of your dead brother? You would despise that! And fear Allah. Surely Allah is Most Accepting of Repentance, Most Merciful. (Al-Hujuraat, 49:12)

Contempt almost always starts with suspicion. You assume the worst about a brother’s motives. You watch him, you build a case against him in your mind, and soon you have convinced yourself he deserves your disrespect. Allah tells us to avoid that suspicion at the root, before it grows into the estrangement and contempt the hadith warns against.

One Body, Not Rivals

The hadith closes with the widest statement of all: the whole of a Muslim, his blood, his property, his honor, is inviolable to another Muslim. Not partially protected. Not protected unless you have a grievance. Fully, completely off limits.

This is the standard the Prophet ﷺ sets for how brothers treat each other: no envy in the heart, no cheating in dealing, no hatred carried silently, no cold shoulder, no undercutting, and no contempt, because piety lives in the chest and shows itself in how a man honors what belongs to his brother.

Part Two: What We Owe the Man Beside You

Brothers,

The first hadith told us what to remove. This second hadith, also narrated by Abu Hurayrah and recorded by Imam Muslim, tells us what to build. It is one of the richest, most generous promises in the entire Sunnah.

Whoever relieves a believer's hardship in this world, Allah will relieve his hardship on the Day of Resurrection. Whoever makes it easy for someone in difficulty, Allah will make it easy for him in this world and the next. Whoever conceals the faults of a Muslim, Allah will conceal his faults in this world and the next. Allah helps the servant as long as the servant helps his brother. Whoever follows a path seeking knowledge, Allah makes easy for him a path to Paradise. No people gather in one of the houses of Allah, reciting His Book and studying it together, without tranquility descending upon them, mercy enveloping them, angels surrounding them, and Allah making mention of them among those near Him. Whoever is slowed by his deeds will not be hastened by his lineage. (Muslim)

Mercy Measured by Mercy

Read the pattern in this hadith carefully. Relieve a hardship, and Allah relieves yours. Make things easy for someone, and Allah makes things easy for you. Conceal a fault, and Allah conceals yours. Every single promise mirrors the act. This is not a general statement that Allah is merciful. It is a direct exchange: the mercy you extend to your brother is the exact mercy measured back to you, in this life and on the Day when you will need it most.

Think about what that means practically. You do not need wealth to earn this. You do not need status, connections, or freedom. You need only the willingness to ease another man’s load when you have the chance. That door is open to every single one of us, in every circumstance, including this one.

Relief and Concealment, Named Specifically

Two promises stand out for their precision. “Whoever relieves a believer’s hardship in this world, Allah will relieve his hardship on the Day of Resurrection.” That Day is the one day none of us can afford to carry extra weight. Every hardship relieved for a brother today is hardship lifted from your own shoulders on the Day you will need it lifted most.

And: “Whoever conceals the faults of a Muslim, Allah will conceal his faults in this world and the next.” Every man here has faults. Every man here has a past he does not want announced, mistakes he is not proud of, weaknesses he would rather no one saw. Concealing your brother’s fault, refusing to gossip about it, refusing to expose it for a laugh or to make yourself look better by comparison, is a direct trade with Allah. He conceals what you conceal. He exposes what you expose.

Allah Helps the Servant Who Helps His Servant

Then the hadith gives us the principle underneath all of it: “Allah helps the servant as long as the servant helps his brother.” This single sentence explains why some men seem to move through hardship with unusual ease, why some du’as seem answered quickly, why some hearts carry peace others cannot find. Look at how they treat the people around them. Help does not run one direction. It circulates. Allah’s help toward you flows in proportion to your help toward your brother.

Gathering to Learn Together

The hadith then turns to knowledge: whoever follows a path seeking it, Allah eases a path to Paradise for him. And when people gather in a house of Allah, reciting His Book and studying it together, four things descend on them at once: tranquility, mercy, angels surrounding them, and Allah mentioning them by name among those near Him.

Notice this is a gathering, not a solitary reader. Something happens when brothers sit together over the Qur’an that does not happen alone. The Prophet ﷺ is describing a scene available to us right here: men sitting in a circle, reading, discussing, correcting each other’s recitation, and Allah’s mercy descending on the whole group at once.

So, surely with hardship comes ease. Surely with ˹that˺ hardship comes ˹more˺ ease. (Ash-Sharh, 94:5-6)

Allah repeats this promise twice in one breath. Hardship is never the last word. Ease follows it, and follows it again. That repetition is a mercy of its own, planted in the Qur’an for exactly the moments when a man cannot yet see where the ease is coming from.

Brothers, In This Place

Brothers, this hadith was not written for easy circumstances. It was written for exactly the kind of hardship surrounding you here.

Look around this room. Every man here carries something heavy. A father missing his children growing up without him. A son who has not heard his mother’s voice in months. A man waiting on a court date that could change everything, or one still absorbing news from a court date already gone. Illness that goes untreated as fast as it should. Loneliness that does not announce itself but sits in a man’s chest at night when the lights go out.

Here is the good news in this hadith: you do not need money, freedom, or influence to earn Allah’s relief. You need only to look at the brother beside you and do what is in your hands. Sit with a man who just got bad news from home instead of leaving him alone with it. When a brother’s past comes up, whether his case, his mistakes before Islam, or his weaknesses now, cover it instead of repeating it to others. Share the little you have, a stamp, a snack from commissary, a phone call minute, with a brother who has less. Gather in the yard or the chapel and read Qur’an together, even a single surah, even slowly, even imperfectly. Every one of these is available to you today, in here, exactly as you are.

This is not a hadith for men with resources. It is a hadith for men with nothing but the choice of how they treat the man next to them. That choice is fully within your reach, right now, in this place.

Two Hadiths, One Brotherhood

Brothers, put these two hadiths side by side and you see the complete picture. The first hadith is the stop list: stop envying, stop the price games, stop the silent hatred, stop the cold shoulder, stop undercutting, stop the contempt. The second hadith is the start list: relieve a hardship, make things easy, conceal a fault, help your brother so Allah helps you, seek knowledge together.

One without the other is incomplete. A man who avoids every sin in the first hadith but does nothing in the second has an empty brotherhood, clean hands but a closed one. A man who tries to do good in the second hadith while still carrying envy and contempt from the first is building on a cracked foundation. Real brotherhood needs both: the poison removed, and the medicine given.

This is what the Prophet ﷺ built among the Companions, and it is what he is asking us to build here, inside these walls, among the brothers Allah has placed around you. Not somewhere else, not after release, not when conditions improve. Here, today, with what is already in your hands.

O Allah, remove envy from our hearts and replace it with genuine joy for our brothers’ good.

O Allah, protect us from contempt, from turning away from one another, and from every hidden hatred we carry.

O Allah, make us men who relieve a brother’s hardship rather than add to it.

O Allah, cover the faults of our brothers as we hope You will cover ours on the Day we stand before You.

O Allah, help us as we help our brothers, and never let our hands be closed to those who need them.

O Allah, gather us upon Your Book, in this place and every place, and send down upon us tranquility, mercy, and Your remembrance.

O Allah, ease the hardship of every brother in this room: his family, his case, his health, his heart.

O Allah, make this confinement a means of purifying our brotherhood rather than hardening it.

O Allah, let our chests hold the piety the Prophet ﷺ pointed to, and let it show in how we treat one another.

O Allah, join our hearts in genuine brotherhood, and let none of us leave this place with contempt or grudge against another.