Steadiness in Friendship

Steadiness in friendship and love is another virtue that should be cultivated by every Muslim. The Prophet of Islam has commanded his followers to be steady in their relations of love and friendship with one another. In one of his statements he says:

Verily God loves Muslims to be steady in friendship and to be loyal to their old friends taking care to observe the demands of friendship love and loyalty. 23

Dr. Aveberry says in this regard:

Much certainty of the happiness and purity of our lives depends on our making a wise choice of our companions and friends. If badly chosen they will inevitably drag us down if well they will raise us up ...

Yet how often we know merely the sight of those we call our friends or the sound of their voices hut nothing whatever of their mind or soul.

We must moreover he as careful to keep friends as to make them ... And when you have made a friend keep him. "Cherish an old friend" says an Eastern proverb "visit him often for thorns and brushwood obstruct the road which no one treads." The affections should not he mere "tents of a night" ... Death indeed cannot sever friendship. "Friends" says Cicero "though absent are still present; though in poverty they are rich; though weak yet in enjoyment of health; and what is still more difficult to assert though dead they arc alive." This seems a paradox yet is there not much truth in his explanation? "To me indeed Scipio still lives and will always live; for I love the virtue of that man and that worth is not yet extinguished ... Assuredly of all things that either fortune or time has bestowed on me I have none which I can compare with the friendship of Scipio."

If then we choose our friends for what they are not for what they have and if we deserve so great a blessing then they will be always with us preserved in absence and even after death in the amber of memory. 24

________________________
23. Nahj al Fasahah, p. 152

24. Lord Avebury, The Pleasure of Life, pp. 99, 105-6

Adapted from: "Ethics and Spiritual Growth" by: "Sayyid Mujtaba Musawi Lari"