The Prophet ﷺ once said:

“It is a serious evil for a Muslim that he should look down upon his brother Muslim. All things of a Muslim are inviolable for his brother in faith: his blood, his wealth and his honour.”

Contempt rarely arrives as a dramatic act. It starts as a private judgement: a glance at someone’s clothes, their accent, their job, their mistakes, and a quiet conclusion that they are beneath us. The Prophet ﷺ names this as a serious evil precisely because it hides in the heart, where no one else can see it, and yet it corrupts how we treat everyone around us.

He ﷺ pointed to his chest three times when he spoke of piety. The point is that righteousness is not measured by how we appear or what we own, but by what is hidden within us. A person can be fluent in religious knowledge and still belittle a brother, and that belittling is itself a sign of a heart that has not yet been humbled.

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