How to develop good character as a Muslim

0:00How can we develop good character and how can we avoid bad character? What's the first thing we need to do? If we want to understand what good character is, what bad character is, where should we look? What should we do? Right, very good. So we should learn about what good and bad character is, and the best place to look is the Sunnah of the Prophet al-As-Salaam, and the Book of Allah, right in the Quran. And that's what inshallah we're going to be doing in this series. We're going to be identifying good and bad character traits based on the Quran and Sunnah. Look, Quran and Sunnah, because if a law says something is a good character trait, we know it's a good character trait. If a law says something is a bad character trait, we know it's a bad character trait. To give you an example, the Prophet al-As-Salaam, he said truthfulness leads to righteousness and righteousness leads to paradise. What is the good character trait we can derive from this Hadith? Truthfulness, right? Clearly, this is something that we should remember in our day-to-day lives. Are we going to be truthful people, because truthfulness leads to righteousness, and in the end we just all want to go to Jannah in the hereafter, right?

1:01So this is a good character trait, but he also warned us against bad character traits. He said, lying leads to wickedness and wickedness leads to the fire. What's the bad character trait to derive from this Hadith? Lying, being dishonest, it leads to wickedness and wickedness leads to the fire. Who is a liar? Chaitan, right? Eblis. Eblis swore by a law that he was Adam's well-wisher, right? In reality, he was doing what? He was lying. He was trying to lead Adam astray. So truthfulness, this is the character of the Prophet al-As-Salaam, lying. These are character traits of Eblis. So this is pretty simple stuff, but by mentioning all of these things from the Quran, from the Sunnah, we should understand how important all of this really is, and we should really try to focus on improving our character. This is a good character trait.