The Ugliness of Arrogance

Dear brothers in Islam, in Suratul-Isra’, Allah mentioned arrogance as one of the prohibited heart diseases. The arrogant person will never be able to cause a crack in the earth as he is walking on it nor will he become equivalent to the mountains in height and strength.

The Prophet peace be upon him defined arrogance as rejecting the truth and/or treating people with contempt.

Arrogance is of two types; the first type is when one rejects what he is told while knowing it is the truth merely because of the teller’s condition. He does not accept the truth because the person advising him might be younger than he is, or has a lower social status. It was the arrogance of Pharaoh that led to his destruction and made him not accept the truth even though witnessing the miracles that happened to Moses. Haman, Pharaoh’s vizier, told him that if he were to believe in Moses he would need to start to worship after he had been worshiped.

It was also the arrogance of the Children of Israel that led to their destruction; they refused to follow Jesus peace be upon him after seeing his numerous miracles just because they thought they would lose their prestige.

Also, Abu Lahab and the leaders of Quraysh refused to believe even though they witnessed the miracle of the Qur’an and admitted that it is not like any of the poetry they had ever known. It was their arrogance that stopped them from accepting the truth.

The second type of arrogance is when one feels that he is privileged over others; he looks at himself as being superior while forgetting that Allah is the One Who bestowed upon him all these endowments. An arrogant person raises himself above others and looks down at people just because they have less wealth, or have lower social status, or fewer supporters among their families.

In addition, the ones who look at others with contempt are not only the wealthy and the ones with high social status, rather, the arrogant person could be a husband who without realising has scorn in his heart for his wife because he thinks he knows and understands more than she does. An arrogant person could also be a father, who has scorn for his son because he thinks he knows more than his son does, or a teacher who looks down at his students merely because he has more knowledge than they do and the like.

Dear brothers in Islam, Allah, the Exalted, has made it unlawful for the slaves to be arrogant. Ayah 18 of Surat Luqman mentions that Prophet Luqman advised his son by saying what means: [Do not turn your face away from people (i.e., out of arrogance), and do not walk around with conceit and arrogance for Allah does not accept those who are conceited and arrogant].

This Ayah shows that Prophet Luqman advised his son not to be arrogant and consequently he should greet people while facing them and not by turning even a slight part of his face away from them as the arrogant people do. He also advised him not to walk around in a way that the arrogant and conceited people do.

We ask Allah to purify our hearts and keep us steadfast on the path of the Prophet, the path of humbleness, and not to make us amongst those who are arrogant, Ameen.