Holding yourself accountable is also an essential characteristic. You hold yourself accountable and question yourself about your feelings towards your brother, sister, or humanity and why you feel that way. We should seek to attain this level, to have this love towards a cause. This cause is a principle that we love and we know that Allah can give and He is bountiful, and not by anything else. For example, Imam Shafi’i said that he would love for people to learn this knowledge and that none of it would be attributed to him; which shows how beautiful his character was.
May Allah (swt) to beautify our character and forgive us for our sins and our shortcomings, and to help us love for our brothers what we love for ourselves. A closing story of Malcolm X, he was encountered by this hadith. He thought it was profound but didn’t know it was a hadith, yet stuck with him for the rest of his life. This is how the examples of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) should be, because these are timeless, amazing, beautiful, and expansive wisdoms that should stick with us and affect us with the way we look at life and the way we deal with others.
