Courtesy

COURTESY:

4:86 - When a (courteous) greeting is offered you meet it with a greeting still more courteous (at least) of equal courtesy. Allah takes careful account of all things. 605

605 The necessary correlative to the command to fight in a good cause is the command to cultivate sweetness and cordiality in our manners at all times. For fighting is an exceptional necessity while the sweetness of daily human intercourse is a normal need. Further, we give kindness and courtesy without asking, and return it if possible in even better terms than we received, or at least in equally courteous terms. For we arc all creatures of One God, and shall be brought together before Him. (4.86)

18:19 - Such (being their state) We raised them up (from sleep) that they might question each other. Said one of them "How long have ye stayed (here)?" They said "We have stayed (perhaps) a day or part of a day." (At length) they (all) said "Allah (alone) knows best how long ye have stayed here...Now send ye then one of you with this money of yours to the town: let him find out which is the best food (to be had) and bring some to you that (ye may) satisfy hunger herewith: and let him behave with care and courtesy and let him not inform anyone about you. 2352 2353 2354

2352 This is the point of the story. Their own human impressions were to be compared, each with the other. They were to be made to see that with the best goodwill and the most honest enquiry they might reach different conclusions; that they were not to waste their time in vain controversies, but to get on to the main business of life; and that Allah alone had full knowledge of the things that seem to us so strange, or inconsistent, or inexplicable, or that produce different impressions on different minds. If they entered the Cave in the morning and woke up in the afternoon, one of them might well think they had been there only a few hours-only part of a day. This relative or fallacious impression of Time also gives us an inkling of the state when there will be no Time, of the Resurrection when all our little impressions of this life will be corrected by the final Reality. This mystery of time has puzzled many contemplative minds. Cf. "Dark time that haunts us with the briefness of our days" (Thomas Wolfe in "Of Time and the River"). (18.19)

2353 They now give up barren controversy and come to the practical business of life. But their thoughts are conditioned by the state of things that existed when they entered the Cave. The money they carried was the money coined in the reign of the monarch who persecuted the Religion of Unity and favoured the false cults of Paganism. (18.19)

2354 Best food:, i.e., purest, most wholesome, perhaps also most suitable for those who rejected idol worship, i.e., not dedicated to idols. For they still imagined the world in the same state in which they had known it before they entered the Cave. (18.19)

Al-Tirmidhi Hadith
Hadith 888 Narrated by
Anas ibn Malik

A man asked the Prophet (peace be upon him): O Messenger of Allah! When any one of us meets a Muslim brother or a friend, should he then bow his head (as a sign of courtesy to him)? He said: No. The man said: Should he embrace and kiss him? He said: No. The man then asked: Should he clasp his hands? He said: Yes.

Transmitted by Tirmidhi.