Up to now, this series has spoken a lot about responsibility in terms of building: building people, building formation, building quiet workers, building missions that outlive us. But there is another side to responsibility that we often avoid, because it is painful to look at.
How we break.
And how we mend.
Most pain inside our communities does not begin with kufr or open sin. It begins with a sentence said badly. A decision made clumsily. A promise not kept. A misunderstanding that was left to rot. A comment forwarded into the wrong group. A disappointment never spoken about until it turned into resentment.
Disagreement is not the problem. Life with other human beings guarantees that. The issue is what we do when it arrives. Do we let it fester into factions, cutting lines across the very masājid we claim to be defending? Or do we treat conflict itself as an amānah, something that Allah is watching us handle, a test of whether we love our own ego or our brother’s heart more?
We often say, “The youth are leaving,” and “The community is divided,” as if these things fell from the sky. But when a young person walks into a masjid and senses coldness between elders, feels tension in meetings, hears hints from the mimbar about “certain people,” watches uncles and teachers ignoring each other in the car park, they are learning a curriculum from us. They are learning how this ummah handles hurt.
The reality of responsibility is that we are not only answerable for what we teach in our classes. We are answerable for the culture we hand down around those classes. If we say “love for the sake of Allah” in dars and “I will never forgive him” in private, the people around us will believe what we live, not what we say.
The Prophet ﷺ lived in a community of strong personalities. Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, Khālid ibn al Walīd, ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar, ʿĀ’ishah, Fātimah, رضي الله عنهم. These were not soft, shapeless people. They disagreed. They argued. They saw things differently. Yet their disagreements did not usually turn into permanent fractures, because they feared Allah in how they spoke about each other, and they cared more about the dīn than about being vindicated.
We, on the other hand, often treat our differences as identity. “Our side.” “Their camp.” We find comfort in the people who already agree with us and avoid the ones who do not. We hint at each other in talks. We send cryptic messages online that “everyone knows” are about a certain person or group. We say “I leave them to Allah” while making sure the damage to their name is already done.
The first responsibility in disagreement is to slow down. Our nafs loves speed in conflict. It wants to reply, to respond, to broadcast, to collect support. But the Qur’an keeps pulling us back to something else: check, verify, ask, fear Allah, be just, even with those you dislike. Before we say, “He betrayed us,” or “They are corrupt,” or “She has an agenda,” we have to ask, “What have I actually seen? What have I actually heard directly from them? What is my own hurt adding into this?”
Responsible disagreement begins with facing the person, not the crowd. It means walking towards the person you are upset with, not towards the nearest audience. It means speaking in a room with the door closed before speaking into a microphone. It means saying, “I felt hurt when this happened,” rather than building a whole story about their intentions.
Sometimes, after talking, we find out that what we built in our head was wrong. Sometimes we discover that we were partly to blame. Sometimes we realise that it was simply clumsiness, not malice. Other times, we find that there really was injustice, carelessness or harm. At that point, responsibility does not disappear. It becomes heavier.
When harm has been done, the priority is not winning, but repair. That repair has three directions. Towards Allah, in tawbah. Towards the one harmed, in apology and amends. And towards the wider community, in clarity and restraint.
We have to learn the courage to say plainly, “I was wrong,” or “I am sorry,” or “We did not handle this well.” We fear that this will make us look weak, but in reality it is the only path out of the swamp. The longer we spin, justify, minimise, or change the topic, the deeper we sink and the more trust dies quietly in people’s hearts.
On the other side, we need to relearn how to accept apology without humiliation. Forgiveness is not pretending nothing happened. It is choosing to let someone rebuild trust slowly, instead of chaining them forever to their worst mistake. If we say “there is no forgiveness for him” about any believer, we forget that the Lord we worship forgives major sins when the door of tawbah is walked through sincerely.
There is also a responsibility in how we speak about disagreements when we are not directly involved. Our tongues and our thumbs often move very quickly. Screens give us the illusion of distance, but the sins are still real. Passing on unverified stories, laughing along with attacks, deleting people with a sentence, reading public humiliation as entertainment. On the Day of Judgement, there will be no “just spectator” category. If a believer’s dignity was being torn apart and we joined in, or watched gladly, or helped the video travel, that will be written.
We need to ask, each time, before forwarding, commenting or joking: If this was about my own father, mother, teacher or child, would I speak like this? If the Prophet ﷺ was in the group, would I press send? If the person I am talking about stood in front of me now, would I say it in the same way?
Sometimes, the most responsible action is to walk away from a particular relationship, project or setting. Not every team can be fixed. Not every pattern will be healed in this life. There are moments when staying in a place keeps you in constant sin, if backbiting, suspicion and contempt have become the air you breathe there. Even then, responsibility follows you out of the door. You can leave without dragging people’s names behind you. You can move on without dropping poison in the ears of everyone you meet.
There is a difference between warning clearly about real danger and turning every difficult experience into a personal revenge tour. The first is for Allah. The second is for the nafs.
The next generation is watching how we handle all of this. They see who always has a new enemy. They see who tries to talk directly and who loves circles and whispers. They see who is able to sit with people they disagree with and who needs constant purity of agreement to feel safe. If we hand them a dīn full of grudges and split loyalties, we should not be surprised if some of them walk away from all of us and call it “leaving the drama”.
The reality of responsibility is that we must not only build strong structures and inspiring programmes. We must also build a culture where people can disagree, hurt, fall out and still find a path back to each other for Allah’s sake. A culture where we do not hand out lifelong labels lightly. A culture where it is possible to say, “We got this wrong,” without everything collapsing.
Perhaps each of us can begin somewhere simple. Make a short list, in your heart, of people you are carrying against your chest with tightness. Ask Allah to soften that. Ask if there is one person you need to message, meet or at least stop speaking about. Ask if there is one WhatsApp group you need to leave because it is turning your heart dark. Ask if there is one story you keep telling that you need to retire, for your own salvation.
We will not leave this world with perfect relationships. That belongs to Jannah alone. But we can leave having tried to keep our tongues and our hearts as clean as possible from injustice towards other believers, especially those who have shared the burden of working for dīn with us.
May Allah protect us from the arrogance that makes us love being right more than being truthful. May He give us the humility to admit when we have harmed, the patience to accept apology, and the wisdom to know when to step back without burning bridges. May He not let us hand the next generation a pile of our unresolved fights as their inheritance.
And may He write us among those who, when they broke, tried to mend, and when they disagreed, still feared Him more than they feared losing face.
