Remember the pigeon’s feather

Have you ever noticed how beautiful a single pigeon’s feather is? The other day I was looking at a pigeons feather, it was white with grey streaks...it looked so pure and amazingly so beautiful. Pondering on this I thought that it’s strange that people don’t often regard a pigeon’s feather as something beautiful, and I think this is because as a whole a pigeon is not commonly regarded as a beautiful bird. I mean, when you look at a pigeon you don’t often think; “Masha’Allah that’s a beautiful bird”, as you would do with other more exotic and less common birds.

Don’t worry now, my post is not all about pigeon’s...but the pigeon’s feather did remind me of something very important. This reminded me of an important hadith which states something to this effect; “Let not a believing man hate a believing woman. If he hates one trait of her character, he should be pleased with another that is within her” (Sahih Muslim). You see, just like the single beautiful pigeon’s feather is easily ignored if we simply disregard the pigeon and think that it’s not a beautiful bird, so too can beautiful traits of people be ignored or overlooked if we dismiss the person as a whole, regarding her as a negative person.

Although the hadith above is being addressed to men, I think that women can take a lesson from this as well. How often do we dismiss other women, our own Muslim sisters, because in our minds we’ve focused so much on her faults that we’ve forgotten that there are good qualities inside of her? I know that it can become very difficult with certain people sometimes, but imagine the difference it will make in another person’s life if you focus on her good when everyone else is accustomed to focusing on her bad or negative qualities.

Once we begin to realise that people have both good and bad qualities, we will then begin to judge those qualities individually instead of judging the person (which is a really bad thing in Islam ). What this also does is it gives us a chance to try and understand where people are coming from and almost all of the time when we actually take the time to try and understand others; we will see that they really are not as bad as we thought they were.

So, if there is any woman in your life who always seems to be negative and who usually causes negative reactions in you and others around you, next time remember the pigeon’s feather and try and look for her beautiful qualities, and you’ll see that things will become much better Insha’Allah, because just like the pigeon will never be regarded as ugly or plain to you again once you’ve focused on the beauty of a single feather, so too will a person not be regarded as a bad or negative person once you’ve opened up your eyes to the good qualities in her.

May Allah Almighty make it easy for us all to always see the good in others, Insha’Allah Ameen!