٨٤ - باب الحياء وفضله والحث على التخلق به

Ibn ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with them both) reported that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ passed by a man of the Anṣār who was admonishing his brother about modesty. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: "Leave him be, for modesty is part of faith." Agreed upon.

ʿImrān ibn Ḥuṣayn (may Allah be pleased with them both) reported that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: "Modesty brings nothing but good." Agreed upon. And in a narration of Muslim: "Modesty is wholly good," or he said: "All of modesty is good."

Abū Hurayra (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: "Faith has seventy-odd — or sixty-odd — branches: the most excellent of them is the saying ‘There is no god but Allah,’ and the least of them is removing harm from the road; and modesty is a branch of faith." Agreed upon. [Al-Nawawī's gloss:] "al-biḍʿ" is with a kasra on the bāʾ, though a fatḥa is also permissible: it denotes from three to ten. "al-shuʿba" is the piece or portion. "al-imāṭa" is removal. "al-adhā" is whatever causes harm, such as a stone, thorn, mud, ashes, filth and the like.

Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī (may Allah be pleased with him) reported: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ was more modest than a virgin in her private chamber, and whenever he saw something he disliked, we would recognise it in his face. Agreed upon. The scholars said: The reality of modesty is a disposition that prompts one to abandon what is shameful and prevents one from falling short in the right of those entitled to it. We have related from Abū al-Qāsim al-Junayd (may Allah have mercy on him) that he said: Modesty is the perceiving of Allah's favours — that is, His blessings — together with the perceiving of one's own shortcoming, so that between the two there is generated a state which is called modesty. And Allah knows best.