Confidence and Arrogance
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
ِ
In the Name of Allah Most-Compassionate, Most-Merciful
How can you distinush between confidence and arrogance, between someone being arrogant, which according to the scholars is, alongside envy, the worst trait to possess, and confidence which is a positive trait? Some people say that there is a fine line between arrogance and confidence. That is true but this doesn’t tell us any more and it doesn’t tell us how we distinguish between the two. Someone could be acting with confidence and yet he may be wrongly accused of being arrogant and someone acting arrogantly may be claiming he’s showing confidence, how do we tell who is telling the truth? The determining factor is certainty because arrogance is a mask for a lack of certainty, whereas confidence is a sign of certainty. A person acting arrogantly lacks certainty about what is right and wrong, about what is true and hence he masks his lack of certainty with arrogance, so that what he shows is that he possesses certainty whereas in truth he does not. Allah warns us about such people:
مَا يُجَادِلُ فِي آيَاتِ اللَّهِ إِلَّا الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا فَلَا يَغْرُرْكَ تَقَلُّبُهُمْ فِي الْبِلَادِ
“None can dispute about the Signs of Allah but the Unbelievers. Let not, then, their strutting about through the land deceive thee!” (Quran, Al-Ghafir 40:4)
But remember that when the Quran refers to the unbelievers, it is not only referring to those that explicitly declare their disbelief but also those that display signs of disbelief in their character. So we should always keep in mind that it could be anyone of us at any time, the only way to guard against arrogance is through the constant remembrance of Allah, so that we do not become like the person that needs to lie about his certainty by masking it with arrogance. About arrogance Allah says in the Qur’an:
إِلَهُكُمْ إِلَهٌ وَاحِدٌ فَالَّذِينَ لاَ يُؤْمِنُونَ بِالآخِرَةِ قُلُوبُهُم مُّنكِرَةٌ وَهُم مُّسْتَكْبِرُونَ
لاَ جَرَمَ أَنَّ اللّهَ يَعْلَمُ مَا يُسِرُّونَ وَمَا يُعْلِنُونَ إِنَّهُ لاَ يُحِبُّ الْمُسْتَكْبِرِينَ
“Your Allah is one Allah: as to those who believe not in the Hereafter, their hearts refuse to know, and they are arrogant. Undoubtedly Allah doth know what they conceal, and what they reveal: verily He loveth not the arrogant”. (An-Nahl 16:22-23)
The verse above presents an interesting link between tawheed, that is the vbelief in the Oneness of Allah, the belief in the hereafter, the desire to know and arrogance. There is a sequential connection these four components, the highest of which is tawheed, begins with the humility, the opposite of arrogance. But the presence of arrogance is also the very thing that becomes the destructive element in a person life because ultimately they forego the possibility of knowing Allah. And Allah can only be known through humility, through the removal of arrogance in the heart, with a desire to confront and know what is true from what is false. Not to coneal what is true, or to create another much more palatable reality, but to see it as it is. Arrogance thus becomes asign of weakness, a refection of a person’s inablility to confront reality because he is not all at certain of what that reality means or expects from him. Conversely, a person with confidence is displaying that he possesses certainty and it is because he possesses certainty about what is right that he is confident. The confident person speaks the truth whereas the arrogant person is untruthful. If a person possesses certainty then he has no need to be arrogant because his certainty is associated with knowledge, and thus both certainty and confidence flow from knowledge. But is this really the case? We know that Imam Al-Ghazali became very arrogant as a result of his knowledge. So what additional factor was missing that gave rise to his arrogance? That factor was obedience to Allah. All certainty comes from not only possessing knowledge about what is right, but applying that knowledge to the best of ones ability which denotes obedience to Allah. As a reward for the dual application of both knowledge and worship Allah rewards His servants with certainty. Furthermore, we know there is only one purpose of existence contained in two acts, knowledge and worship. As Allah says in the Quran:
اقْرَأْ بِاسْمِ رَبِّكَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ
“Read: In the name of thy Lord Who createth” (Quran, al-Iqra 96:1)
This verse was the very first to be revealed in the Quran, which places the seeking of knowledge as the first priority, but this can only be done, as the Quran states, for the sake of Allah. So we may read this verse as enjoining the principle of knowledge and worship as a combined act. We know of the Sahaba that they never sought to increase in their knowledge of the Quran until they had perfected what they knew, and that perfection came only through applying their knowledge perfectly. Hence they would read and memorise only about ten verses at a time, apply them to perfection and then learn another ten and so on. But what true knowledge, that is to say, knowledge that is combined with obedient worship, engenders is humility. Out of humility, thus, comes certainty. Thus from knowledge and worship comes humility, from humility comes certainty and from certainty comes confidence. The same logic does not apply to someone that possesses arrogance because their knowledge and worship are not sincere and because of a lack of sincerity they are not increased in their certainty. So that is how to distinguish between arrogance and confidence. Confidence is very beneficial, it is a gift from Allah that enhances capabilities. The one that acts out of arrogance thinks his capabilities are being enhanced, but he is actually being diminished in them, his punishment comes from his own hands. Finally, we are to remember the hadith of the prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, who said, “A person will not enter paradise even if they have an atoms worth of arrogance in the heart”.
May Allah increase us in our humility to Him, may He show us how to be more humble, may He show us our true blessings so that we may show our gratitude to Him, may He remove even the slighest arrogance from us and never cause it to root in the heart, and may He bless us with certainty about all that is true and right and just and pure, granting us the ability to act according to what we know. Ameen.
