Act the way you advise others to

allah the almighty said: {o you who have believed, why do you say what you do not do? great is hatred in the sight of allah that you say what you do not do}(as-saf: 3) i.e. why do you speak about good things and urge others to do good deeds while you do not do that? why do you tell others to avoid bad deeds and allege that you don't do bad deeds while you do them? the right believers don't do that. the believer who tells others to do good deeds should be the first one in doing such good deeds. similarly, the one who tells people to avoid bad deeds should be far away from such bad deeds. allah the almighty said: {do you order righteousness of the people and forget yourselves while you recite the scripture? then will you not reason?} (baqara: 44). shu'ayb, peace be upon him said: {and i do not intend to differ from you in that which i have forbidden you;} (hud: 88). our prophet, peace be upon him, was advising people to do good deeds and he was doing such good deeds firstly. he was advising them to avoid bad deeds and he was avoiding bad deeds firstly. these are the morals of mohammad, peace be upon him. he translates his statements into good manners and the best example for this is what happened to the prophet, peace be upon him, and the muslims at al-hudaybiyah. when the polytheists entered into treaty with the muslims pursuant to certain conditions, including the condition that the muslims shall return from makkah this year and come to do pilgrimage in the next year.

ibn al-qayyem said:

1. when the prophet, peace be upon him, finished the issue of the letter, he said to his companions: "go ahead and slaughter your sacrifices then shave". however, no one of the companions responded although the prophet, peace be upon him, repeated the order three times. seeing that, the prophet, peace be upon him, went to the room of um salama and narrated to her what happened. um salama said: o prophet of allah, i recommend that you go out without speaking to any one of them, then slaughter your sacrifice and shave your hair. the prophet, peace be upon him, worked according to the consultancy of um salama. he went out and did not speak to any person until he finished slaughtering his sacrifice and shaving. when the people saw that, they stood up immediately to slaughter their sacrifices and they started shaving for each other. al-bukhari (2581).

the companions at the beginning delayed implementing the orders of the prophet, peace be upon him, but when they saw him doing the rituals, they started implementing their rituals quickly.

this is a great method in life. the teacher should adhere to this method in his life because he is an example and the students will take morals, behaviors and science from him. therefore, what is the benefit which the students can gain from the teacher if his deeds are contradicting his statements. what should the student follow? the deeds or the statements of the teacher? the teacher may say that lying is bad habit but we may see him lying to others several times.

therefore, allah said: {great is hatred in the sight of allah that you say what you do not do}.the teachers should fear allah and bear the trust of teaching our children as required. they should teach themselves firstly and they should act as per their statements in order to be able to educate the generations on the right manner.

al-ghazali said: the eighth function: the teacher should apply what he has learnt. his deeds should not contradict his statements because by that no one will believe him. if some person eats something and says to people this is a poison; don't eat it. the people will not believe him and will say if it is really poison why he eats? surly it is a good food and he wants to take it alone! abu al-aswad al-do'ali said:

"before teaching others teach yourself. don’t' tell others to avoid certain bad deeds and you do such bad deeds. you will be like the one who prescribe medicine to others while he is sick and needs medicine to cure himself. start from yourself. try to reform yourself first. by that, if you advise others they will hear your advice and they will follow your example".

summary:

1) it is bad manner to say what you don't do {great is hatred in the sight of allah that you say what you do not do}.

2) if the teacher says what he does not do, the student will feel confused and will not be able to maintain stability in his manners.

3) the mission of the teachers is very important.