The art of dialogue and listening

The Sheikh asks what has befallen homes, where affection and mercy have evaporated until the house has become a prison for some of its members even if it is a lofty palace, where souls are straitened by the slightest causes, and where brothers, sisters and spouses no longer prefer one another. ^{1 2} He holds that one cause is that people do not master the language of dialogue. ³

He says dialogue is not a battle one enters to win, but a calm conversation for which the right time is chosen: a household problem is not raised when the husband comes home tired from work, nor does a husband reproach his wife when she has just heard bad news about her family. ^{3 4} He holds that when one party is in a fit of anger the other must stay calm, and that this applies in government offices, institutions and companies, and between neighbours and colleagues, not only between spouses. ^{5 6}

He holds that everyone lacks the art of listening; if each party listens to the other and gives him room to set out what he has, they reach safe harbour, whereas the one whose argument is weak raises his voice and the one with a strong argument sets it out calmly, without hurt and without raking up a painful past. ^{6 7}

He distinguishes social intelligence from social stupidity: the wise person puts things in their proper place and neither belittles the great nor magnifies the small, while it is social stupidity to fix on the other party's faults and on traits that do not change, such as a temper a man inherited from his family, and to neglect the wide space of good in him. ^{8 9 10 5} He says the Arab Muslim woman is among the cleverest of people at absorbing her husband's anger until he calms down; this is his view. ¹⁰

In the eleventh episode the Sheikh holds that human gifts differ as fingerprints, voiceprints and eye-prints differ, and that dialogue fails when one party wants to impose his view as the absolute truth and the other's as absolute falsehood. ^{11 12 13} He cites the Qur'an's manner: at the end of Surat al-Kafirun it calls what the others follow a 'religion' as they themselves call it, and in another verse it describes, in the address, the believers' deeds as 'crimes' and the others' deeds as 'work'; he counts this the height of refinement in dialogue. ^{13 14 15 16} He mentions the verse 'either we or you are rightly guided or in clear error', which in its address does not settle who is guided, and the believer of Pharaoh's household, who began his argument with his people from their own suspicion of Musa: if he is lying, his lie is upon him. ^{17 18 19} He concludes that one in dialogue should present the truth he holds rather than busy himself with tearing down and insulting falsehood, and that children recoil from advice that comes as criticism, because human nature resists commands; he cites Adam, who was allowed every tree of the Garden but one and ate from it, and that people were commanded to be patient yet few are. ^{19 20 21 22 23}

The Sheikh holds that part of the Prophet ﷺ's greatness was that he grasped the keys to his Companions' personalities, that every person has a key, and that if we fail to understand someone it is because we have lost the key or stand at the wrong door; he gives the image of a house with two doors, and of what he says were two knockers on doors in Ottoman times, a large one knocked by a man, answered by the master of the house, and a small one knocked by a woman, answered by the lady of the house (needs_source: the report as the Sheikh tells it). ^{24 25 26 27} He holds that parents stand at the wrong door when advising their children, choosing the wrong time and manner and using the duty of honouring parents to raise their voices at them, which for him is not upbringing. ^{27 28}