How do you smell?

Weird question lol, but I don’t mean it that way.

You see, the way we smell is very important in our religion, the physical sense of it and the spiritual.

Umar bin Khattab, we know him to be the most averse to the luxuries of this world, he says, if I were to spend half of my wealth on cologne, I would not consider it extravagance. And our prophet was very conscious about how he smelt and always accepted gifts of perfumes. Smelling good is one of the greatest sunnahs we can follow.

The sense of smell is very powerful, in fact God gave us this sense before he gave us eye sight. It has the ability to bring back memories of the deceased. We see that in the story of Yaqub and Yusuf (AS). Some people do not wash clothes of their deceased loved ones because the smell reminds them of them. So not only is there a physical dimension to smell, but also a spiritual one. The prophet said, the example of the person who reads and follows Quran is like that of a citrus fruit, it smells good and tastes good. How do the angels know that a persons about to commit a good deed? Some scholars say that when we are about to do a good deed, we emanate an exquisite smell and that attracts the angels.

The prophet said, “Verily, the parable of good company and a bad company is only that of a seller of musk and a blacksmith. The seller of musk will give you some perfume, you will buy some, or you will notice a good smell. As for the blacksmith, he will burn your clothes or you will notice a bad smell.”

Source: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1995

So if you have good friends, their goodness will rub off on you, overtime. And the opposite is true, as well, hanging out with bad folk will adversely impact your character. And the worst thing about that is, you might not even notice it, you’re so used to the smell, that you can’t tell it apart. Someone has to actually point it out to you. Imagine being in an environment where swear words or backbiting is the norm and then one day, you backbite in front of another group of people and you get these vibes that they’re not appreciating what you’re doing. You know you smell bad.

Not only can you BE influenced by the smell of others, but you can also be the source of that smell. We should look around at our friends. Am I the bad apple amongst them? Am I the source of that smell? What kind of smell (khair or fitna) am I disseminating? Do I like good smell or bad smell? Am I repulsed by bad smell (backbiting, swearing etc) or do I like it? Your soul will be shrouded in good smell if you spiritually smell good, otherwise, we already know.

So we all gotta make sure we smell good, both physically and spiritually.

I learnt all of this from Omar suleimans podcast!

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