Tradition

"شَرُّ إخْوانِكَ مَنْ داهَنَكَ فى نَفْسِكَ وَ ساتَرَكَ عَيْبَك"

Imam ‘Ali (‘a) is narrated to have said: “Your worst friends are those who flatter and praise you and hide from you your defects.”1

Brief Commentary

Fleeing from reality and covering the truth can never help us resolve the various issues that we face in our day to day lives. It is for this same reason that when our friends hide the realities they see within us, rather than helping us through constructive criticism, they are doing us the biggest disservice. Usually, this is done in order to gain the friend’s favor or it is seen as a positive attribute, where one only mentions the good things about a friend and hides all of the negatives. The truth is that such actions are actually disloyalty to one’s friends, even if they do not recognize it as such. In some cases, this kind of harmful behavior ends up costing these friends dearly later on in life.

• 1. Narrated from the book Ghurar al-Hikam.