The Three “Selfs” via Islam

What are the three Selfs?

1 - The self confidence

2 - The self esteem

3 - the self worth

It’s easy to confuse self-confidence with self-esteem, and self-esteem with self-worth.

Self-confidence

is the attitude you have about your skills and abilities. When you have self-confidence, you are more willing to trust yourself and make choices that make you feel more in control in your life.

Self-esteem

refers to a person’s beliefs about their own worth and value. People often make decisions and choices for their lives based on their self-esteem

Self-worth

is about valuing yourself. Merriam-Webster defines self-worth as “a feeling that you are a good person who deserves to be treated with respect.” Regardless of what others say or do, people with a healthy sense of self-worth accept themselves and treat themselves with respect.

As you read above, in the three Selfs, they interact with each other to a great extent, and the question here is: Did Islam belittle these three Selfs or any of them, or did it support that? To answer this question, I will present a brief story by the great companion Musab bin Umair.

The story in brief for those who do not know it

Musab was one of the most elegant men of the Quraysh, distinguished by his elegance and luxurious clothes, He was known for his wonderful scent of luxurious perfumes, and he was known for his intelligence and fluency of speech, and when he sat in the gatherings of the men of Quraish, he would listen to him despite his young age, after a short while, he heard with those who had heard about Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace. As a young man with an eloquent tongue and a lover of everything new, he wanted to learn about this new religion that was being persecuted in Mecca, so he went to the house of Al-Arqam Ibn Abi Al-Arqam, until God Almighty opened his heart to Islam, but the winds did not always bring what the ships desired, He had a mother with a very strong personality who was feared by men, and she was against the Muhammadan message with all her strength and she learned of her elegant son’s conversion to Islam, she robbed him of money, luxurious clothes, and plentiful food, and locked him in the corner of the house, as events unfolded, he fled from his mother’s house and migrated with the Messenger of God, May God bless him and grant him peace, to Medina, where the Messenger of God - may God bless him and grant him peace - appointed him as an ambassador for the new Muslims in Medina to teach them their religion.

The witness of this story

Listen with me to this part of his story - may God be pleased with him - so that you can learn and know how much self-esteem, self-confidence and self-worth he had, and that the Messenger of God - may God bless him and grant him peace - He supported this behavior and did not reject it or interfere in the way he dealt with it or restrict it to a certain intellectual approach or anything else. Rather, of course it is the Qur’an, but in the way it pleases.

Musab lived in Medina as the guest of one of the prominent Ansar and one of its masters, whose hearts and minds God opened to Islam, namely (Asad bin Zurarah) then he took Musab out one day and took him to a garden where the new Muslims were gathering, and two Quraysh masters came and they were still polytheistic and were not Muslims, - Without going into many names - one of them came, brandishing his sword, because he thought that Musab bin Umair - may God be pleased with him - He came to belittle the status of the masters in the city, and the reaction of Musab bin Umair - may God be pleased with him - was very strange... Read with me:

What brings you to us? Make fun of our weak? Seclude us if you have any need of yourselves, and Musab said to him: Or do you sit and listen? If you are satisfied with something, you accept it, and if you hate it, refrain from what you hate. He said: You have done justice. Then he focused his spear and sat down, and Musab spoke to him about Islam and recited to him the Qur’an, He said: By God, we would have recognized Islam in his face before he spoke, and in his radiance and rejoicing. Then he said: How good and beautiful is this? what do you do if you want to enter this religion? They said to him: You wash, purify your garment, then bear witness to the truth, then pray two rak’ahs. So he got up, bathed, purified his garment, recited the tashahhud and prayed two rak'ahs.

The story has ended and we will not go into the details of the story of Musab bin Umair, may Allay put mercy on him - which is not hidden from any Muslim, but we take some pauses with it:

1 - When the man came to him, brandishing his sword, and came with a face other than the one he left the gathering with (intimidation of death), and despite this, Musab - may God be pleased with him - did not move a eyelash.

2 - Musab - may God be pleased with him - began with all calmness, telling him: “Should you not sit down and listen?” This is an article full of self-confidence, self-esteem, and a sense of the value of what he is talking about.

3 - This calm dialogue ended with one Islam who had been threatened with death a short while ago.

What do I mean?

I mean that Musab - may God be pleased with him - was full of self-confidence and had a high level of self-esteem, and the Messenger of God - may God bless him and grant him peace - did not rebuke him about that or tell him that humility was better or anything else, On the contrary, from the treatment of the Messenger of God - may God bless him and grant him peace - in Mecca, he understood that this man was the best ambassador for the Muslims in Medina, despite the presence of great companions such as Abu Bakr and Omar, may God pleased with them, However, he presented the formerly wealthy young man who died and could not find enough to support him due to his lack of money at that time, Now: Do you imagine that the principle of the three Selfs differs from Islam in any way?