The Sunday Guardian | February 22, 2015

There are two distinct ways of addressing people. One way is to address their minds, so that this helps engender in them new thinking.

The other way is to pander to their emotions- to deliver what people might think to be "fine" speeches, but which cause no positive transformation at all in their lives.

Those who seek to address people's minds and enable them to start thinking on positive lines often do not gather a large following. Generally, they do not win public acclaim. But, at the same time, serious-minded seekers of truth find food for thought and inspiration in the wisdom of such people, which helps them wake up from their slumber and to set their thinking process working in a different direction. The Quran advises: "Speak to them in such terms as will address their minds" (4:63). People who speak in this way help others to re-think things and change their attitudes and opinions.

If until then their lives had been centred on themselves, it helps them begin to live for the Truth. It helps them develop a new mentality. It leads them to introspect. They speak less now and think more. They now give more attention to reforming themselves than to criticising others.

For people who address others simply to make a "good" impression and win cheap popularity, the matter is totally different. They seek to gather followers, and so they appeal to people's whims, fancies and prejudices and other negative emotions. This is how they win the adulation of their unthinking fans. They become very "popular" and are much talked-about. In actual fact, however, behind their apparent popularity lies a deep and dark emptiness. Their rabble-rousing rhetoric can continue for years, but it will not have helped transform even a single individual.