إذ قالوا ليوسف وأخوه أحب إلى أبينا منا
I’ve always heard about Sayedna Yusuf’s brothers in contexts that involve envy, jealousy and hatred. Everyone who ever spoke about them would always mention them within a negative theme, and would mostly just take away from them the importance of purifying our hearts, etc. I’ve always even personally despised them and wondered how a normal human being could possibly plan to “kill” their actual biological brother. But then just yesterday, I came across those two verses again:
“إِذْ قَالُواْ لَيُوسُفُ وَأَخُوهُ أَحَبُّ إِلَى أَبِينَا مِنَّا وَنَحْنُ عُصْبَةٌ إِنَّ أَبَانَا لَفِي ضَلالٍ مُّبِينٍ (8) اقْتُلُواْ يُوسُفَ أَوِ اطْرَحُوهُ أَرْضًا يَخْلُ لَكُمْ وَجْهُ أَبِيكُمْ وَتَكُونُواْ مِن بَعْدِهِ قَوْمًا صَالِحِينَ (9)”
[Translation: When they said, “Truly, Yusuf (Joseph) and his brother are more beloved to our father than we, while we are a clan. Indeed, our father is in clear error. Kill Yusuf (Joseph) or cast him out to some (other) land, so that the favour of your father may be given to you alone, and after that you will be righteous people (by intending repentance before committing the sin).]
And for some reason, they hit me differently this time: Yusuf’s brothers just needed to feel loved.
It’s true that they were “jealous”, but I don’t remember it was ever mentioned that they were jealous of anything that had to do with “Yusuf” himself. They were simply in need of their father’s attention and love that he was so obviously getting. They wanted to be loved and cared for the same way their father loved and cared for Yusuf, that’s it.
Of course that does not, in any way, justify coming up with a plan to get rid of your own brother, but it does, in some way, feel like God is acknowledging this human need by highlighting it that way in one of his stories. No one can say that Sayedna Yaqub wasn’t a good father, but it kinda felt like God was still shedding light on how different children’s needs can be and how far going after those human needs can possibly take us, without actually “invalidating” them. To be loved is an inherent and valid human need. Maybe Sayedna Yaqub did really love them all the same, but maybe they needed him to express that love in a different way for each of them. Maybe their love languages just weren’t in alignment. Maybe their need for affection paralyzed them in a way where they were no longer conscious of their thought patterns; they just needed to experience that kind of love and they needed it right then and there. And that’s where it got them.
Thinking about it this way, and about my own very similar needs, kind of put Yusuf’s brothers in a different place in my head. They started feeling more real, more relatable if I may say. They started sounding like someone I might have possibly turned into had I been in a different setting, around different people, with different resources. Even Yusuf himself didn’t “punish” them when he had the power to.
Constantly craving love and attention from sources that aren’t always able to recognize that need can and often does lead to mental problems. Not justifying them, but to a great extent; explaining them. They’re always coming from someplace.
I don’t think people are evil by default. They aren’t virtuous by default either. But I’m very convinced that if you try tracing back any of those “unlikeable” attitudes/attributes to their origins, it would more often than not lead you back to a distinct need that was hardly met over the years.
And well, that’s a little scary.
