THE THIRTY-SEVENTH DISCOURSE On censure of envy

Why is that I see you, O believer, envying your neighbour for his food and drink and dress and wife, and his house of residence and for his enjoying himself on his affluence, because you find him in possession of blessings of his Master and of the portion allotted to him? Do you not know that it weakens your faith and causes you to fall in the eye of your Master and makes you loathsome to Him? Have you not heard the saying narrated from the Holy Prophet that Allah says: "An envious person is an enemy of Our blessing"? And have you not heard the saying of the Holy Prophet: "Verily envy eats up virtues as fire eats up fuel"? Then why are you envious of him, o poor man? Is it for his portion, or for yours? If you envy him for the portion allotted to him by God, you come under the operation of His word: We portion not among them their livelihood in the life of this world (43:32). You have most surely been unjust to this man who is enjoying the blessing of his Lord with which He has specially favoured him, and which He has appointed as his portion and has not left any share in it for anyone else. Who will be more unjust than yourself, and the more miserly and more foolish and more stupid? If you envy him on account of your portion, then you have betrayed the utmost ignorance, because your portion will not be given to anybody else and will not be transferred from you to anybody else. God is free from such injustice. He says: My sustenance cannot be changed, nor am I in the least unjust to the servants (50:29). Surely God has not been so unjust to you as to take from you what He has allotted to you and to give it to somebody else. Such a thought only betrays your ignorance and is an injustice to your brother. It is better for you that you should be envious of the earth which is a storehouse of treasures and buried wealth, consisting of various kinds of gold, silver and precious stones out of what had been hoarded by past kings; of Ad and Thamud and kings and emperors of Persia and Rome, than that you should envy your brother. Your likeness is only like that of a man who sees a king with his majesty and army and power and kingdom, exercising control over the lands and collecting their taxes and exploiting them for his own benefit and enjoying life with various kinds of enjoyments and gratification of desires, but he does not envy this king. Instead he sees a wild dog which serves a dog from among the dogs of that king and remains with it, and passes day and night with it and is given the leavings and crumbs of food from the royal kitchen, so he lives on that; this man begins envying this dog, and becomes hostile to him and desires his death and wants meanly to be in its place after its death without being indifferent towards the world or developing a religious attitude towards life and contentment with his own lot. Is there any man in the whole course of time more foolish than this man and more stupid and more ignorant? 'Had you known, o poor man! what your neighbour will have to face in the future in the form of a lengthy account on the Day of Resurrection if he has not obeyed God in what He has given him out of His blessings, and in the matter of fulfilling the obligations due to Him, and if he has not obeyed His orders and observed His prohibitions while enjoying His blessings, and has not used them as an aid to His service and obedience to Him — that he will face such things as will make him desire that he was not given even a particle of these enjoyments and had never seen any enjoyment at all. Have you not heard what has come down in the Tradition? "Surely there will be parties of people who will desire on the Day of Resurrection that their flesh might be severed from their body by means of scissors on their seeing the recompense of the sufferers of troubles." Your neighbour will desire on the Day of Judgment to be in your place in this world's life, on seeing his own lengthy account and his own difficulties, and his standing fifty thousand years in the heat of the sun of that day on account of what he has enjoyed of the comfort of this world's life, while you will be keeping aside from all this under the shade of the throne of God, eating, drinking, enjoying, happy and joyful and comfortably placed on account of your patience in the face of the difficulties of this world's life and lack of means, and its troubles and its poverty and its neediness, and on account of your contentment with your lot and your reconcilement to your Lord in what He has decreed and ordered in the matter of your poverty, and of the affluence of others and of your ill-health and others' health, and of your difficulties and others' ease and comfort and of your abasement and others' honour. May God make you and us among those who show patience in the face of calamities and feel grateful for His blessings and who resign and entrust their affairs to the Lord of the earth and the heaven.