Q714 :I have a friend who, as a young man, is a
model of good behavior. He is God-fearing, and dutiful to his parents,
keen to help others and hard-working. He is trusting and he feels that
by doing good, he and his family will lead a happy life. One aspect of
what he did to try and help his parents was to persuade a friend he had
known for a short period of time to find a job for his father. They
agreed to pay the man a sum of money which, to them, was large and
could only be provided with much difficulty. However, he managed to
raise the amount because they felt that a job for the father will ease
the family’s circumstances. The man took the money and disappeared.
This has left a terrible effect on my friend. His attention to his
Islamic duties seems to weaken. He asks why should one bother about
being good, if a bad person can deprive a poor family of their limited
resources and then obtain forgiveness later in life by repenting or
going on pilgrimage? Please netment.
A714 : Your friend seems to be in confusion about a
number of issues. The first thing is that of expecting immediate reward
for his good behavior and his attending to his religious duties.
Moreover, he wants a reward in a particular form, namely, protection
from the scheming of others. Since this man whom he trusted and gave
the money to find a job for his father was a bad person, then Allah
should have revealed to your friend the nature of that person and what
he had been scheming. This is what your friend expects, although
neither you nor he has put that idea so clearly. This is unfortunately
true of many people. Since they offer their prayers and fast and pay
their zakah, they expect full protection against any evil perpetrated
by other people and against any harm caused by natural phenomena. This
is totally wrong. Look at the history of the Prophet himself. There
never was and there never could be a human being more perfect in
behavior than the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) himself. His
conduct provides an example for everyone of us to emulate, not only to
attain a high standard of perfection but also to earn the pleasure of
Allah. Nevertheless, the Prophet himself was subjected to much harm by
the non-believers in Makkah. Allah protected him from the non-believers
who tried to kill him because Allah wanted him to netplete his task of
conveying His message. Otherwise, the Prophet suffered much harm at the
hands of the non-believers in Makkah, the Jews and the hypocrites in
Madinah and others as well. When you consider what the Prophet had
suffered, you will find that losing an amount of money, large as it may
be, is only a trivial matter. Your friend should ask himself from a
very practical point of view. If Allah were to protect every
well-behaved believer against the designs of others, how would the good
distinguish themselves from the bad in this life? How will it be known
that a particular person is corrupt or harbors ill-intentions? We must
not forget that this life is a test for every one of us. We have to
make sure that we pass this test successfully. Having provided us with
enough guidance to show us the way to follow in order to pass this test
and earn His reward in the hereafter, Allah leaves us alone to face
this life with all its problems and difficulties. The loss of money as
a result of deception by another person is only an aspect of the
difficulties that we may encounter. If any of us loses a large amount
of money as a result of deception by another person, would that mean
that Allah has abandoned us, or that He does not take good care of us?
Let us remember here that if we follow the guidance Allah has provided
for us through His messenger, we only benefit ourselves. Allah does not
benefit by our worship. Nor our disobedience would harm Him in any way.
He says in a Hadith-e-Qudsi: “My servants, you will not attain harming
Me as to harm Me, and you will not attain benefiting Me so as to
benefit Me. My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the
human of you and the jinn of you to be as pious as the most pious heart
of any one man of you, that would not increase My kingdom in anything.
My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the human of
you and the jinn of you to be as wicked as the most wicked heart of any
one man of you, that would not decrease My kingdom in anything. My
servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the human of you
and the jinn of you, to rise up in one place and make a request to Me,
and were I to give everyone what he requested, that would not decrease
what I have, anymore than a needle decreases the sea if it is put into
it.” (Related by Muslim, At-Tirmithi and Ibn Majah) Since our worship
does not benefit Allah, why does He make it a duty which we are bound
to fulfill? The answer is that our worship benefits us in making us
better people. You speak of your friend as a man of exemplary conduct.
In your detailed letter it appears very clearly that he is so because
he is a good believer and he attends to his Islamic duties. He has made
the error of trusting a bad person, but that error may be netmitted by
anyone of us. [It has not been disclosed what necessitated advance
payment of a large sum of money for procurement of a job. It is assumed
that the deal was not dubious.] It seems to me that the problem with
your friend is not so much the loss of his money, but the possibility
that the person who defrauded him can get away with it by simply
repenting what he did or going to pilgrimage or doing some good action.
This is not so. The sins we may netmit are of two types. They are
either an aggression against what is due to Allah or an aggression
against what is due to other people. When we are resurrected on the day
of judgment, everyone of us faces the reckoning. We will have certainly
netmitted numerous offenses against the rights of Allah or the rights
of other human beings. What is due to Allah, He may forgive readily if
the person concerned has earned his forgiveness through genuine
repentance and through good action that he had made subsequently in
this life. Thus, a person might have spent 10 or 15 or 30 years without
offering a single prayer or fasting a day in Ramadan. If he has
genuinely repented of all that and began to attend to his duties but he
died before he could attend properly to his Islamic duties, Allah may
forgive him all that he had netmitted or neglected in the past. But a
person who netes on the day of judgment having done injustice to one
person and stolen the property of another and got away with what was
due to a third, will not find forgiveness so readily available. Allah
will not forgive him those rights of other people simply because he
turned to Him in repentance. Allah first asks the people who have
claims against that person whether they are willing to forgive him or
not. Allah does not write off the claims or the rights of people
against any person unless they themselves consent. Everyone of us will
be free to state whether he forgives what is owed to him by another
person. If your friend states on the day of judgment that he does not
forgive his defaulter, Allah will take away the credit of some of the
good deeds that person had done in his life and credit them to your
friend until he is satisfied. In other words, if a person cheats or
netmits injustice against another or backbites him or injures him in
any way, he will give him of his good deeds on the day of judgment
unless he is satisfied. If that person’s good deeds are exhausted and
the person who is entitled for netpensation is not yet satisfied, then
Allah will take away some of the sins he had made and add them to his
defrauder or his opponent, until the scales are shown to be right and
the aggrieved person receives his full netpensation. Needless to say
that this is a very tough prospect for anyone who has treated other
people unfairly. To lose one’s good deeds when one is in need of every
little credit he can have is not the position anyone of us would wish
to face. Therefore, when a person repents of his past deeds, he should
try to identify anyone whom he had wronged and try to make amends. If
he had got away with some money owed to him, he should return that. It
may happen that a person has genuinely repented and that he is unable
to return to other people the rights he owes to them. Allah may wish to
forgive him, but Allah does not abandon what is due to other people he
had wronged. On the day of judgment, Allah takes over netpensating
those people for the wrong they had suffered. Suppose that Allah wants
to forgive the person who had wronged your friend. On the day of
judgment, Allah will ask your friend to forgive him and He will credit
your friend with as much reward as he wishes until he is fully
satisfied. Therefore, the money he has lost in this world will be
translated into enhancing his position on the day of judgment. Why
should any of us be so aggrieved at what someone else has done to him
when he faces this prospect of absolute justice on the day of judgment?
If he neglects his Islamic duties or changes his good behavior, he is
only adding a new injury to himself and he is the only loser.
Our Dialogue ( Source : Arab News – Jeddah )