In the Name of Allâh, the Most Gracious the Most Merciful
All praise to Allâh, may the best of salutations be upon the best of His Creation.
Allâh has indeed predestined that good and evil will mix in this world, so also the truth and falsehood as well as believers and disbelievers; the list can go on. While the people of goodness and truth meet in the Jannah, the people of evil and falsehood meet in hell; therein Allâh shall distinguish the good from the bad.
Also, as Allâh has decreed that the path to Jannah be filled with difficulties, He filled the path to hell with what the hearts desire. The greatest torment that can occur to a slave is what punishes his soul.
It has therefore become imperative for every sensible person to check his soul well else he earns an everlasting perdition in the hell.
When it is known that al-Hasad [envy] is one of the dangerous factors which when it occupies a soul, it leads it to many destructive dispositions whose cure is far to fetch except Allâh so wills. It is on this understanding this work [by its original author] is written to dispraise envy, and to explain its harm on the heart of a believer, his Deen, his soul, family, friends and associates.
No doubt, envy is a common malaise, with the generality of the people and those who ascribe themselves to the Islamic knowledge, thus it has become highly important that something like this is, once again, talked and written about.
What Is Envy?
Allâh the Mighty said:
أم يحسدون الناس على ما آتاهم الله من فضله
Or do they envy men (Muhammad and his followers) for what Allâh has given them of his Bounty? [Nisâ: 54]
May Allâh the Mighty save me and you from envy; it is one of the diseases of the heart that cannot be cured with the orthodox medicine. It is usually hidden in the heart, known to its possessor and Allâh alone [except when its traits become known to the people, like when Allâh wants to expose and punish the unrepentant envier]. Envy also brings for its possessor a lot of misfortunes and punishment of varying colours in a way other than him is not punished. An envying person will suffer from ailment such as, hatred, keeping malice, enmity, despair, being angry with Allâh’s predestination [for His creation], disillusionment, weakness of the heart, fault finding, suspicion; all these without harming the person being envied in any way.
The Messenger of Allâh [salaLlâhu alayhi wa sallam] has forbidden the Muslims from envy when he said:
لا تباغضوا ، ولا تقاطعوا ، ولا تحاسدوا ، ولا تدابروا ، وكونوا عباد الله إخواناً
‘Do not hate, do not severe relations, do not be envious, and do not turn away from one another; be brothers to one another...’ [Reported by Al-Bukhârî and Muslim].
Talking about envy, Al-Imâm Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyyah [may Allâh bestow mercy on him] said: ‘Envy is a character of the soul; blameworthy, lowly and non-befitting. It possesses no good desire for what is good...the envier is an enemy of progress who desires that the good endowed other than him is removed...’
Envy is the first sin with which Allâh the Mighty was disobeyed in the Heavens, so also the first with which He was disobeyed on earth.
As for the one that occurred in the Heavens, that was the envy Iblis showed to Adam when he said: ‘I am better than him; You created me from the fire and he from the clay.’
As for the one on earth, that was when Qaabil envied Haabil when Allâh accepted the offering of the latter but did not accept that of the former. The former said: ‘I shall kill you.’
Al-Imâm Ibn Qudaamah Al-Maqdisî [may Allâh bestow mercy on him] recorded in his book, Minhaaj AlQaasideen, that Iblis said to Nuh: ‘Be wary of envy, it was what made me become what I am today.’
Ibn Hajar [may Allâh bestow mercy on him] defined envy as thus: ‘Desiring that the good with the rightful person be removed.’
Al-Imâm An-Nawawî [may Allâh bestow mercy on him] defined it in the other way as: ‘Desiring the removal of a religious or mundane benefit from its possessor.’
The soul naturally inclines to being rated over others, it loves that it surpasses its mates, therefore whenever anybody else wants to edge over it, it becomes angry, thus it will begin to harbour malice [against the offending soul]. Many a times the soul will strive to contain the other soul by harming its possessor or making efforts to see that the favour possessed by it is removed such that it continues to remain above, or at least, on the same level with the assuming soul. This is a common phenomenon.
It should be known that it is not intrinsically wrong for a soul to desire that he outdo the other, that when envying others has not set in, or when it desires that the good with mates is removed.
