Harms for the Believer to Avoid
In this life God has given the human beings a choice as to whether they choose virtue, wisdom and good character or whether they choose to allow their lusts to lead them into vice and evil. Avoid misery for this life and the hereafter by avoiding harming others and avoiding self-harming, by trusting in God and having patience, by lessening ambitions and being pleased by what one has, by doing genuine and well intentioned good deeds and living by the Sunnah of the Prophet (may God bless him and give him peace) and by seeking to develop genuine humble virtues and avoiding vices (keep life simple, humble and spiritually clean).
Vices are all the undesirable, unhealthy and spiritually unlawful forms of behaviour. They are those actions and habits to be avoided as they lead to unhappiness in this life and the hereafter.
Every believing person must train their intellectual faculty with deliberate thinking and reflection as to the benefits of virtue and the loss caused by vices. Through this process they may gradually develop true wisdom and virtues such as temperance and courage.
Sins are actions contrary to the orders of the Creator as recorded in Divine Law as taught by the Prophets through the ages. Previous Divine Laws were recorded in scriptures such as the Torah and Gospels, but the current explanation of Divine Law for this last age of humanity on Earth is the Holy Qur’an.
wise believers avoid hurting or harming other living beings (human or animal) in any way without lawful cause,
- wise believers avoid harmful lying,
- wise believers avoid slandering,
- wise believers avoid back biting (this is revealing others faults for gossip),
- wise believers avoid haughtiness and arrogance, wise believers avoid showing off (especially in good deeds) – if you have some good quality or skill remember it is just a gift from God, like a loan it may be withdrawn,
- wise believers avoid looking at others with envy,
- wise believers avoid haughtily considering themselves superior to others due to wealth, looks, ancestry or any other reason,
- wise believers avoid nationalism (be a human being not a tribalist),
- wise believers avoid tribal iniquity and wise believers avoid racism, wise believers avoid harshly finding fault with others,
- wise believers avoid ridiculing people, wise believers avoid being harsh with juniors,
- wise believers avoid committing adultery,
- wise believers avoid gazing lustfully at unrelated people of the opposite sex,
- wise believers avoid being alone with people of the opposite sex in dubious circumstances that could facilitate adultery or rape,
- wise believers avoid stealing, wise believers avoid using things belonging to others without permission,
- wise believers avoid being miserly
- wise believers avoid accepting usurious or corrupt earnings,
- wise believers avoid abortion in cases without an extreme medical justification,
- wise believers avoid treating parents and elders disrespectfully,
- wise believers avoid delaying prayers until they are late or miss them altogether,
- wise believers avoid associating unnecessarily with harmful or deviant people,
- wise believers avoid oppressing others,
- wise believers avoid breaking the ties of family (forgive and rejoin ties),
- wise believers avoid breaking the unity of the believers,
- wise believers avoid doing things that one suspects are forbidden with good cause,
- wise believers avoid abandoning the ways of the blessed Prophets to adopt or copy the ways of the foolish of the disbelievers,
amongst other things…
The following metaphor is attributed to Prophet Jesus (may God bless him and give him peace). It explains the reality of the lives and differences between those with good hearts and good deeds and those with bad hearts and bad deeds.
The Kingdom of God is like this;
A farmer planted grain on his land
That night an enemy scattered the
seeds of weeds amongst the furrows
Later when the grain
and weeds weeds grew up
The farmer knew what had happened
The servants of the farmer offered
to pull up the weeds
But the farmer ordered that both were allowed to grow until time for harvest
At harvest the harvesters
put the grain in the barn
and the weeds were put on the fire.
(Purported Gospel of Matthew 13; 24-30).
Believers who sin should repent to God so that they may be valuable like the grain, not like the weeds that must be burned. Tauba is the term for repentance from sin and turning to God with apology and the firm intention not to repeat the sinful deed. One way a person may wash away their sins is through charity and good deeds.
It is recorded in al-Baihaqi al Sunan al Kubra that the Holy Prophet (may God bless him and give him peace) explained that three saving graces are;
Being God-fearing both in public and private.
Being truthful whether calm or angry
Being moderate whether one is poor or rich.
Whilst three destructive traits are; Feeling satisfaction with ones lust, miserliness & conceit. It is said that the Holy Prophet Muhammad (may God bless him and give him peace) explained that conceit was the worst of all three of these destructive traits.
There is nothing more beneficial for believer’s heart
than to mix with the righteous people and observe their ways, whilst at the same time there is nothing more harmful for the heart than to mix with the sinners and observe their ways…
(Ahmad ibn Harb (ra)
Flee from Shirk
Shirk is the gave mistake and terrible sin of worshiping other than God or associating/confusing anything with God. Pagans many worship idols made of wood or stone or worship made up ‘gods’ both of which are clear shirk. Some ignorant people have deviated from Islam and founded extremist associative cults as a result of false interpretations of Tasawwuf. The most important thing for any human being is to all reject Shirk, realize that there is no power or might other than God and to realize and assert that there is no god, but God .
Some gravely mistaken people, some Muslims included, make the mistake of falsely attributing some of God’s unique qualities to certain goodly Saints and blessed Prophets, but these people should understand that God is totally unique and completely incomparable to all created things or beings, however good they are, and He is all powerful and far beyond the limited level of human comprehension.
Shirk is wrongly associating things with God in which created beings or things are worshiped alongside the One True God – as they are falsely thought to be the same as Him or part of Him. Misguided people sometimes associate Prophets, Angels or Demons with the God however…
- God is the One and Only God,
- there is nothing like Him,
- He is eternal,
- He was not born to a parent,
- He is far above having a had a ’spouse’ or a non-metaphorical ‘child’.
- Prophet Jesus (may God bless him and give him peace) was a ‘word’ of God not the ‘word’ of God,
Prophet Jesus, Prophet David and others were described as being ’son’s’ of God in the Bible (may peace and blessings be upon them all) but this was merely an old way of describing an Israelite valued friend of God and it should be realized that God is far beyond having a literal ’son’.
According to Sheikh Habib Ahmad Manshur al-Haddad (d. 1995 CE (ra) in his Key to the Garden there are six main types of idolatry. These are listed below
Autonomous Idolatry – Shirk Istiqlaal, (Dualism) in which it is mistakenly believed that there are two autonomous deities, such as in Manicheism.
Separative Idolatry – Shirk Tab’Iid, in which it is mistakenly believed that although God is one that that Unity is divided into parts, such as Trinitarianism.
Approximative Idolatry – Shirk Taqrib, in which other than God is actually worshiped in the hope of drawing nearer to God, such as in Grave Worship.
Imitative Idolatry – Shirk Taqlid, in which a person copies others who worship other than God, as with those who say ‘we are only following in the ways of our fathers’.
Idolatry of Secondary Causes – Shirk al-Asbab, which is the idolatry of those who believe that nature runs on its own – rather than through constant sustenance from God, as with some misguided philosophers.
Idolatry of Intention – Shirk al-Aghrad, in which religious acts are carried out for worldly motivations, as with those who put on a boastful show of Islam and have no sincerity.
Another form of associationism is Shirk ad-Dua which is to supplicate (make Dua) to other than God. This should not be confused with seeking intercession (Tawassul), rather it is to see anyone other than God as being the one who answers prayers, having power to answer them independent of God. There is no power or might other than Allah and He is the best of helpers.
Some Atheists tend towards the ”worship” of themselves or current theories or ideologies (although they are unable to see how), whilst the secular Humanists tend to “worship” the human race. Some would say that these attitudes can also develop into Shirk.
Wise spiritual teachers teach us to flee from Shirk and anything that resembles it.
Flee from Usury
Usury refers to making risk free profit by giving loans tied to ‘interest’, it is unlike investment, which carries some risk. One reason that usury (riba) is forbidden by Divine Religion is because it serves to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, whereas trade is allowed and even encouraged as investment in business and trade serves to make many people richer by employing workers and increasing productivity and the flow of wealth between the people.
Many modern people are completely unaware of the fact that interest based banking is largely based upon usury and whilst it appears to be a form of business according to the guidance of the Bible and the Holy Qur’an it is in fact a type of economic piracy, that functions rather like a reverse Robin Hood, as the poor nearly are always the losers who need to pay interest, whilst the rich are nearly always the winners who can save money in the usury bank and thus receive interest. Thus usurious banks rob from the poor to give to the rich. Sensible people avoid becoming either a victim of this system or a beneficiary of its poisoned spoils.
Wise people who have wealth make sensible and secure investments that are non-usurious, because whilst the proceeds of these investments are a blessing from God the proceeds of usury are unclean and harmful to the spiritual self. A wealthy one coming to belief should seek financial advice upon how to transfer from usurious investments to secure non-usurious ones. For those with a good financial adviser it is a little thing to do and they will now how to do it in a sensible, secure and productive way. The political solution to the problems caused by usury is its international prohibition and the re-introduction of the Gold Dinar and other real currencies.
Flee from Ignorant Takfara
Takfara is to declare someone to be a disbeliever. Wise Muslims avoid declaring other people who call themselves Muslims disbelievers where they are able to, because declaring a Muslim to be a Non-Muslim (Pagan/atheist) carries with it many spiritual and social dangers.
The Muslims are those people who have accepted the Message of God and His last Messenger (may God bless him and give him peace) to the planet Earth. They are those who believe in the One True God and associate no partners with Him. They are the ones who recognize the Prophets and Books of God and seek to live a good life in accordance with what is right. They are the people who follow the guidance of the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah (practices) of the Prophet Muhammad (may God bless him and give him peace).
In one sense the Muslims are the people of the Qibla, which is the direction of the Ka’abah to which God Muslims point as they pray to God. If someone claims to be a Muslim and to hold the essential beliefs of the religion and accept the Laws of God without asserting anything to the contrary then why should people bother him or her? why should they pry into arguments over finer points?
The Muslim Ummah is a brotherhood, a family and a multicultural nation. We should never forget this.
Flee from Hypocrisy
In Islam hypocrisy refers to those people who pretend to be Muslims in order to harm Islam. It is sometimes practised by malevolent Westernized scholars and ignorant political figures in Muslim countries who hate Islam but know that their people will not accept a non-Muslim ruler. It is said that the main expressions of hypocrisy are to secretly refute the Holy Prophet (saws) and his Message, to have enmity towards him or some part of his Message, to feel happy when the Muslims are defeated or to feel sad when the Muslims triumph. The signs of a hypocrite are that they lie, they break promises, are untrustworthy and are evil and insulting during disputes.
Another type of hypocrisy is the hypocrisy of pretending to be doing religious deeds for spiritual reasons when in fact you are doing them for worldly reasons…
A hermit, being the guest of a king,
ate less than he wished when sitting at dinner
and when he rose for prayers
he prolonged them more than was his wont to give the king a good opinion of his piety.
O Arab of the desert, I fear you wilt not reach the Ka’bah
Because the road
on which you are travelling
leads to Turkestan.
When the hermit returned home,
he desired the table to be laid out for eating.
He had an clever son who said:
‘Father, have you not eaten anything at the repast of the Sultan?’
The hermit replied: ‘I haven’t eaten anything to serve a purpose.’
The boy said:
‘Then likewise say your prayers again
as you have not done anything to serve that purpose.’
O you who shows virtues on the palms of the hand
But conceals your errors under the armpits
What wilt you buy, O vain-glorious fool,
On the day of judgement with such counterfeit silver?
(Saadi)
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