Page 63 - What the Qur'an Says about Liars and Their Methods
P. 63

THE LOSSES OF LIARS










         I I         n general, liars seek to deceive others and procure
                     some personal advantage, all the while believing
                     that they are being smart. In fact, they are always
         the losers, regardless of how many people they deceive. But
         they cannot see this truth, for all of their energy is devoted to
         acquiring a temporary gain by lying, the accomplishment of
         which convinces them that they actually have profited by
         lying. When looked at from a distance, they may really have
         obtained an advantage. As we said above, liars may feign ill-
         ness to avoid a task. For example, by saying: "I have backache,"
         they can make someone else carry a heavy object.
             They may have protected themselves from physical ex-
         haustion with this lie, but this momentary benefit, when con-
         sidered in terms of a person's eternal life, is really harmful. A
         few minutes of rest or an escape from work secured by lying
         causes the loss of an advantageous reward in the afterlife; in
         fact, it brings about eternal harm. Given that liars cannot un-
         derstand and calculate such things due to their lack of true in-
         telligence, they will suffer great losses in this world and the
         next. In the Qur'an, Allah addresses them in the following
         terms:
             Shown by their arrogance in the land and evil plot-
             ting. But evil plotting envelops only those who do it.
             Do they expect anything but the pattern of previous
             peoples? You will not find any changing in the pat-

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