Page 169 - Seekers Guide Book

The Seeker’s Guide
Everyone is required to recognize the rights of others,
just as everyone is expected to sympathize with those
afflicted by adversity. This feeling should be so well
developed that one has no hesitancy about sharing one’s
possessions with others, or coming to their assistance,
even when it is clear that nothing can be expected in
return. Even where there are no ties of friendship, one
should wish others well and guard their honour as if it
were one’s own. According to a hadith:

Charity (zakat) should be collected from
their rich and distributed among their
poor. (Sahih al-Bukhari, hadith no. 1395
and Sahih Muslim, hadith no. 19)

One unfortunate aspect of human relationships is that
people tend to give to others only when they hope to
gain something in return. Money, they feel, should be
returned with interest. When such an understanding
becomes a factor in our social organization, exploitation
becomes rampant; everyone is ready to plunder everyone
else. This results in society falling a prey to oppression
and disorder.

Society should be so ordered that the ‘haves’ are able
to assist the ‘have-nots’. Believers have the assurance of
God that if they give to others, whatever they give will be
returned to them many times over in the next world; their
trust in God’s promise is complete. In a society ordered
in this way, feelings of antagonism and indifference are
not allowed to develop: people are not bent on exploiting
one another. There is never an atmosphere of mutual
resentment and dissatisfaction, for everyone lives in peace

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