on the ʿayn, keeping the yāʾ quiescent and the nūn opened. In either pronunciation the term derives from ʿayn, meaning ready cash, because the buyer who purchases on deferred payment receives its substitute in immediate cash. Its form is as follows: a man sells a commodity on credit—or even for a spot price that he has not yet received—then the seller repurchases it from the buyer for immediate cash at a lower price, while the larger amount remains a debt upon the first buyer.

– the tails of cattle: the singular is dhanab, the limb at the rear of an animal opposite its head. Here it is a figure of speech for becoming absorbed in plowing and agriculture to the neglect of religious obligations and of jihad in the path of Allah.

I say: The reason the tails of cattle are mentioned alongside tilling the soil is that the farmer stands behind the oxen when they draw water and when he plows the land with them.

– dhullan (humiliation): dhalla, yadhillu, dhullan—with ḍammah on the first dhāl—means weakness and disgrace; one who is dhalīl is weak and humbled.

– “He will not lift it”: with kasrah on the zāy, from the verb nazaʿa (form I), meaning He will neither remove nor raise it from you until you return to your religion.

• Lessons derived from the hadith:
  1 – The narration forbids becoming complacent about worldly life and being so preoccupied with it that it distracts one from religious matters—foremost among them jihad in the cause of Allah, the pinnacle of Islam.
  2 – If Muslims busy themselves with cultivation and are content with it, and with amassing wealth instead of striving in Allah’s cause, Allah will repay them with humiliation and abasement at the hands of their enemies; they will become colonised, scorned, and degraded—retribution for their turning away from a religion that guarantees their honour, protection, and happiness in this world and the next.
  3 – This threat has come to pass: Muslims today constitute one-third of the earth’s population; they possess human resources, economic wealth, vast arable land, urban capacity, commanding strategic locations, and their lands and riches are among the finest and most bountiful on earth,