for his brother what he loves for himself.

5. Shaykh ʿAbd al-Rahmān al-Saʿdī said: Envy is of two kinds:

   1. A forbidden and blameworthy form: to wish that Allah’s favor be removed from someone. This may be a desire that settles in the heart and is not fought, or a person may go further and strive to eliminate the blessing and hide it. The latter is worse, for it is a recurring injustice. This is the type that consumes good deeds just as fire consumes firewood.

   2. The second kind is when one does not wish for Allah’s favor to be taken from another, but rather hopes to receive a similar blessing—whether equal to it, greater than it, or even slightly less. This, in turn, divides into praiseworthy and blameworthy forms:

      a) The praiseworthy form is when one sees Allah’s religious grace upon a servant and longs to have the same. This is simply aspiring for goodness; if that desire is accompanied by effort and action to attain it, it is light upon light.

      b) The form that is not commendable is to covet worldly gains merely for the sake of pleasure and the pursuit of desires, like the case of the people of Qarun.

6. Ibn al-Qayyim, commenting on Allah’s words, “and from the evil of an envier when he envies” (Qur’an 113:5), said: Notice how Allah limits the evil of the envier to the moment he envies. A person may harbor envy yet keep it hidden; it shows neither on his face, nor in his heart, nor on his tongue, nor through his hand. He feels nothing of it within and treats his brother only in the manner Allah loves. Hardly anyone is free of this except those whom Allah protects.

   Envy has three levels:

   • The first is the one just described.
   • The second is to wish that a blessing never reach the other person at all—that he remain in his former state of ignorance, poverty, weakness, or