• Another fruit: Perfect faith keeps its possessor from entering the Fire altogether, just as it kept him in this world from committing sins and from persisting in whatever lapses he did commit.

Deficient faith, by contrast, protects a person from everlasting residence in the Fire—even if he must first enter it—for the transmitted texts are recurrent and decisive that “Whoever has in his heart so much as a mustard seed of faith will be taken out of the Fire.”

• Another fruit: Faith makes its bearer esteemed among people and known for trustworthiness; it obliges him to refrain from harming their lives, their property, or their honor. In the ḥadīth, “The believer is the one from whom people feel secure regarding their lives and their wealth.” (1)

What worldly distinction could surpass this—that, by the strength of his faith and the perfection of his trustworthiness, a person rises to the highest social rank, becomes the locus of people’s confidence, and the reference point for their affairs? This is one of faith’s noble and immediate fruits.

• Another fruit: The person of robust faith tastes in his heart its sweetness, savors its flavor, delights in its effects, and finds joy in serving his Lord and in fulfilling His rights and the rights of His servants—duties that faith itself both demands and produces—in a manner that makes all the pleasures of this world pale into insignificance:
– He is elated while performing the obligatory and recommended acts of faith;
– he is elated by what he hopes for and expects from his Lord of reward and recompense, both near and distant;
– and he is elated that he has profited from his time, the flower of his lifespan and the very source of his capital.