, and has favored me above many of His creatures with an outstanding favor.

When he retired to his bed he would say, “O Allah, You created my soul and You will take it; to You belongs its death and its life. If You keep it back, then show it mercy, and if You release it, then guard it with the protection You grant Your righteous servants.” He would also say, “In Your name, O Allah, do I die and do I live.”

Section

Among the illnesses of the heart is ḥasad (envy). Some have defined it as the harm that afflicts a person because he is aware of the good fortune enjoyed by the wealthy. A truly virtuous man, however, cannot be an envier, for virtue moves a person only toward what is fair and becoming.

A number of scholars have said that envy is to wish for the blessing to disappear from the one envied, even though the envier would not himself obtain it. By contrast, ghibṭah (emulative desire) is to wish for the like of that blessing without loving that it be removed from the one who enjoys it.

A more precise analysis is that envy is the dislike and aversion one feels when he observes the favorable condition of another. It is of two kinds:

1. A wholesale dislike of the blessing itself, whoever may possess it. This is the reprehensible form of envy. When someone loathes another’s blessing, he suffers and is pained by its very existence; that pain is a disease in his heart. He rejoices at the disappearance of the blessing—even though he gains no tangible benefit—because its removal relieves the inner pain he was feeling. Yet that relief is only momentary, for the blessing may return to the envied person in even greater measure, or a similar blessing may be bestowed on others as well. For this reason those who defined envy as “wishing for the blessing to vanish” were correct: whoever detests a blessing granted to another naturally wishes for its removal.
2. To resent that another has been given an advantage over him, so that he feels he must be his equal or superior. This too is envy, though it is the state that people commonly label ghibṭah.

The Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—called even this second type “envy” in the sound hadith agreed upon by al-Bukhārī and Muslim, narrated from Ibn Masʿūd and Ibn ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with both of them): “No envy is permissible except in two cases: a man to whom Allah has granted wisdom, so he judges by it and teaches it; and a man to whom Allah has granted wealth and given authority to spend it in the cause of truth.” That is the wording transmitted from Ibn Masʿūd. Ibn ʿUmar’s wording is: “A man to whom Allah has given the Quran, so he recites it throughout the night and the day; and a man to whom Allah has given wealth, so he spends from it.”