A Muslim’s benefit is not confined to humankind; it extends even to animals, as expressed in the well-known statement of Umar ibn al-Khattāb (may Allah be pleased with him): “If a mule were to stumble in Iraq, I would fear that Allah would question me about it: ‘Why did you not level the road for it, Umar?’” (1)

This sense of responsibility is one of the effects of faith in Allah and the Last Day: an awareness of the weight of accountability and the enormity of the trust that man undertook, but which the heavens, the earth, and the mountains feared to bear. He knows that he will be held responsible for every matter, great or small, called to account for it, and recompensed accordingly: if it was good, then good; and if it was evil, then evil:

“The Day when every soul will find all the good it has done brought before it, and every evil it has done—it will wish that there were a vast distance between itself and that evil.” (30) [Āl Imrān: 30]

“And the record will be laid open, and you will see the wicked fearful of what it contains. They will cry, ‘Woe to us! What kind of record is this that leaves no deed, small or great, unaccounted for?’ They will find all that they did present before them, and your Lord wrongs no one.” (49) [al-Kahf: 49]

As for one who believes neither in Allah nor in the Last Day and the reckoning and recompense it holds, he strives relentlessly to attain his ends in the life of this world, panting after its pleasures and greedily amassing them. He prevents any good from reaching others through him and has made this world his greatest concern and the limit of his knowledge. He judges everything by his own private interest; no one else matters to him, and he pays no heed to his fellow human beings except insofar as doing so serves his own interests in this