or by drinking wine, or by financial wrongdoing—whether through betrayal, theft, usurpation, or the like.

It is clear that, although these sins are reprehensible in both intellect and religion, they are at the same time alluring. By their very nature, souls dislike seeing others enjoy them exclusively; each soul wants for itself what it sees in someone else’s possession. This is ghibtah, the milder form of envy. The soul therefore seeks to rise above others and monopolize the pleasure, or else it envies them and wishes the blessing removed from them even if it gains nothing itself. Within it lie aims of self-exaltation, corruption, arrogance, and envy—impulses that press it to keep such pleasures to itself. How, then, will it feel when it sees another person having secured them to the exclusion of all others? The moderate soul is satisfied with sharing and equality, whereas the other is unjust and envious.

These two tendencies manifest themselves in matters that are permissible and in those that are forbidden as violations of Allah’s right alike. Whenever something whose basic category is lawful—food, drink, marriage, clothing, riding animals, or wealth—is monopolized by one party, injustice, miserliness, and envy arise, all of them rooted in shuhḥ (self-centered greed).

In an authentic hadith the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—said:

“Beware of shuhḥ, for it destroyed those who came before you: it commanded them to be miserly and they were miserly; it commanded them to commit injustice and they committed injustice; and it commanded them to sever their ties, so they severed them.”

For this very reason Allah the Exalted, describing the Helpers who had settled in the City and embraced faith before the Emigrants, said:

“Nor do they find in their hearts any need for what they (the Emigrants) have been given” ⦗59:9⦘,

meaning that they feel no envy over what their brothers have received.