the remainder of the hadith.

He was asked: “O Messenger of Allah, a man likes his clothes and shoes to look fine. Is that arrogance?”

He replied: “No. Allah is beautiful and loves beauty. Arrogance is rejecting the truth and looking down on people.”

Rejecting the truth means denying and repudiating it; looking down on people means belittling and despising them. Anyone with an atom’s weight of this in his heart is thereby led to deny the truth he is obliged to acknowledge and to hold people in contempt, thus wronging them and transgressing against them. Whoever neglects the truth he is obliged to uphold and wrongs others is not among the people of Paradise and does not deserve it; rather, he is among those subject to the threat of punishment.

Thus, his statement, “will not enter Paradise,” implies that such a person is not among its people and does not deserve it. But if he repents, has good deeds that erase his sin, is afflicted by Allah with calamities through which He expiates his sins, or experiences something similar, then the consequence of this arrogance that bars him from Paradise is removed, and he enters it. Or Allah may, out of His bountiful mercy, forgive him for that arrogance within him. He will not enter Paradise while retaining any arrogance.

This is why some have said concerning this and other hadiths that what is ruled out is unqualified entry, involving no punishment, rather than qualified entry, which occurs when someone enters the Fire and then enters Paradise. For when a hadith states without qualification that someone is in Paradise or is among the people of Paradise, the understood meaning is that he enters Paradise without entering the Fire.

Once this is clear, the meaning is that anyone with an atom’s weight of arrogance in his heart is not among the people of Paradise and will not enter it without punishment. Rather, he deserves punishment for his arrogance, just as others who commit major sins deserve punishment. Yet he may be punished in the Fire for as long as Allah wills, for