28 – Muhammad ibn Abī Rajāʾ, a freedman of Banū Hāshim, related to me: A dehqān (a local Persian landholder) once said to Asad ibn ʿAbd Allāh—who at the time was governor of Khurāsān—when Asad passed by him while he sat in his cell, calmly filling his cup:

“If you give alms in order to show mercy, then show mercy to the very person you wrong. The heavens burst open at the cry of the oppressed.

Beware of one who has no supporter but Allah, no shield but his confidence that change will descend, and no weapon but earnest supplication to the One for whom nothing is impossible.

O Asad, tyranny trips up its own people, and when it falls, its crash is disastrous. Do not be deluded by the seeming delay of aid from a Helper who, whenever He wills to help, helps.

He sometimes grants people a respite only so that they may pile sin upon sin.

All those destined for felicity are of two kinds: either someone who has abandoned the sin itself and is thus safe, or someone who has abandoned obstinate persistence in it. Whoever refuses to press on in wrongdoing has secured one of the two prizes, whereas whoever walks away from blessedness will find no destination but wretchedness.”