to righteousness and yet forget your own selves while you recite the Scripture? Will you not reason?” (Al-Baqarah 44).

Here the interrogative serves to condemn: How can you enjoin righteousness upon others but neglect it yourselves, even though you recite the Book and thus know perfectly well what is righteous and what is not? “Will you not reason?”—this question is likewise a rebuke, as if He were saying, “How can such behavior issue from you? Where is your intellect if you are truly sincere?”

Take, for example, a man who tells people to keep away from riba (usury) while he himself engages in it—or in something even worse. He might say to the public, “Do not take interest in your banking transactions,” then go and reap interest through legal stratagems, trickery, and deceit, unaware that the very ruses he employs are a greater sin and a more serious offense than taking interest openly.

For this reason, Ayyub al-Sakhtiyani—may Allah have mercy on him—said of those who rely on tricks and schemes, “They try to deceive Allah just as they deceive children; had they approached the matter head-on it would have been less severe.” How truthful were his words—may Allah have mercy on him.

Another example is a man who orders people to perform the prayer yet does not pray himself. How can that be? How do you command the prayer, recognize it as an act of goodness, and then fail to perform it? Is that rational? It defies reason, let alone religion; it contradicts the intellect and represents foolishness in matters of faith. We ask Allah for well-being.