for well-being.

Allah also says, “and as a provision for the wayfarers” (56:73), meaning that He has made fire a benefit for travellers and for anyone else who needs it: they make use of it, warm themselves by it in winter, heat their water with it, and cook their food on it. It is therefore a blessing—yet it can also become harmful. As the Prophet ﷺ said in the ḥadith: “This fire is an enemy to you.” It becomes an enemy when a person fails to control and restrain it. It turns hostile if he is negligent or if he oversteps the bounds—negligent by leaving near it something that may ignite, or excessive by lighting it beside materials that blaze quickly, such as petrol, gas, and the like. In such cases the fire becomes an enemy of man.

This demonstrates that one must take precautions in matters whose harm he fears. For this reason a person has been instructed to extinguish the fire when he goes to bed and not to say, “It is harmless; I am safe.” He may think so, yet something he never imagined could occur.

The same principle applies to the gas valves found in our own times. A person must inspect them lest they leak and fill the air with gas; if a flame is then lit, the whole place may go up in flames.

It likewise applies to electrical sockets. One should be careful with them and check them regularly, and they should be installed only by someone knowledgeable—an engineer—so that they are not fitted incorrectly, which could cause a fire that consumes the entire house or part of it. The point is that a person must take precautions against everything he fears