How Unlawful Earnings Can Harm Your Faith and Family
The
disadvantages of marriage are three: one-the strongest-is the inability to seek
gain lawfully.
For that
is not available to every person, especially nowadays, because of social
instability and because marriage encourages the amplification of attempts to
provide [for dependents] through unlawful means.
In it
[marriage] is, thus, a man’s destruction and the destruction of his family; a
bachelor is safeguarded therefrom. As for a married man, he is most often
driven into the paths of evil by following the whims of his wife and selling
his hereafter for this world.
The Spiritual Consequences of Unlawful
Earnings
There is
a khabar which states that “the servant (`abd) is made to stand before the scales with good deeds that resemble
mountains in weight.” ‘He then is questioned concerning the care and support of
his family, the source of his wealth and how he spent it, until such reckoning
absorbs all his good deeds, thus not one good deed remains to his account;
whereupon the angels cry out: ‘Behold, here is the man whose dependents consume
his good deeds in the world and is today mortgaged by his deeds.’
It is
said that those first to cling to man on the day of resurrection will be his
wife and children who will cause him to stand in the presence of Almighty God
and then say, “0 Lord! Give us our just due from
him, for he taught us not what we were ignorant of, feeding us by unlawful
means and we did not know it.” He [God] will punish him for their
sake.
One of
the forefathers said, “When God wills evil to a servant, He sets upon him fangs
in this world to devour him”; meaning dependents.
The Prophet
said, “No one will meet God with a greater
offense than one who ignores [the needs of] his dependents.”
This is a
general calamity from which few are delivered, excepting one with possessions
that are inherited or gained lawfully, which
he uses to redeem himself and his family, provided he is content not
to seek more. Such a person will be delivered from this calamity as will be a
craftsman who is able to gain lawfully through permissible means, such as
gathering firewood, hunting, or engaging in a craft that is not dependent upon
rulers, and thereby is able to deal with virtuous people; also, the one who
manifests blamelessness and most of whose possessions are lawfully gained [will
be delivered by God].
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Taken from “Book on the Etiquette of Marriage” by Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali
