Seadet-i Ebediyye - Endless Bliss Fifth Fascicle

tradesman could go into a business dealing with anyone. For,
everyone knew how to buy and sell (suitably with Islam’s
instructions), and all people observed the rules they knew very
well. Later, times changed to worse so that one or two people
would have to be shunned in business. Then there came even
worse times when few people would fulfil the qualifications to be
preferred as a second person in one’s business transactions. Even
worse is feared, for one day you will find not a single person with
whom you can safely interact in your buying or selling. It was a
long time ago when our superiors predicted this degeneration.
Perhaps it is the time our superiors anticipated with such grave
fear that now hangs heavy on our hands. Buying and selling are
being done with anyone, with a total lack of discrimination. And
some unlearned hâfizes add fuel to the flames by saying, “Today it
is the case the worldover. Personal property has been jumbled up
with harâms far and near. It has become impossible to be safe
against harâms.” These words are quite wrong. The facts are quite
the other way round. We shall elucidate this in the following
chapter.
7– In an interaction of buying and selling, words exchanged
with the person being dealt with, attitudes assumed, and articles
given and taken should be calculated well and correctly. It should
be kept in mind that all these things will be accounted for in the
Hereafter. One of our great guides in Islamic matters dreamt of a
(dead) grocer. He asked the gocer, “How did Allâhu ta’âlâ treat
you?” The latter replied, “A book of fifty thousand pages was
placed before me. ‘Yâ Rabbî,’ I asked. ‘Who do these pages belong
to?’ I was told that I had dealt with fifty thousand people and that
each page contained an account of my dealing with one of them.
When I looked more closely, I saw that each of my dealings was
reflected with all its minutest particulars on the page allotted for
it.” A penny’s worth of cheating or injustice will bounce back with
heavy retribution on the offender, and there will be no help
around.
Such were the ways and manners of our superior and blessed
guides in observing the principles of our faith, Islam, as we have so
far been trying to unfold. This way of principles has been
consigned to oblivion today, so that next to no one seems to know
of their existence. Anyone who manages to observe one of these
principles today will be rewarded with plenty of thawâb.
Rasûlullah ‘sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam’ stated: “A time will
come, when Muslims perform one-tenth of the acts of worship that
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