 Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim, Alhamdulillah wa Salatu wa Salamu ala Ashraf al Anbiya wa al-Mursaleen. Sayyidina wa Maulana wa Habibina Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Wa ala alaihi wa sahbina wa sallam teslimin kathira. Asalaamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. Thank you, Alhamdulillah, for being here, sisters, I know. It's midweek and we still have work and other commitments, so it's always an honor to have you here. Alhamdulillah. For those who are also watching on live stream, just to refresh your memories, we are working, or we are reading from Purification of the Heart in this class. And Alhamdulillah, today we are going to be talking about a topic that we all need to really revisit over and over again, especially in today's world. In fact, to be honest, all of the diseases of the heart are relevant. They're present. We all, to a certain degree, have likely all of them. And we need to come to that understanding, inshallah, and also heed the warning of many of our teachers that this is among the sciences that are considered obligatory for us to constantly renew our intentions and to purify, and to basically read this as often as possible, or read through it, and really never abandon this science, because every day we're tested in different ways. So the topic we're going to talk about today is envy. And usually what I do is I read from the book and then provide commentary as it pertains to the text or any stories that I have to share. We will likely take a break. I think Asha comes in around 8 o'clock, so we'll take a break for Asha and then we can come back and do some Q&A or have any discussions we want to have, inshallah. So Bismillah. With that said, I'll read from the verses of the poem. I'm on page 27 if you have the book, Alhamdulillah. So envy, if you were to describe your desire that someone lose his blessing as envy, then your description will be accurate. In other words, if you yourself were able, through some ruse, to eliminate someone's blessing, you would utilize that ruse to do so. But if the fear of God, the eternally besought, prevents you from doing so, then you are not an envious person. This is what the proof of Islam, Imam al-Ghazali, Rahimullah, expected with hope from the bounty of the possessor of majesty and generosity. He said that whoever despises envy, such that he loathes it in himself, is safeguarded from fulfilling what it customarily necessitates. So the definition. Envy or hasad is a severe disease of the heart that some scholars hold to be the root of all diseases, while others opine that the parent disease goes back to covetousness, poma. Regardless of where envy ranks in the hierarchy of diseases, most scholars agree that it is the first manifestation of wrongdoing and the first cause of disobedience against God. It occurred when Satan Iblis refused to obey God when commanded to bow down before the new creation, Adam, the first human being. Nothing prevented Iblis from bowing down except his envy of Adam, for God chose Adam to be his vice-igerent on earth instead of him. Iblis arrogantly objected to the command that he show Adam any honor for Iblis saw himself a creation from fire, superior to Adam, created merely from clay. When confronted with his disobedience, Satan did not seek forgiveness from God. Enviers develop a mindset that makes it impossible for them to admit they are wrong. To manifest envy is to manifest one of the characteristics of the most wretched creature, Satan. In Arabic, hasoud or hasid is one who carries and emanates this envy, and the object of one's envy is called mahasoud. The Qur'an teaches us to seek refuge in God from the evil of the envier, hasid, when he envies, in Surah al-Falaq, Chapter 5. The Prophet ﷺ said that envy consumes good deeds the way fire devours dry wood. The Prophet ﷺ also said, every possessor of any blessing is envied. Someone of means will have someone who envies him for what he possesses. Even a street sweeper may be envied. If he owns a donkey to pull his cart, and another street sweeper has no donkey and has to pull his cart, this can be a cause for envy. So right away we can see that this is, again, as I mentioned, a very relevant disease, and it's also one of those that, if you're not paying attention to your thoughts, it can creep up, right? And, you know, you may experience it in two ways. One, where you have envy for someone, you may see someone that has a blessing that you want, that you have been pining for, or yearning for, or making daa. So you may be susceptible to being the envier, where you are looking to someone, wondering how they got what they want, or I'm sorry, how they got what they have that you want, and you may start to become almost, especially in the world of social media, that gives us access to kind of peer into people's lives. We can go and look at their life, and in some cases people have become very open with the most private aspects of their life, which is honestly very interesting if you think about a time before social media, right? And some of us are old enough to remember what that was like, where people didn't just have access to your private life. They had to be very close, and they had to actually come over to your house to actually see, you know, the way that you lived, your family, your possessions, but now from a remote area all the way across the world, some random stranger you've never met in your life before, can know very intimate details. So we may have fallen into this very seductive trapping of social media where we, because we are curious about a person's possessions. For example, if you hear that a relative of yours went on a fancy vacation, right? The rumor mill, someone mentioned, oh, they got, they went on this cruise or this other vacation, and you're like, oh, really, how'd you hear about it? Well, they posted it all over their social media. So what do we do? We race to their account to go check out the footage to check out the pictures, right? And what is the point of that? The point of that is, you know, I haven't been on a vacation in a long time. I've been stuck working. I don't think I'll be able to go anywhere for a while. I have obligations. I can't afford it. So let me live in a way vicariously through this person's, you know, personal life. And so you go down that rabbit hole and you end up not just on one picture or one, you know, story, but maybe you go through more, you know? There's sometimes little captions that are, you know, that are, again, calling us. So we go click on a bunch of buttons and next, you just waste so much time. But that's how envy works. It's a very, you know, unless you're paying attention to your behavior and why you're doing what you're doing, you can fall into these types of thoughts, right? And that can end in certain ways. Maybe if you're, inshallah, your heart is, you're working on your heart. Maybe, yes, there's a little bit of a, you know, a slight pain because you haven't been somewhere, but you're genuinely happy for them. Alhamdulillah. Happy for them. Happy that they had a good time. And maybe it ends there. Or maybe you're annoyed because, you know, you don't like, you know, one or both of them or the whole lot of them. And now you're allowing your heart to develop even more diseases. And that's why, you know, as was mentioned, this is considered the root of the diseases because it can lead to other diseases. So we have to be very careful of engaging in these things that have been so normalized in our society, but from our faith perspective, we're actually very low things, you know? Wanting to know people's private business is actually antithetical to Islam, right? Because the Prophet Muhammad SAW said, very clearly, to mind your own business. So when we go down those paths that peering into people's lives, becoming like what we used to call them back when I was younger, a peeping tom, right, voyeurism, it is actually indicative of a problem internally if you do that. So you have to kind of be aware of yourself. Like what is it? Why am I so curious? Am I just, you know, a busy body, a nosy person that wants to know other people's business? To what end? How is that helping my life, right? If I am just engaging in that behavior. But again, when something is normalized and you see it done on such a large scale, everybody kind of does it and nobody thinks twice about it, then you may not realize how repugnant it is until you go back to the Deen and you realize it's upon Allah. We're not even, we shouldn't, I mean I remember one of our teachers said that his father ingrained this in him to such a degree that I believe he was in the streets of Damascus, Syria, and if there was like a car accident or a fight happening, he would remind him, don't even look, you know, like the rubber-necker effect, right? You hear a noise and you see, you hear something or you witness something. It's human instinct. We're curious, we want to look, but his point in teaching him that was this whole thing, you can't do anything about that, right? You're a little kid basically. Don't have the habit of being that curious person who wants to know what's going on all the time with other people. Unless you're obviously, you have a good intention, you want to help them, that's different. But in this case it was just one of the examples that he mentioned that even to that degree of not falling into these habits of just wanting to look and notice and what's going on. And I've certainly caught myself, one example I think we've all probably experienced many times before is when you're in a gathering or in a khutbah, in a prayer hall, and you hear that baby crying in the back, right? I urge you or I, yeah, I'm going to put you to the test. I'll encourage you to try to fight the instinct to turn around. It's very difficult, right? Especially if it's repeated and you're just like, where's the mom? Why isn't she taking care of this child? And you get frustrated, right? Subhanallah, it happened to me recently and I completely, and I lost my witness, I did this with this in mind because I said it's so unfair if these children, if I turn around, I'm going to have a negative opinion of them, right? I'm annoyed by the sound. I don't want to know who they are because it's not fair to them that I acknowledge them, I look at them and then I imprint this negative thought in my heart toward them and the next time I avoid them, right? They're children, they're being children, let them be. I've had that happen on a flight before. Same thing, where it's like, nope, no matter how much I want to turn around and give them a glare, I'm not going to do that because I'm fighting my own nuffs that entitles me to think that I, you know, that everything should go according to my comfort. You know, people, we're existing on this planet with all of our fellow human beings and sometimes people have problems and can't they just exist or does everything have to go according to our comforts and our needs, right? So the entitlement of the nuffs is what we're trying to also address here. So envy, again, is something that can affect us in that way where we are literally doing things or engaging in behaviors that will lead us to very dangerous paths or it could be the opposite which is mentioned here where we are so unaware of this disease as being a real threat that we put ourselves out there and lead and allow ourselves or our families, our loved ones to be susceptible to being afflicted by the envy of other people, right? And so this is the advice that was mentioned at the end here, that every possessor of any blessing is envied. So when you have anything that's going good for you, whether it's your career or your relationship or your health, people, for example, will be very excited to share whether it's they've lost weight or they're going to the gym and they're getting healthier, they went on a hike and they went this place and that place and we failed to realize that there are a lot of people who, again, maybe on the other end of the screen looking into your life and they're not able to do those things or maybe there was a point where they were able to but they can't do it anymore. And so the point is, is not to fall into what we see now again in this time and place that we're all in where people don't think about the consequences of over-sharing, right? Over-sharing your blessings is putting yourself in a threat and the more private you are with your blessings, the greater the protection of that blessing but when you put it out there, then be prepared for problems, right? Your relationship is, I would say, one of the most important things. I give this advice to couples all the time to please guard your relationship no matter how wonderful it is, how wonderful your spouse is, your children are, you don't need to share that with a single soul literally other than showing a gratitude to your spouse, to your family and of course to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala as a point of deep gratitude to him for giving you that blessing. There's really no point in going around sharing it with anyone else and as sad as it might seem to some people even your closest family members can afflict you with Hussain. I know people who have felt jealousy, envy from their own parents. So you imagine you're a young girl, your spouse, you married someone, you have a love marriage and your husband is buying you gifts left and right, taking you all over the place. If your mother did not have that experience with your father, right? Even though she's your mother, she loves you, it may enter her heart that, well I never got that and you may see or hear even a response that seems a little bit passive-aggressive maybe, a little unkind and a lot of people are on the other end of it like, wow, that was strange. Why did she say that? Or she didn't seem very happy for me, right? This could be at play and I think that's hard for a lot of people to accept that someone close to you like your mother, your father, your siblings could potentially not be happy for your blessing but it is that real, right? So we're reminded repeatedly to just safeguard your blessings. Don't be a braggard. Don't be a showboat. Don't go around flaunting whatever you have and do the opposite actually which is to minimize your blessings when you're talking about other people not as a means of being ungrateful but rather don't be at the center, right? Don't spotlight yourself. When we are with other people we should be more concerned with benefiting them, right? Want for your brother, what you want for yourself. Being a person who is interested genuinely in their well-being, having conversations where you're not so self-centered but there's something to be said about again the world that we live in when every opportunity you're out with people whether it's one-on-one or in a group setting and you want to keep bringing the conversation back to yourself. I'm sure we've all experienced that where there are some people who just seem to really want attention and they seek attention. So that's something that is just again not becoming a believer because we should be more concerned with listening, learning, speaking about beneficial things, right? Outside of even the personal, individual needs or lives of the people involved we should be talking about really important things that help us to move away from the nefcy state. So that's why we are encouraged to do the remembrance of Allah to make sure that our knowledge and our discourse and our gatherings are beneficial. We're actually exchanging good information with each other, we're teaching, we're learning so that again we get out of the nefcy state so these are what we're encouraged to do and that will really prevent and it'll mitigate this issue of inviting people to know too many intimate details about your life feeling the need to share and to flaunt in any way because when you go further down into the diseases like you'll cover soon diseases that relate to envy, right? For example, ostentation. Ostentation is where you show off you could show up your religious practice or otherwise but you're basically showing off in order to impress people in order to make a name for yourself. So this is the danger of these diseases they are kind of interwoven and then there's sumah which is similar but it's wanting renowned it's wanting reputation it's wanting for people to know your accomplishments, right? So kind of dropping hints about like where you work name dropping for example it's a very classic example, right? That people like to let people know that I know this person or I've been here and I do this that kind of behavior again is all inviting these diseases onto yourself and that's why I mean in addition to compromising your Nia with Allah that's the other danger is that you're inviting harm to yourself so it's a very important part of this conversation is that we look at envy as two directional that you could be the one envying others for their blessings or being careless and then bringing envy into your life and then you wonder why are things going well suddenly in your relationship and I know people who have had this exact same thing happen I know someone who says that every single time she had ever posted about her relationship like that night or the next day there was a fight and it's you know she eventually saw the pattern right so it's like oh you know we went to dinner we went here and went there and then subhanAllah out of nothing there would come an argument with her spouse and it would be like a cold war for days or weeks like so you realize like subhanAllah this is real and the Prophet has told us right the evil eye is real so we take these things very seriously so we'll continue we're on page 28 the middle paragraph here while it is believed that envy can bring about harm to the one envied ultimately it is the envier who has harmed the most the evil eye is generally related to envy though not necessarily so some people simply have the eye some type of psychic power that does not necessitate envy every culture has a concept of the evil eye in some cultures parents use to pierce the ears of their first born males and dress them as little girls for the first five years since first born males were so coveted many Chinese conduct rituals to prevent the evil eye from reflecting their homes by placing mirrors on walls to reflect evil looks the word invidious means envy and it originally meant to look at something with a malevolent or evil eye the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said the evil eye is true the evil eye is not superstition the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam worked to eradicate superstition from the minds of people for example the Arabs believed that when the moon eclipsed it meant that a great person died when a lunar eclipse occurred on the day the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam's infant son Ibrahim died many of the Arabs were impressed by this phenomenon while a charlatan would have seized the moment to take advantage of such an event the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam announced to the people the moon is a sign of God the sun is a sign of God they do not eclipse for anyone imam maulud explains that envy is exhibited when one desires that another person lose a blessing he or she has this loss could be anything big or small a house, a car, a job, etc for example an envious person may become resentful that a co-worker was promoted to the point that he wishes that the person lose the position a woman may envy another woman because of her husband such that she hopes that a marital crisis separate the couple a man may grow envious over another man's wife there are endless variations of envy but a common thread is the desire that someone lose a blessing in essence envy arises over what one perceives to be a blessing in someone else's possession i've heard so many stories over the years about this and it's really just unfortunate how people allow this disease whether it comes from again wanting something that someone else has or wanting someone to lose a blessing that they have just out of spite or heard some really evil stories over the years I remember one person she said that who basically did not like her daughter in law for whatever reason maybe she was jealous of her so that can happen if the mother has what they call an emotionally incestuous relationship with her son she may become quite threatened when he gets married and so it can cause this type of jealousy this type of envy to emerge because suddenly the son may start to need more attention to the wife than his mother so in this case the woman was so protect us from hearts like that but she was very upset that his wife had become pregnant that she actually made a thought that she would lose her baby against her and sure enough she had a miscarriage so this evil eye this ability to push ill on someone that can come from envy but not always is very real that some people have that ability it can come from evil and it can also come from just a person who's afflicted with this I know someone else personally who she doesn't have it anymore but there was a time where she believed very strongly that she had this this evil eye and there were examples of it many many stories but one in particular comes to mind of a dress a friend of mine was wearing a dress and she looked very much all beautiful and someone at her gathering had told her that her dress was very nice and within seconds I think she tripped her heel got caught in it and it started to unthread so there's examples like that and if you've missed them speaking I had someone once ask me before speaking engagement if I was nervous and Allah alhamdulillah I don't know but I generally after speaking for almost 30 years you don't get as nervous it's like riding a bike you get better at it so I answered confidently I feel fine and I did feel fine and then I went up and I started making a lot of mistakes that were so odd for me were you okay? I was like I have no idea what happened I had no nerves, Alhamdulillah I did not feel nervous but somehow I just started stumbling and making a lot of mistakes that were apparently odd so things like that can happen people can throw you off your game or whatever you want to call it so the point is these are real phenomena and we can't by the way we shouldn't let ourselves become the worst of people we should practice khusna dan which is making excuses and not presuming definitively that we know someone has an evil eye we shouldn't do that we should really be aware of that because it reflects we don't have knowledge of these things these are unseen things but we just have to be aware that they are real and that they can happen and the best way to protect yourself is like before we started we did our word which we're highly encouraged to do we seek protection from Allah these are the ways and staying in a state of voldu these are the ways that we protect ourselves from the effects of these harms so that's what we should be doing Alhamdulillah so we can stop and then continue after prayer it's a very valid point and I think we have entered obviously a new era with all of this technology that gives us access but I think we have to stick to our principles and it's just not really, it's not healthy like I've visited people's homes and because of like Alhamdulillah these teachings kind of being ingrained I've left and I don't know anything about that person's private home like I don't know the decorations I won't remember but then I know people like that painting or that their curtains were this color and did you see this and I was like what? you're paying attention to that level of detail like wow that's amazing but I think it's because yes we're very insecure and I think that's where it comes from it comes from insecurity when you go to people's homes with an agenda try to find out details about their private life or just even to know what do they have what do they don't have but if you're there to genuinely meet people and you want to see them then you're focusing on them and connection not their belongings, their possessions so I think it's all symptomatic of the world we live in which is people have forgotten character as being a prime or as being a a what they should focus on so that that speaks of who you are and it's more about what you have right so your possessions your accomplishments, your titles how big your home is how how many children you have and how good looking they are your trophy wife or husband starts to shape your value right because in this society that's how people are treated or judged and I think there's some truth to that the more we've drifted away from really prioritizing character and faith and these beautiful virtues we do I think look to people's other assets or in order to kind of suss them out you know but that's not how it should be those things are immaterial anybody can have those things but it's the heart that's the most prized possession subhan Allah because it's been normalized and that's why normalization is so dangerous because if you're the company you keep or the what you allow to influence you will shape your perspective so if you adopt the mentality that everybody else is doing it then you're forgoing your own values we don't look to what's normalized or what the status quo is doing or what the majority is doing we look to is it halat and is it haram is there potential danger to it that's our criteria but you have to be rationalizing and thinking on a higher level to do that most people I think most of us have fallen into an automatic pilot way of existing you know we're on you know we're just barely doing the bare minimum we're you know going from work to home life and it's just like keeping up with the Jones becomes you know the way that we operate like what's everyone else doing because I don't want to be ostracized from groups I want to be included I want to keep my social circle so if everybody's doing this then I have to participate in that too you know like for example a common trend that I think we may have noticed in recent years is just these the way that we celebrate milestones in life right look at how much spending goes into our weddings our birthdays graduations right there's baby showers now bridal showers there's an excuse to party for everything but it's all about what is it really about bringing the hearts together or is it about showing right off and letting people know that you too can put on a really good party you know you too can entertain like you know whose party is the party of the year you know and it's just this whole competition this competitive culture that I think we've created in order to present ourselves as having worth and I think that's a very dangerous precedent because again we're moving away from what our dean prioritizes which is your character your heart how you know how you are of all of us how you uplift people I think that's why also I don't know I find it like the more we have acquired all these things and the more we have connection through social media ironically we have less really strong relationships right a lot of people complain that they can't have they don't have trusted friends anymore or they've lost friends because they have a fall out and those are actually getting smaller like with real trust someone that you can entrust your life to your soul your secrets how many of us really have those kinds of people in our lives it's very difficult nowadays so you might have 1000 friends on your social media but how many of them would really could you turn to as true companions for example that have your back that wouldn't throw you under the bus because I've seen it I know many for example I think one of the most horrific realities of our time and I've had friends go through this when a sister for example if a marriage doesn't last I know many friends who they lost friends because of the divorce like people just turn their back on you so you're like okay I lost my relationship you have no idea about the details of that but suddenly I'm not worthy of your friendship anymore because the status of my marriage is different now so a lot of sisters say they begin to be ostracized they're no longer invited they're judged their spouses will even tell them don't hang out with her she's divorced I've heard that many times and that's why if you see a sister who had wasila connections her and I did a program a few months ago on just the aftermath of divorce and how difficult it can be so that's the kind of friends we have I don't want a friend like that who in my fair weather friends they want to come to your celebrations but then when you're going through hardships the presumption is that you're the problem based on what based on your own diseases and your own but not anything so I think my point is our friendships are so superficial they're not real which is ironic because you'd think with all the connecting we're doing all the meetings we're doing all the social networking we're doing we would have more friendships or meaningful relationships but the quality matters so yeah if it's superficial then you're likely going to have superficial friendships so we shouldn't collect people we should look to people who are really genuinely good companions in this life and who we feel are looking out for us and those people aren't always going to have maybe they're not always going to compliment you they're not always going to tell you what you want to hear but they will be truthful I would take a friend who is truthful with me and tells me what I need to hear even if it's bitter as opposed to someone who's just faking it complimenting superficial that's not genuine companionship so I think it's an unfortunate reality of our time but this particular disease is so revealing because we need to first and foremost always look inward like how much of these behaviors are we contributing how much of these diseases are we propagating because of our we're participating we're culpable unless we like social media is the easiest thing if you're on social media and you just start there to peer into people's lives you don't even post anything you need to really get off of social media if you're not actively on there trying to do something like at least even benefiting people like let's say you do follow really good people like scholars and teachers okay then use it to benefit people right share those things but if it's like because there's a lot of people who have these accounts they don't even have a profile picture nothing fake name and they only use it to go and spy on other people that's horrendous that's like so unacceptable to me that's just really wrong on so many levels or multiple yeah exactly well what they call the finsta right the fake insta account they actually have names for it and a lot of the youth you know they know these things because that's how they get away with things from their parents but adults to it too you'd be surprised and it's just a very dangerous thing to do for your heart so envy again like most people when they hear of it we tend to and I mentioned this I think last time too but it's true of all the diseases when we read them or read the descriptions or hear the descriptions our mind usually goes to other people because that's the delusion of the nefs and so we're always like oh yeah that person I know she has so much envy did you hold the mirror up to yourself because you might be surprised that so how a lot of these things apply to you as well so I'll read the next there's just a couple paragraphs left and this is a blessing netma is something that God bestows one of God's names is al-muneim the bestower of blessing bestower of blessing envy then is to desire that a person lose whatever blessing God has given him or her it is tantamount to saying that God should not have given this person a blessing or worse yet that he was wrong to do so because I deserve it more as the Imam says it may reach the point that an interviewer would himself remove the blessing if he were able to do so through some kind of ruse however what is perceived as a blessing could be based on a completely false notion as one may desire something that in reality is nothing but trouble and difficulty conversely there should be excuse me there could be a blessing hidden in something difficult there is a well-known story about al-asma'i the famous Arab philologist and compiler of poetry when he once came upon a Bedouin and was invited to enter his tent in Bedouin culture the women serve guests in the presence of their husbands this Bedouin had a very beautiful wife though he himself was quite unattractive when the men went out to prepare a lamb for a meal the guest couldn't resist saying to this woman how did such a beautiful woman like you marry such an ugly man like that the woman said fear God perhaps he had done good works accepted by his Lord and I am his reward God is all wise in what he gives to people if one questions the blessing a person has received then he or she is actually questioning the giver this makes envy reprehensible and forbidden so again it's a powerful reminder that when we have envy we are actually calling into question the distribution system of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala presuming that the one who has received it doesn't deserve it and I deserve it so it's very dangerous on so many levels because it's again accusatory in the worst way possible we should always have the best opinion of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala things aren't always as they appear right many people present themselves as though everything is great and it's usually to mask the reality that things are miserable right because they don't you know they're compensating so it's like they feel like everything in some cases and I know people who admitted this that when things aren't going well in their lives they'll put those messages out there because they feel exposed you know so it's kind of like a way of rewarding or projecting their insecurity in that way of no no no everything's fine so they'll put up like a picture of let's say their relationship is not in a good place suddenly you see all these pictures of you know their past 10 years ago my love you know did this for me and it's like why would it's so random right but usually it's coming from a place of deep insecurity projected in that way so things aren't always as they assume I mean seem and we should just know that the human nature is to sometimes cover things by you know doing things like that so this chapter is quite long and I don't think we're going to be able to finish it today we're going to have to do a part two so I can read there's I guess we can read a little bit more the treatment because the treatment is important so I'll read another section and then we can stop and take any questions or comments from you guys inshallah so as for the cure it is to act contrary to one's caprice for example being beneficent to a person when it seems appealing to harm him or praising him when you desire to find fault in him also the cure is in knowing that envy only harms the envier it causes him to be grievously preoccupied with his object of envy today and tomorrow he is thereby punished moreover envy never benefits the envier nor does it remove from the one envied the blessing he has been given so the treatment imam alid prescribes two cures for envy the first is to consciously act in opposition to one's caprice the Arabic term here for caprice hawa is derived from the Arabic word that means to fall it is also related to the Arabic word for wind one's passion is like the wind in that it comes stirs up emotion and then dies down one cannot really see it only its effect more often than not following one's wings takes a person away from the truth the history of humanity is replete with false notions that have come and gone the truth however is something that is fixed and that can be recognized as such if one is truly objective as for caprice it has no foundation for this reason imam alid says one must resist his caprice the Quran repeatedly warns against following one's caprice it speaks of bygone communities who grew arrogant when god's messengers came to them with admonitions and teachings that did not agree with their souls caprice so they rejected the message and even killed the messengers as mentioned in Quran chapter 5 verse 70 also god praises those who resist the caprices of their souls and promised them paradise in chapter 79 40 one of the names of hell mentioned in the Quran is hawya in chapter 101 verse 9 which is derived from the same root as hawah perhaps the connection is that a person enslaved to his whims descends into the depths of depravity in this life and as a consequence he faces perdition in the hereafter to the type of envy that prods one to bring about harm to another person imam alid suggests that one contradicts his temptation that is do something that will benefit the person who is envied for example give that person a gift or do a favor this defies the commands of one's whims gains the pleasure of god and protects against envy the imam suggests also that one may praise the person toward whom one feels the urge to slander there is no hypocrisy in this recommendation the purpose is to starve envy of the negative thoughts it requires to thrive being beneficent to a person against whom one feels envy often makes that person incline towards the envier in general good people are inclined to love those who show them good so alhamdulillah there's other treatments but i think this is a good place to stop and also just to think about when we're struggling with emotions toward a person that we may have envy toward again it's important to realize the nature of the nafs that these things are that our nafs as you know there's a sorry i'm trying to remember the exact quote but you know she comes up for example he mentions that there's four what he calls the four axis of evil four evils in the world which are the nafs shaitan, hawah and dunya the material world and so to realize that all of these are obviously working against us and their oppositions to what we should aspire which is inshallah to be the best versions of ourselves so when you start to realize that you know in your current circumstance whatever it is that you're lacking or not lacking or that you want it's all immaterial at the end of the day because it's part of this dunya this dunya is a low place and maybe you want it now but is it really something that's going to benefit you in the long run in other words just kind of having that perspective to not hold on to such a degree that they compromise your state with Allah to kind of rationalize your emotional states when you see people have certain blessings that you know what that sounds good like if you for example have a car that's not really working well and you hear someone in your family got a brand new car again you know it sounds good you know to when you hear of another person's blessing that you would want that but then you have to think about well they're probably paying you know extra payment so it might be a burden right whereas my car that's old but at least it gets me where I go so you start to kind of just magnify the blessings you have and minimize these things that just come and go because it's going to be this car today but maybe later it will be something else and you kind of start to see the frivolity of it all like right that this is just the nature of the human being we're never really satisfied with anything we're always going through these ebbs and flows of life and wanting this and wanting that and always like you know redirect and reorient our hearts to what really matters which is Allah swt so kind of again coming out of these emotional states and seeing that we are always you know being affected or prodded by either iblis, our own nafs, hawwa, dunya like these forces are always in a way attacking us and not to fall prey you know to see the trappings as they are to kind of rise above it and just say this is dunya it's all temporal what does it matter at the end of the day when nothing really lasts right if you really think about whatever blessing you have i think that's one of the reasons why i mean even i've talked to children who kind of can rationalize this as well like this dunya part of the the what we sometimes forget is that it's temporal nothing is lasting here right so we invest all this time all this energy but as far as Allah can take away something within a second and there's many stories like this you know people losing their entire livelihood their homes through a house fire a flood we saw it recently with the floods that were happening in southern california entire neighborhoods devastated by torrential rain or something else so that's the nature of dunya is that it's not going to last you so even if you have something or you don't have something not to give it so much weight and importance that it actually again compromises your fate so that's one way to really just have a clear understanding of this world and its temporality and then to prioritize the next world and then the other is when you're dealing with individuals or someone to fight the negative thoughts and to actually force yourself like let's say and all i think because we're mostly i mean we're women and like the people watching are mostly women this is something that our world and sometimes our cultures we see other women sometimes as threats to us right so if a beautiful woman were to enter a space and she is decked out from head to toe right every single woman who's looking at her will immediately feel very insecure in herself right we'll all look at her because she's beautiful Allah has given her jamal she's maybe dressed beautifully she carries herself a certain way and so in that moment the hasad or this these feelings may come up right where you just want to find faults in her I've been in situations where I've seen people actually start saying things out of the blue because they can't deal with the feelings that are coming up for them so they have to make some comment like oh who does she think she is or look at her so these are all reflections of this disease but an example of this is when you see someone who enters a space like that instead of immediately making it about you and feeling insecure compared to her just see that person as you know she's from Allah like Allah created her in her beauty right and force yourself to recognize the one who created her the fashioner of that person right because she didn't obviously make herself right I mean yes nowadays with plastic surgery that's arguable but you know Allah is the one who designed her who fashioned her who created her who made her you know you can just stop for a moment and say Allah gave her jamad now does that mean she's perfect she likely has other issues we're all deficient in some ways we have shortcomings and we also have blessings but the point is to fight the urge to try to find some flaw in her or anyone like when you go somewhere and let's say your claim to fame is that you cook very well you know you're invited to someone and maybe the dish that you always someone else comes and their dish is more delicious and everybody's like oh wow this is the best you know whatever biryani or you know cake or whatever it is that you bake or make if the compliments are going to that person instead of feeling threatened right to just be like Alhamdulillah you know Allah's given her that skill good for her to truly mean it like I'm happy that you are successful and not to make it about you that enough that takes other people's blessings and personalizes it and makes it about you is something that we should gross about like there's this it's something we shouldn't we should detest and we should want to purge and the way you do that is by recognizing the and directing the praise not to the individual but to the one who enabled them with that you know which is back to Allah so that's where the compliment it's very good you look very beautiful these types of compliments that we can bring out are really they should come from a heart that wants to remove these feelings because if you are fighting these thoughts and you don't fall under the description of someone who has envy it's the one who not only does it with impunity without even thinking of it and you know makes everything as I said about themselves that really has this disease but fighting these thoughts and really working against the self is how we inshallah purge so I think these are these is a good place to stop any comments or questions inshallah we have about 10 minutes or so God so possessiveness possessiveness so the question was about feeling maybe possessive towards someone where you covet them you want them for yourself you maybe even feel threatened if someone else comes into the picture I mean obviously every relationship especially the closer we are to people we may feel those things but I think when we you know Allah's part that it tells us two things that come to mind first is Astaghfirullah sorry I'm forgetting my my verses right now my Hadith but one of them is that when we are sorry so when you are grateful right for something that also might increase you in that blessing so your gratitude for the blessing should should emerge in those situations instead of feeling threatened right because if you're grateful for the blessing then you want to pay it for it you want to share you want people to benefit so if you have a really great friend and they've been good to you and you feel like they're such a blessing then show your gratitude by yes protecting it but also wanting not to covet it for just yourself right because some people have that ability I mean I have much beautiful people even teachers that I feel like I want the world to know about right because they've benefited me so much so it's kind of like it's a way of expressing your gratitude to Allah's part that and then you'll find that when you have that it's a scarcity mindset right versus the the growth mindset that when you have the the mindset that Allah is so generous and kind to have given me this great friend and I don't feel threatened by because someone else is into the picture and you have that type of I think attitude then you'll find that your relationship I think is strengthened by that right but when we started to become possessive and jealous and we play these little mind games I feel like there's an insecurity there and we should be like look what what is inspired what what is inspiring that insecurity is it that I feel I'm not like that someone else can replace me right and and maybe this friend that's so special is going to suddenly be swept away by someone else and if that's the case and you want to work on maybe being the best friend that you can to that person so that you are irreplaceable right that they would never feel that way about you so I think you know there's a few different ways to approach it but most importantly is to remember Allah gave the friend to you and if you want to hold on to that relationship that's the best thing to do like with any blessings just to be very grateful for it because the more we're grateful for the blessings of Allah the more he secures those blessings and increases those blessings and not to to start to draw lines and I've seen I personally in my relationships I've always told my friends like that's actually a sure where sure far away to negatively affect the relationship is if you start to become too possessive because I feel like we it just complicates things and it it becomes I mean there's a fine line obviously where people really are very committed and they love and that's just their expression of love but when it becomes emotionally enmeshed to the point where it's now it's an unhealthy attachment then I think it just doesn't go very well because then there's expectations and now it's like oh you went to this and I it wasn't invited and there's jealousy competition so I don't feel like those are good emotions that we should romanticize you know between whether it's couples or friends in general like the possessiveness I think it's not a healthy thing we can certainly be loyal and have fidelity and love in all of our relationships but there should always be a very clear boundary because to be honest this world is a difficult place and I've seen people lose themselves you know because they were too attached so in every relationship you should have a very healthy distance you know so I know it's a long answer to your question but you know because I feel like these notions are sometimes over romanticized you know like oh you know this is my best friend and it's like you know we're not in high school yeah let's mature let's grow up and and look at people as just I mean like the prophesies of he had his companions and everyone knew you know who they were there's that one hadith I forget which Sahaba it was but he was because the prophet doesn't have the ability to make everyone feel very special and close to him and so one of the Sahaba asked him like who's your favorite person and he mentions like Sennabah Bakr he goes through all these people and like by number 5 or 6 he's still not mentioned and he's like okay I'm good because he realized like this is hurting me now right so sometimes wanting to be number 1 you know in someone's world especially if they have like that magnanimous personality type or are very loving is it might just I think it's not necessary rather you see them as being you know signs of God you know especially if they're very good people and want that everybody benefit from them inshallah and then just do your part to be a very good friend and a loyal friend to them and inshallah you'll never lose them you know it's absolutely on point and you know as you mentioned Allah span that is the one who distributes he's the source of all blessings so he knows what we all need at the time of our you know whatever time we're in and maybe at you know different intervals in our lives or different periods of our lives we may feel abundance other times things may be withheld from us but it's all inshallah for our betterment and if we can accept that and then understand that every other person has the same experience then we stop fixating on the particulars and just see that everyone's being tested and that's why you know that famous story and his teacher where he talks to him about you know just the burden of the dunya that he can't deal with that and then he tells him I'll tell you something and if you understand it you will it'll help you and he goes on to explain to him that all people are being tested every single person and there's four different states that human beings fall under right so the first is that they're in blessing and if they're in blessing then their test is that they have to have gratitude that Allah is looking to see whether or not they're being grateful but that is a test for them so a person could be filthy rich and have all these great things but we could perceive it like oh they have it so easy right and that's where envy comes from it's like oh they have it so easy I don't have those things but they're actually being tested wealth is a huge amana and it's a burden in many ways right so that's your first state and the second is that you are in tribulation right that you have problems it could be in your health it could be in your relationships it could be in your work it could be in your home it could be wherever but if you're being tested in a with a tribulation a real difficulty that's not in your faith right it's in the world it's in a worldly sense then your test is that you have patience that you have the beautiful patience and it is your test right so you're on your path to Allah the person in blessings on their path to Allah but everybody's being tested simultaneously and then the two remainder are that you're either in guidance or you're in misguidance and those two also have tests if you're in guidance like we're Muslim we're being guided but we're being tested as well in the guidance and the test is do you have the humility to know right that your guidance is from God and to not fall into that self righteousness where you think like you're better than people the superiority mindset that a lot of believers can fall into that your guidance is in whatever things that you've been able to accomplish or achieve your knowledge whatever you've done is directly from Allah swt it's not from you it's not because of your efforts that you are at a certain level that you are in the path of piety or righteousness so that's the third and then the fourth is misguidance and the test is to make toba and to repent that you free yourself of the sin sinfulness and that you would turn to Allah so the point of this is to say that in order to fight these diseases is that you start to have that zoom out look at the world as a place of tests and tribulation where all God's creation have their journey to him and then the details of other people which is why we're told to mind our own business become inconsequential because it doesn't matter what they have or what they don't have I have to think about me I am going to just as I was brought into this world by myself I will be returned to the grave by myself I will be risen on the day of judgment by myself I have to be worried about me so the preoccupation and the distraction of what other people have and don't have is from shaitan it's from nefs it's all to throw you off the path so that you fail and that's why we have to reject that right so going back to those four sources of evil just start to see that it's all so you know it's baseless I'm giving weight to things that don't matter at the end of the day like a person's as I said their bank account their house their beauty their lineage all those things that we are like oh at the end of the day they're going to end up in the same predicament that we all are same predicament we're going to die we're going to leave this material world and we will rise to stand before our last partner and it's about whether we get our account in our right hand or our left hand and the rest will know that's the most important thing and to not magnify these minutia of dunya that are designed to as I said throw us off our path so there's a lot more to be said but to all of you inshallah we'll continue after that one minute to spare we'll continue this discussion on envy because there is more about the treatments that and some of the ways envy manifests and also leads to other diseases that we should know about because it is a big one in our time so we'll end in dua inshallah peace be upon the messengers and praise be to Allah and praise be to Allah thank you everyone inshallah