Chapter on When Does the Servant Know He Has Eliminated Hasad?

Chapter: When Does the Servant Know That He Has Negated Envy?

I said:

You have made clear the nature of hasad (envy) and magnified its harm, and I would love to be saved from it through knowledge. So what is the proof—

That I may know that I have negated it from my heart—when I recall within myself what you have described of that which fulfills envy and that I have avoided it? Yet I may find myself recalling some of what you described, and there is an impulse contending with me from within myself—with aversion toward the blessing that God has bestowed upon someone, and a wish for its removal.

He said: You are not able to silence your enemy Iblīs, nor to change your natural disposition, so as to make the constitution of your soul a constitution that does not contend toward envy of one who opposes it, or who is singled out with something to its exclusion, or that [something] be for it rather than for them. You can scarcely control yourself when you recall [such things], lest the natural disposition be stirred.

Nor are you charged with making the disposition of your soul of a nature that is never heedless, never forgetful, never contending toward anything desired or disliked—for that is the disposition of the angels. Rather, you are charged with using your intellect to comprehend from God, Mighty and Majestic, so that it does not incline toward other than His obedience. So when you intend with your intellect what God, Mighty and Majestic, has entrusted in it of knowledge regarding the harm of envy, against the contention of your natural disposition and the summons of your enemy, you would then, by virtue of your intellect, be averse to it, refusing to yield to the contention toward it—your natural disposition ever refusing that. So if, by virtue of your intellect, you do not incline toward it out of aversion to it, you are saved. Likewise is the case with all that contends from among the promptings of evil in the hearts. So if you are, regarding envy, averse to it, refusing it,

It has been narrated from al-Hasan, from the Prophet ﷺ, that he said:

"There are three things in the believer from which he suffers no blame: [envy], suspicion, and [evil omen]—and his way out of suspicion is that he does not act upon it."