The Essence of Islam – Volume II — Page 355
12. ARROGANCE. I tell you truly that on the Day of Judgement, next after association of anything with God, no vice shall rank as high as arrogance. This is a vice that humiliates a person in both worlds. Divine mercy rescues every believer in. Divine Unity, except an arrogant one. Satan also claimed that he believed in the Unity of God but, as he was afflicted with arrogance and looked contemptuously upon Adam whom God loved and found fault with him. . He was ruined and became accursed. Thus the first sin whereby one was ruined forever was arrogance. [Ā'ina-e-Kamālāt-e-Islām, Rūḥānī Khazā'in, vol. 5, p. 598]. What is Arrogance?. I admonish my Community to shun arrogance as arrogance is hateful in the eyes of God, the Lord of Glory. You may not perhaps fully realize what is arrogance. Then listen to me as I speak under the direction of God. . Everyone who looks down upon a brother because he esteems himself more learned, or wiser, or more proficient than him is arrogant, inasmuch as he does not esteem God as the Fountainhead of all intelligence and knowledge and deems himself as something. Has God not the power to afflict him with lunacy and to bestow upon his brother, whom he accounts small, better intelligence and knowledge and higher proficiency than him?. So also he who, out of a mistaken conception of his wealth, or status, or dignity, looks down upon his 355