Forty Gems of Beauty — Page 141
141 and commanded the payment of the worker’s wages before his sweat becomes dry. In making this wise observation, his aim was not simply a prompt payment of the labourer’s earnings; in fact, what he aimed at was to draw attention to the rights of the poor and the working classes in general. Since payment of the wages to the worker, as and when it became due, is the minimum of the worker’s rights, by stressing its importance as an example, he indirectly proposed a safeguard of the greater and more important rights of the worker. The reformer, who would not brook so much delay in payment of wages to the labourer as allows his sweat to become dry, is, by means of this command, without a doubt, also recommending the payment of full wages to the worker, a due regard for his comfort and abstention from putting him to exertion beyond his capacity. His teaching about the kindly treatment of domestic servants and his injunctions about Islamic brotherhood and equality [which have been dealt with in some detail by the author in his work, S i rat Kh a taman-Nabiyy i n [The Life and character of the Seal of the Prophets] Volume II & III] are illustrative of his solicitude for the welfare of the poor, and show how great a protector of their rights they had in him. It is true that, in order to keep the individual’s initiative alive and to ensure to him the fruit of his personal effort, he permitted possession of the private property. Simultaneously, he outlined the organisation of suitable machinery in the shape of Zakat (a prescribed rate), proscription of usury and division of property among heirs for the proper regulation and distribution of wealth. And, in order to remove the traces of bitterness due to disproportion, if any were still left, he comforted the poorer classes by saying that if they adhered to faith, they would be admitted to heaven 500 years ahead of the wealthy. It is evident that the short life of this world bears no comparison to the eternal life of the Hereafter. Again, he comforted the poor further by addressing the words to them: