The Mirror of the Excellences of Islam — Page 170
PREFACE FOOTNOTE 169 all the means and emotions he possesses would be for doing only good and the desire of evil would be inherently absent from his nature. In such a case, by what virtue would he have the right to deserve reward for avoiding vice? For instance, if a congenitally impotent man, who has no desire for women, were to claim before an audience that he passed a certain time in the company of young beautiful women, but being virtuous, he did not look upon them lustfully even once and feared God all the while, everyone would laugh at him for saying so and mockingly exclaim: 'O fool! When did you ever have the capability, which you then restrained to justify boasting about or expecting any reward?' It should be understood that, in his ini- tial and intermediary phases, all hopes of reward for the seeker arise out of the rebel- AUTHOR'S MARGIN NOTE All hopes of reward arise out of rebellious desires lious desires. If, in those stages, the circumstances of the seeker's very nature are such that he is completely incapable of committing any kind of vice, then his actions cannot merit any reward. For instance, unlike scorpions and snakes, we do not possess any poison within our bodies through which we can inflict the kind of injury on anyone that snakes and scorpions cause. Therefore, in being precluded from inflict- ing this kind of harm, we are also not entitled to any reward according to Allah. Thus it is evident that the rebellious desires arising within man that pull man towards vice, are, in fact, also the very means for man's reward because when he eschews those rebellious desires out of the fear of God, then, without doubt, he becomes worthy of praise in the estima- tion of Allah and pleases his Lord. However, there are no rebellious desires left in the one who has attained the highest station, as if his jinn has become a Muslim. Nevertheless, he continues to deserve reward, for he has traversed the stages of trial with great courage just as a