In this greed Malik disposed all his assets and distributed the money in charity.

In this greed Malik disposed all his assets and distributed the money in charity. Since the trustee is expected to be extremely pious and simple, he went and stayed in the mosque. Whenever he found any person entering the mosque, he would stand up and start praying. The purpose was to attract the attention of the people to his piety so that his candidature for the trusteeship could be clinched. But in course of time people understood his insincere plan.

They were covertly, and sometimes overtly, making fun of him. They would ask him, “O Malik! What is your intention?” A lot of time passed in this manner. Then he realized that in his avarice he had reduced himself to the condition that he was in. Now that all the people have gauged his plan, there was no chance of him getting the trusteeship. He thought that his fate was neither to get the worldly benefit nor of the Hereafter.

That night, with a broken heart, Malik expressed penitence ( istighfar ) to Allah (S.w.T.) and sought His forgiveness for his sins throughout the night. He was surprised the next morning to see the same persons who were insulting him earlier, met him with due respect and asked him to pray for them. In due course of time it was well known in Syria that Malik was a man of great piety. Now the important persons came to him and offered to him the trusteeship of the mosque.

He declined the offer politely and said that he had acquired the Good will of Allah (S.w.T.) with difficulty and that he was not in the need of anything else. The unlucky person who is devoid of sincerity will definitely be one who loses the world as well as the Hereafter ( Khasira ad-duniya wal aakhira ). Futile Prayer We have already mentioned that the acceptance of prayers is dependent on the sincerity of the person.

The prayer that is devoid of sincerity is an exercise in futility and is useless. The lowest is the prayer through which one seeks the pleasure of both the Creator and the creatures. In such acts those elements of hypocrisy are present that are counted among major sins. The prayer of a lower category than this is that which is not even for the mental pleasure ( Hiz an-Nafsani ). Sometimes the nature of a person plays its part in his intent. For example: It is Friday and a warm day.

The person wishes to go to the swimming pool to cool himself and, at the same time, perform his obligatory bath. Now, who could say that whether his intent is to swim or to have his mandatory Friday bath.