Look around...

Look around; you will see either a poor man hardly able to breathe in extreme poverty and penury, or a rich man who has transformed God's blessings into his own infidelity, or you will see a miser who makes stinginess in discharging the obligations imposed by God a means of increasing his own wealth, or you will find the rebellious whose unruly hearts are deaf to moral admonition. Where are the virtuous, the righteous amongst you? Where are the free men and the magnanimous?

Where are those who avoid every trace of deceit in their dealings and pursue piety and honesty in their ways? The Intoxication of Affluence: Amir al-Mu'minin (A), in his utterances, has used the phrase sakarat al-ni'mah, meaning 'intoxication induced by comfort and affluence', which is inevitably followed by a vengeful disaster. In sermon 151 he warns them: You, O people of Arabia, would be victims of calamities which are drawing near.

Beware of the intoxication induced by affluence and fear the vengeful disaster which will follow it. Then he describes the misfortunes caused by such immoderations. In sermon 187 he foretells the calamities that were to befall the Muslim society in future. He says: This would happen when you would be intoxicated, not by drinking wine, but with wealth and affluence.

Yes, the flow of immense amounts of wealth into the domain of Islam and the unjust distribution of this wealth together with nepotism and partiality, infected the Islamic society with the disease of worldliness and the race for affluence. 'Ali (A) struggled to save the Islamic world from this grave danger, and was severely critical of those who were responsible for the infection to set in.

He set an example of an altogether different life style in his own personal living, and, on attaining caliphate, he gave the top priority to the campaign against these dangers in his revolutionary programme. The General Aspect of 'Ali's Warnings: This prologue was intended to throw light upon the particular aspect of the warnings of Amir al-Mu'minin (A) about worldliness as a specific reaction to a particular social phenomenon of his times.

Yet, aside from this particular feature, there is a general aspect to 'Ali's words that is not confined to his own time and applies to all times and all people as an essential part of Islamic teaching.