Wealth and pelf are great evils and penury and piety the supreme tests.

Wealth and pelf are great evils and penury and piety the supreme tests. Allah tests the proud people through these weak and insignificant creatures. Prophet Musa (as) and Prophet Haroon (as) reached the court of the Pharoh wearing coarse wollen raiment and carrying a staff. They told Pharoh that if he wished to have permanent respectability and desired to rule for long, then he should embrace Islam.

Hearing this Pharoh laughed and told to his courtiers that the two mendicants who neither had good dress nor pompous appearance, hold a beggar’s staff in th hand, offer him eternal life and respectability! If they have so much power, then why they are not rulers and kings? They even don’t wear bracelets of gold! It became evident from the talk of the Pharo that in his consideration wealth, pelf and bracelets etc were signs of respectability and power.

If Allah has attached any importance to these things, he certainly would have provided all these to His Prophets (as) But the Intention of Allah was to test the proud, conceited rulers of the world through His Prophets (as) who were the paragons of simplicity and humility. If the prophets were rich and powerful, people would have respected them for their outward pomp. But Allah wished to see who were his sincere creatures. Similarly Allah built His House with ordinary stones and sand.

It was possible for Him to Order it to be made with gold, silver and precious stones. That would perhaps have put the pride of the world to a shade! But the Creator wanted people of all shades of power and pride to bow down to His Humble Abode! The philosophy of Salah too is the same. Proud and conceited persons prostrate their foreheads on the dust in acknowledgement of the Greatness of Allah. Wealthy persons fast in the Holy month of Ramadhan to earn the Goodwill of Allah!

They take out and distribute the Zakat thinking that Allah has gifted them with wealth and it must be shared with the needy. Although the House of Allah is in an isolated and desolate place, but since it is related with the great Creator, people have to respect the Black Stone ( Hajr al-Aswad) in obedience to His Commands! The Types Of Pride The proud consider themselves big and powerful.

There are several categories of these men of pride The pride that touches the borders of infidelity when the proud person belittles the prophets, the men of piety, the scholars and the abstemious.