Jalaludin Rumi...

Jalaludin Rumi, one of the greatest Iranian poets, makes a very nice example in this regard and says: “Water in the boat is the ruin of the boat, but water under the boat is its support… The stoppered jar, though in rough water, floated because of its empty heart.

Thus, when the wind of self-detachment is in anyone, she floats in peace on the waters of this world.” It is very important to mention that human beings, in accordance with Shiat doctrine of predestination, are agents with free-will but subject to some determinism imposed by reality. In other words, humans have control over their lives and are able to make decisions. These decisions, however, are always subject to some constraints and under uncertainty.

This is because there are many factors that involve the implementation of the decisions which may speed up, retard or even stop them. Therefore, a Muslim should optimize righteously the mathematical expectation of his target function based on the distribution of probabilities, even though the result is not clear except in God’s Omniscience.

Thus, this doctrine rejects both extremes, extreme free-will and extreme determinism, and accepts that there is a variable degree of choice for each person depending on his internal and external (genetic and environmental) factors. Being responsible with our lives and our decisions motivates us to be strong enough to realize them. No doubt wealth carries a sort of power which does not deserve to be neglected.

Therefore, all people who wish to become God-like must attend deeply and strongly to be powerful and creative in order to drive society toward both justice and growth and to create a living environment full of hope and dignity seeking the elimination of poverty from the earth. This approach to wealth is obviously inconsistent with seeing it as a potential source of corruption, as it is seen in some closed worldviews.

On the contrary, this endowment is a source of a lofty mission to embrace life and brotherhood and to enrich the lives of others through our excessive endeavors. Nonetheless, we are responsible for the process not the result, because the realization of such a divine mission depends on determinisms over our circumstances, as well as being indebted to our endeavors. Thus, we can hardly place the blame on the person who suffers from a lack of wealth.