Understanding The Prophet's Life
From Issue: 679 [Read full issue]
Courage and Generosity
God sometimes links prayer (salah) and the alms-due (zakah) together and sometimes links these two with patience. All three are essential: prayer, the welfare due and patience. The well-being of the believers depends upon all three, both for their own piety and for the improvement of others - and never more so than whenever discord and tribulation are intense, for the need then is all the greater. The need for tolerance and patience is common to all mankind, and these are vital to human welfare in both the religious and worldly spheres.
That is why people always praise courage and generosity in one another - indeed, it is these that the poets extol in their writings - just as they blame one another for stinginess and cowardice. There is universal agreement among the whole of humanity to praise truthfulness and justice and to condemn lying and tyranny. Some desert Arabs once begged so demandingly of the Prophet, on him be peace, that they forced him into a thorn bush which caught on his cloak. He turned to them and said: "By Him in Whose hand is my soul, if I had a flock as numerous as these thorns I would divide it among you; then you would not find me a miser, a coward or a liar."
Compiled From:
"Public Duties in Islam" - Ibn Taymiyya, p. 103