CHAPTER 5ʿALĪ’S QUESTIONS WITH ANSWERS, AND ʿALĪ’S ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
5.1
O people! If one of you asks a question, let him be scrupulous in asking. If one of you is asked a question, let him be conscientious in answering. By God, calamitous events and momentous affairs have descended upon you because of the failure of many who are asked, and the submissive acceptance of many who do the asking.
5.2
The prophet asked ʿAlī:
What is the first favor God bestowed upon you?
That he made me male not female, ʿAlī replied.
Then what?
That he guided me to Islam, and allowed me to recognize its true value, and that in his kindness he gave me you as a guide, O messenger of God.
Then what?
«If you count God’s bounty you will be not be able to tally it.»38
5.3
ʿAlī asked his son al-Ḥasan the following questions about the perfection of human qualities, and al-Ḥasan responded—
Dear son, what is well-directed action?
Well-directed action is repaying wrong with good, father, he replied.
And what is honor?
Being generous to your kin and enduring injustice.
What is good character?
Virtue. And probity is rectitude with regard to property.
What is refinement?
Compassion in little things and protecting the vulnerable.
What is blameworthiness?
Contempt for yourself and neglect of your bride’s honor are blameworthy.
What is generosity?
Giving generously in times of hardship and ease.
What is stinginess?
Believing what you have spent to be a waste.
What is brotherly behavior?
Helping your brother both in times of adversity and security.
What is cowardice?
Being spirited against your friend and cowardly with your enemy.
What is booty?
Consciousness of God and indifference to the world—that is booty easily won.
What is forbearance?
Suppressing rage and controlling desire.
What is wealth?
Accepting what God has ordained for you, even if it is little. True wealth is the wealth of the soul.
The appetitive soul’s gluttony.
What is might?
The soul’s well-directed action, and its combating the power of despair.
What is shame?
Being frightened by the truth.
What are the signs of faltering?
Playing with your beard and spitting excessively.
Whence comes boldness?
Brotherly harmony.
What is unnecessary and painful?
Speaking about things that do not concern you.
What is nobility?
Paying your dues and forgiving acts of injustice.
What is intelligence?
Your heart keeping safe everything with which you have entrusted it.
What is schism?
Striving to oust your leader and raising your voice at him.
What is loftiness?
Choosing goodness and avoiding meanness.
What is resolution?
Long deliberation, calmness in dealing with governors, and caution when dealing with people, by expecting the worst. This is resolution.
What is honor?
Brotherly harmony and protecting neighbors.
Following immoral people and keeping company with reprobates.
What is heedlessness?
Forsaking the mosque and submitting to malefactors.
What is deprivation?
Giving up your destined share when it has been presented to you.
Who is a real leader?
Whosoever is feckless about his own property, cares not about his own glory, refrains from cursing back when insulted, and is resolute in his clan’s affairs. That is a real leader.
5.4
Alī was asked:39
Who is knowledgeable?
The one who stays away from forbidden things, he replied.
Who is intelligent?
The one who rejects falsehood.
Who is a leader?
The one whose actions are good.
Who is happy?
The one who fears the promised reckoning.
Who is generous?
The one who gives to the needy.
Who is noble?
The one who shows justice to the weak.
Who is immature?
The one known for his arrogance.
Who is naive?
The one who trusts in his own longevity.
The one who is consigned to the angel Malik’s care.40
5.5
Zayd ibn Ṣūḥān al-ʿAbdī came to ʿAlī, asking:
O commander of the faithful, what kind of sovereignty is the most overwhelming and powerful?
Base desire, he replied.
Which vileness is vilest, he asked.
Greed for worldly things, he replied.
Which is the most painful loss?
Becoming a disbeliever and losing one’s faith.
Which supplication goes astray?
The one for something that can never be.
Which act is the most meritorious?
Consciousness of God.
Which act brings the most success?
The quest for God’s reward.
Who is the worst friend?
The one who tempts you into sin.
Who is the strongest of people?
The one who controls his anger.
Who is the nastiest wretch?
The one who sells his faith to please another.
Who is the most miserly?
The one who misappropriates property and uses it for unlawful ends.
Who is the smartest?
An errant man who sees the right path and turns toward it.
The one who never flies into a rage.
Who is the most steadfast?
The one whom people cannot deceive, who does not yield to the temptations of this bejeweled world.
Who is the biggest fool?
The one who is seduced by this world, even though he sees what is in her and observes her fickle state.
Who will have the most grievous regrets?
The one who is deprived of this world and the hereafter. «That is truly the most manifest loss.»41
Who is the most blind?
The one who performs acts to please someone other than God, yet expects a reward from God.
What is the best form of contentment?
That of one who is satisfied with what God has given him.
Which is the severest calamity?
That which shakes your faith.
Which act does God like best?
Patient waiting for deliverance.
Who is the most virtuous person in God’s sight?
The one who fears God, cultivates patience and piety, and rejects worldliness.
Which words are the most meritorious in God’s sight?
Words spoken in remembrance of God, in supplication to him, and in prayer.
What is the truest assertion?
The testimony that “There is no god but God.”
What kind of belief does God like best?
One that encompasses acceptance and restraint.
Who is the noblest of men?
The one who fights gallantly in battle, holds back his tongue from uttering falsehoods, commands good, and forbids wickedness.
5.6
ʿAlī said: Ask before I am lost to you. Truly, my heart holds abundant knowledge—knowledge that my beloved, the messenger of God, imparted to me.
Ṣaʿṣaʿah ibn Ṣūḥān rose, saying, commander of the faithful, when will al-Dajjāl the antichrist appear?
Sit back down, Ṣaʿṣaʿah, ʿAlī replied, God knows your capacity.42 There are signs and events and happenings announcing the antichrist’s coming, which will occur in close succession in the course of a single year—as surely as one shoe follows the other. If you wish, I can inform you about those signs.
Yes, that is what I was asking about, commander of the faithful, replied Ṣaʿṣaʿah.
ʿAlī then expounded: Keep count on your fingers, Ṣaʿṣaʿah: When people stop praying, when they squander trust, when they consider falsehood lawful, practice usury, and take bribes. When they build fortified structures, follow their whims, sell their faith for worldly things, and regard killing as unobjectionable. When they consider restraint weakness, and oppression a source of pride. When rulers become immoral, their viziers and counselors fraudulent, their Qurʾan readers debauched. When injustice becomes manifest, and divorce and sudden death common. When copies of the Qurʾan are decorated, mosques ornamented, and pulpits raised high, but hearts are in ruin, promises broken, lutes played, wine consumed, and adultery widespread. When the fraudster is trusted and the honest man is viewed with suspicion. When women participate in trade with their husbands, greedy for more, and females sit astride their saddles. When greetings of peace are reserved for associates. When witnesses offer testimony without having been summoned. When people wear hides of sheep to conceal hearts of wolves. On that day, hearts will be more bitter than myrrh, more putrid than a carcass. So run and make haste! Run and make haste! Struggle, struggle! What a good place to reside in Jerusalem will be when that day comes!
Then Aṣbagh ibn Nubātah rose, saying: commander of the faithful, what is the nature of the antichrist?
Aṣbagh, ʿAlī replied, the antichrist is Ṣayfī ibn ʿĀʾidh. Whosever trusts him will know misfortune. Whosoever refuses him will know bliss. He will be killed at a plateau in the Levant known as the Plateau of Fīq at three in the afternoon at the hands of the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary. After that the «great devastation»43 will come! The sun will rise darkly from the west. On that day, «no soul will be helped by believing, if it has not previously attained belief and has not earned a reward in its belief by performing good deeds.»44 On that day, no repentance shall be accepted, no deed shall rise up to the gates of heaven, and no sustenance shall be sent down.
Then ʿAlī said: My beloved, the messenger of God, made me swear that I would not recount what is to happen after that.
5.7
A man came to ʿAlī and said: Commander of the faithful, tell me about destiny.
It is a deep sea, ʿAlī replied, do not dive into it.
Commander of the faithful, tell me about destiny.
It is God’s mystery that is concealed from you. Do not ask for it to be revealed.
Commander of the faithful, tell me about destiny.
O prober—has God created you for his purpose or for yours?
Does he use you for his purpose or yours?
For his purpose, not mine.
O prober, do you not ask God for protection?
I do indeed.
From what do you ask his protection? A trial he has tested you with, or a trial that someone else has tested you with?
A trial that he has tested me with.
O prober, you say “There is no power and no strength save …” save from whom?
Save from God most high and most great.
O prober, do you know what that means?
Teach me from the knowledge that God gave you, commander of the faithful.
It means that no person has the power to obey God or to disobey him except through power that God grants him.
O prober, do you have any purpose that you can enact alongside God’s purpose, or over and above God’s purpose? Or any purpose that you can enact apart from God? If you believe that you have a purpose that you can enact apart from God, then you have sufficed yourself with that and dispensed with God’s purpose. If you believe that you have a purpose that is over and above God’s purpose, then you have believed that your strength and your purpose can overpower God’s strength and God’s purpose. If you believe that you have a purpose that you enact alongside God’s purpose, then you have believed that you have partnership with God in the enactment of his purpose. O prober, truly, God makes you ill and cures you; the illness is from him, so too the cure. Do you understand?
Yes, the man replied.
Then ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib said: Now your brother has truly accepted Islam. Stand up and shake his hand.
He added: If a man from the Qadarites fell into my hands, I would grab the side of his neck and hack it until I cut it off. They are the Jews of this community, its Christians, its Magians.
5.8
A Jew came to ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and asked: commander of the faithful, when did our lord come into existence?
‘Alī said to him: God was never brought into existence such that he should become existent. “When did he come into existence?” is said of a thing that was not in existence then afterward came into existence. He is existent without coming into existence, existent unceasingly. He has no before, for he is before the before, before the first limit. All limits end with him, for he is the limit of every limit.
5.9
A man asked ʿAlī to explain the dictum “There is no power or strength save from God.”
ʿAlī replied: It means that we are not masters of anything in partnership with God; that we are not masters of anything against his will; and that we are not masters of anything without him being its real master—when we are, we are given it as a burden to carry, and when it is taken from us, the burden is lifted. Truly, God has commanded us to do things while giving us a choice, and prohibited us from doing things while giving us a warning. He has given us much in return for little. Our obedience does not burden him, and our disobedience does not threaten him.
5.10
A man came to the commander of the faithful and said: commander of the faithful, I am a poor man, with no money and no children.
ʿAlī replied: Have you not heard God’s words in his book, «Ask your lord for forgiveness, for he is the most forgiving. He will send down the sky in torrents and provide you with wealth and progeny. He will give you gardens. He will give you rivers.»45
Teach me how to ask God for forgiveness, said the man.
I seek your forgiveness, God, for every sin that my body committed using the fortitude you gave it; for every sinful act my strength acquired using the favors you bestowed upon it; for every sinful thing my hand stretched out to grasp, fortified by your sustenance; for every sin I hesitated at but committed anyway, relying upon your patience, believing in your forgiveness, and trusting that you would not strike me in your wrath.
I seek your forgiveness, God, for every sin by which I betrayed my trust, or short-changed my soul, or transgressed upon my body, or gave precedence to my pleasures, or preference to my desires, and for the times when I answered roughly any who would try to stop me.
I seek your forgiveness, God, for every sin that you knew I would commit, but that I entered into of my own will, perpetrating it blithely, and coming to it through my own desires. I tried to deceive you, lord, but could not vanquish you. You disliked my disobedience, but had prior knowledge about me, and so were patient. You did not force me to sin, nor push me into it. No, you did me no injustice there. Forgive me, God. None can forgive sins but you.
5.11
ʿAlī was asked:
What is the distance between the sky and the earth?
An answered prayer, he replied.
What is the distance between east and west?
The sun’s day-long trek.
5.12
This report goes back to al-Barāʾ ibn ʿĀzib. He said: I went to ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and said to him:
Commander of the faithful, I ask you in the name of God. Bestow upon me the loftiest part of the special knowledge that God’s messenger bestowed upon you, from that knowledge which Gabriel bestowed upon him, from that knowledge with which the Merciful sent him.
ʿAlī replied: If you had not asked in God’s name, I would not have revealed to you what I had intended to conceal until I am laid in my grave.
If you wish to call upon God by his greatest name, then recite the first six verses from “Iron.”46 Then recite the last verse of “Resurrection,” from «He is God, there is no god but him» till the end of the surah.47 When you are done reciting and are beginning your supplication, say: “O God, you who are such and such, do with me such and such.” By God, even were you to pray in this way for a wretch, he would be saved.
Al-Barāʾ said: By God, I will never use this prayer to pray for worldly things.
Good, ʿAlī replied. This is the special knowledge God’s messenger bestowed upon me, and he instructed me to save this prayer for momentous affairs.
5.13
Abū ʿAṭāʾ said: The commander of the faithful, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, came to us one day, troubled and sighing deeply, and said: How will you cope with a time that has almost come upon you, in which punishments for major crimes will be disregarded, and wealth will be the only thing for which people compete? A time in which God’s elite will be hunted down, and God’s enemies pledged allegiance to?
If that time comes upon us, we asked him, what should we do?
Be like the followers of Jesus, ʿAlī replied, who were hacked to pieces with saws and crucified on planks of wood for believing. Being killed for refusing to renounce God is better than being spared for capitulating.
5.14
ʿAbbād ibn Qays rose and asked ʿAlī: Commander of the faithful, tell us: What is faith? And what is Islam?
I shall tell you, Ibn Qays, ʿAlī replied. God created all things knowing about them. He then selected what he wanted, picking out what he loved; what he loved was Islam, which he favored and made into a path for his servants. He derived its name from his name, for he is al-Salām, Peace, and his religion is Islam. He was pleased with this religion, and gifted it to the creatures he loved. He exalted it, made the paths to its watering holes smooth, and protected its ramparts from those who would attack it. No saboteur can ever sabotage it. He made it a source of might for whomsoever pledges allegiance to it, a place of safety for whomsoever enters into it, right guidance for whomsoever takes it as his leader, light for whomsoever seeks illumination by it, proof for whomsoever holds fast to it, an ornament for whomsoever exalts it, an aid for whomsoever treads its path, an honor for whomsoever recognizes it, an attestation for whomsoever speaks by its strength, a witness for whomsoever litigates with it, victory for whomsoever debates with it, knowledge for whomsoever retains it, comprehension for whomsoever relates its merits, wisdom for whomsoever judges by it, maturity for whomsoever gains intelligence from it, rationality for whomsoever ponders it, conviction for whomsoever understands it, comprehension for whomsoever reflects upon it, a lesson for whomsoever takes heed from it, a stout rope for whomsoever links himself to it, salvation for whomsoever is true to it, an affectionate bond for whomsoever does good deeds, closeness to God for whomsoever comes nigh unto him, comfort for whomsoever gives himself to him, clothing for the pious, sustenance for the believer, security for the devoted, and well-being for the truthful.
Islam is the foundation of truth, and truth is the road of right guidance. Clasping its hand results in a beautiful reward, and its brilliance bestows nobility. Its path is lit, its sun bright, its road illuminated, its lamp burning, its goal high, its course true, its jewels countless. It is ancient in the counting of years, an arena where the prize can be won, or a painful chastisement received. It is the objective of the truthful. Its proof is clear, its eminence great, and its champions noble.
Its path is faith, its provision piety, its road good deeds, its lamp chastity, its champions the pious, its end death, its racecourse this world, its arena the day of resurrection, its prize paradise, and its punishment hellfire.
The blissful take refuge in faith. The wretched are debased by their continued disobedience to God even after Islam’s proofs have been eloquently presented to them and the path of truth and the road of right guidance have become clearly visible. Whosoever rejects truth after all this—his shape will be made hideous on the day of loss and gain,48 his arguments voided, that day when the blissful attain the garden.
Faith guides you to deeds, deeds guide you to piety, piety makes you heed death, and death will end this world. It is in this world that the hereafter can be attained, and it is on the day of resurrection that paradise will be brought close. People who are thrown into the fire will be in agony because they are barred from the garden. This reminder about people who are thrown into the fire is a warning that the pious will heed.
None who strive for piety perish, and none who live by it regret. It is by piety that victors are victorious, and by disobedience that losers lose. Let the pious take heed. There is no place for any creature on the day of resurrection other than before the just arbiter. Running swiftly in the racetrack toward the final pole, the finish line, pulled by the neck toward the caller, disturbed from the repose of graves, they will be handed over to the eternal distress that awaits each one of them. All means will be cut off for the wretched, who will be given over to severe punishment. There will be no return for them to the earth. Divested of good deeds, the people they preferred to obey rather than the Almighty will do nothing for them. And the blissful will win the kingdom of faith.
Faith, Ibn Qays, stands on four pillars: forbearance, conviction, justice, and struggle against evil.
Forbearance too stands on four pillars: Longing, fear, rejection of worldliness, and expectant waiting. Whosoever longs for the garden is diverted from indulging desires. Whosoever fears the fire retreats from the forbidden. Whosoever rejects worldliness makes light of calamities. And whosoever awaits death hastens to perform good deeds.
Conviction also stands on four pillars: Perceptive sagacity, counsel offered by this world’s lessons, interpretation of God’s wisdom, and following the practice of the earlier prophets. Whosoever perceives with sagacity interprets God’s wisdom. Whosoever interprets God’s wisdom recognizes these lessons. Whosoever recognizes these lessons recognizes the path trodden by earlier prophets. And whosoever recognizes the path trodden by earlier prophets is like someone who has lived with them and who has been guided to the steadfast faith.
Justice in its turn stands on four pillars: Deep comprehension, abundant knowledge, blossoms of wisdom, and flowerbeds of restraint. Whosoever comprehends, understands particulars from the generalities of knowledge. Whosoever knows the path of wondrous wisdoms is guided to the repositories of self-control and does not stray. And whosoever possesses restraint, eschews extremes in his affairs, and lives among people respected and loved.
And struggle against evil stands on four pillars: Enjoining good, forbidding evil, valor in battle, and abhorring the corrupt. Whosoever commands good strengthens the believers’ resolve. Whosoever forbids evil cuts off the hypocrites’ noses. Whosoever is valorous in battle has discharged his duty. And whosoever abhors the corrupt has been roused to anger for the sake of God—so God will be roused to anger on his behalf.
This is faith, Ibn Qays, and its columns and pillars. Do you understand?
Yes, I understand, commander of the faithful, Ibn Qays replied. May God guide you, for you have guided me.