Islam is not just accumulating "hassanates"

During the last sacred month of fasting (Ramadan) an old memory going back to middle-school occurred to me.

At a course of Islamic education, the female teacher approached the topic of usury (Riba) and bank loan with interests.

My purpose here is not debating to know whether benefiting from bank interests is licit or not in Islam, but I rather want to mention the question asked by a pupil during that course of Islamic course and the answer he received.

Indeed, that pupil wondered if someone, who received a sum of money he thinks he doesn’t deserve, could he give that money to the most helpless people via alms? (sadaka).

Whereupon the teacher replied that this person won’t receive “hassanate” , which is to say that he or she will not be retributed for his or her acts in the Judgement Day.  Then, the pupil made a quite moving and also wise answer: “It’s okay Mrs. what’s important is that the poor will get something to eat.”  That was a very meaningful answer from a teenager of 13 or 14 who thought of doing good without anticipating the reward he might receive here on earth or in the other world, despite the rather calculating reasoning of his teacher.

Indeed, it’s vicious to get kids or teenagers used to think only in term of retribution they might find in the afterlife have they not received it when they’re alive, because even their relationships with others will be perverted by that. Not only they will think in a calculating way but they’ll wary of anyone who doesn’t seem to guide his or her actions according to a very specific conception of what one must say or do, in order to receive an appropriate reward in Judgment Day.

That what brings us to the concept of “Love for God” (Houb Fi Allah) which means the fact of loving someone else for the love of God.

This is a worthy principal when it’s about a kind of selflessness towards the advantages and material goods that one can obtain on earth, provided that this doesn’t lead to conflicting calculating aiming to be rewarded in the afterlife.

In this respect, it’s worth reminding that episode in the life of the female mystic of the 8^th century: Rabia Al-Adawiyya :

One day, several soufis met Rabia Al-Adawiyya running, with water in one hand and fire in the other. So, they asked her: “Oh lady of the future, where are you running and what this is all about?”

she answered: “I’m going to burn paradise and extinguish hell, so that these two veils disappear entirely from pilgrims’ eyes, and that their purpose is determined. I wish that the servitors of God could see him, without hope nor fear”.

Lyes  Ferhani