Evils of the Age

Dear people! This age has been corrupted in all forms and every possible manner, all kinds of sins and evil have surrounded people, evil innovations and wretched deeds have multiplied, high morals and excellences have decreased, truthfulness has become as rare as red Sulphur, and giving good and sincere advice is now the most difficult of the moral values. Trying to find faults with others, hiding their excellences and good qualities, being thankless for favours, breaking up friendships, and disobedience to parents have now become common habits of people. Their hearts are now inclined towards battle instead of sincere friendship, so they have broken the oath of love and brotherly conduct, taking in its stead the habit that is against the precepts of virtue and piety. They are ever inclined towards women with animalistic lust and they do not love God Who is the Best of all beloveds. They love adulterous girls and are infatuated with song and singing girls. You can see that the Mosques are now empty of praying men and women. They seek delight and pleasure in the faces of young boys, and they have forsaken our Lord. They bear hardships for this wretched world and its pretentious affairs. It is easy for them to spend money in order to get their heart’s desire. You will find that many among them have constrained chests. Their arrogance and haughtiness have grown to such an extent that they beat up their servants and wives for trivial things like extra salt in food or thinness of the flour. They come close to splitting open their heads just because they did not serve fresh and cool water with their food. Sometimes they will slap them just because they did not clean the house, or did not lay down the carpet, or did not place the cushions in neat rows. They constantly wear a frown. Their face is sullen, teeth are gnashed and they wail and scream as if they are about to die. They raise their voices and they shake with anger. They shove aside the weak and drive them away. And if for some reason they need the favour of the weak, they act cunningly and without any sincerity. And if their servant is late, they beat him to within an inch of his life, questioning him as to where he had been. If their servants do not serve them food on time, they reproach them severely; they smell the meat that they are served and if it has any unwanted aroma they would break the ribs of the servant. If a servant is intelligent and not used to this kind of torturous reproach, they verbally abuse him. They side with the oppressor even if he is like a bull. They oppress the widows, even if they are their close relatives, neighbours, one of their close acquaintances, or even if they are their own nieces. If one or more of their brothers are hungry, they do not feed them even a morsel, even if they see that they are close to death and hunger has bitten them like a serpent. If an adulterous woman arrives, they rush to open the door, welcome her with kind words, but his own neighbour cannot even dare to alight in his courtyard to be entertained by his hospitality even if hunger is cutting him up like knives. He goes to great lengths to prepare meals, when dining with the elite of society, making sure all types of food are available and he does not consider this any kind of burden. Rather he will prepare a wide variety of dishes for them, even if the person being served ends up having indigestion. He will bear pains while showing off but will not give away the food from the past night to any beggar, nor cast a hospitable glance towards the hungry. Rather, if the beggar stays even for a moment, he will beat him and verbally abuse him. He does not realise that the beggar has come to him in the dead of the night and has gone through considerable hardship just to get to him, as the beggar considers him to be a hospitable host who will offer him some food out of the fear of a Merciful God. He turns the beggar away from his home, and does not have mercy on him even though he knows that the beggar has nowhere to go and may not have tasted food for more than two days. He does not even give a single thought to where the poor man will go in the dead of night and what he will do at such a torturous and painful time. In a nutshell, compassion has become scarce and the problems that face the weak have multiplied, because everyone whether they live in the east or west have forsaken compassion and friendship. Even near relatives have become like scorpions, so anyone who is driven by hunger ends up leaving his home and family and follows poverty wherever poverty may lead him. He follows poverty no matter how it turns him round and round. He leaves his loved ones with teary eyes and a broken heart, and it is not even known whether he is alive, so that they should wait for his return, or that he has been consigned to an empty grave. He may be screaming in a strange land, “O my Wife! O My Son! Where art Thou! Being away from you has killed me but how can I return to you empty handed!” He says “O my grief for my country!” And his heart is broken. [Out of shame] he keeps silent. There is no one close to him who may write his story and then take his news to his country like a swift steed. No one asks about the hidden pain of his heart and no one makes any effort to reunite him with his family, and neither is he given any money to start looking after his family. Sometimes he has a daughter who has matured and has become like the spinster whose youth has been spent in the home of her parents and the time is close when she will not be considered a young girl anymore. Hence, such a person becomes consumed by thoughts such as these and dies before his time. Sweet water becomes bitter in his throat, he is overtaken by severe torment, and he walks around as if bereft of his senses and deranged. He begs for a loan, but no one gives him any portion of their wealth, even if he is willing to provide a written guarantee of repayment. He tries various means but does not even get enough sustenance to survive on, as if he were living in a famished land. He does not get any kind of sympathy from any group of people no matter whether he spends all of his efforts in praising them. He does not find any compassion no matter how long he talks. He does not find the cure to hunger for these people, no matter how colourfully he embellishes his tale or how concisely he tells it. Thus, the long dark night is prolonged and the bright morning does not dawn. The night of never-ending woes, whose black hair never turns grey, traps him in its wings. This is his state of affairs.

On the other hand, his brother who was brought up in ease and comfort prances about like a deer, sleeps till sunrise and his hand never rises to give alms, and his back does not bend for prayer. He runs amok like a freight train indulging in evils, and covering up his ignorance with the garb of arrogance. He has no idea how a person’s heart can break into a thousand pieces yearning to return to his native country and be reunited with his son. He continues to hoard his wealth in his sack and the features of his happy face shine bright from this. Thus, his success is made a trial for him and he is given an abundance of everything. And so the way of finding true guidance becomes hidden from him and his wretchedness drives him towards ignorance and disobedience. He entertains the false notion that his wealth is due to his own knowledge and cunningness, and not from God Almighty, Bestower of both spiritual and worldly wealth. He sings praises of his intelligence and claims that he achieved his heart’s desire through it, and his brothers were not able to amass the wealth that he was able to, even though he does not believe in the Prophets, rather he loathes them. He says that if he has indeed committed a sin or crime, why then is he not punished?

One of the crimes that is common among the Muslims is arrogance and haughtiness like that of Satan. The one among them who considers himself to be a scholar showcases the greatness of his knowledge through arrogance and hubris and speaks of others as if they were lowlife wretches. If it is mentioned that they too are scholars, he flares up in anger. He furrows his brows at the mention of others and says that their mention should be shunned as they are like donkeys or onagers. Then, like an arrogant one, he embellishes and sings praises of his own self so that people may cling to him like lovers. He takes on various personas and concocts various shams. Sometimes he claims that he is a writer and none from the eloquent can match his excellence. He starts asking his companions about matters of grammar and declensions as if they were children. He interrupts others mid-sentence to catch their mistakes, and bares his teeth like a dog on disagreement upon a single word, and claims that he is always right and true. Similarly, sometimes such a person claims that he is one of the learned physicians and has surpassed everyone in diagnosing and treating illness. At other times he assumes the role of a jurist, and sometimes he hints that he has succeeded in learning the recipe of the philosopher’s stone. However, once the riders of the pen and excellent artisans test him in the arena, it is brought to light that he does not even have the ability to write error-free statements and changes them as he pleases. Rather it becomes manifest that he is dumb and is like an animal as he does not even know what literature is and is completely ignorant of its luminous ways. Then, if patients are brought before him to be cured, as per his claims, he does not even have the ability to distinguish between a coma and common sleep. He sometimes misidentifies a fever brought on by tuberculosis with normal fever, angina with heartburn, conjunctivitis with blepharitis, and thinks that asthma is diphtheria. He prescribes medicines that lower the body temperature and cool the stomach when the body needs to be heated, saying that the patient should consume lettuce, camphor and coriander in copious amounts and thinks that barley water is the best food for him. He prescribes complete abstinence from meat and spices and says that the patient should not even approach any hot foods. The final result is that the patient is afflicted with a cold swelling from his head to the urethra. Some countenances are such that their belly swells up, or the patient dies due to severe cough, or the heart stops and the patient dies at once. It is because of physicians like this, that the number of graves are increasing and the liveliness of settlements is decreasing. Anyone who remains under their care for long cannot escape from death. How many eyes have they poked? How many legs have they crippled? And how many children are there who suffered from measles or smallpox and they consigned them to the grave due to their own incompetence? And by these deaths, they were saved from the hands of these physicians. Their patients serve them tasty meals even if their own land grows only dry shrubs, and they drink so much milk from their goats and cows that their milk production dwindles and their udders go dry. Eventually these patients die in abject dejection. Cursing their so called physicians on their deathbed as they bid farewell to their sons and daughters. Sometimes these charlatans make the false claims that they are able to make infertile women bear lots of children and that they can transform arid land, such that crops will grow quicker and produce lush vegetation. They claim that they will give sons and daughters to people even if they have reached eighty years of age. They say that although this child is the last child of the parents, he will get to see more brothers and sisters, thanks to their medicine. Similarly, they claim that they can stop a disease from spreading and that they can make a patient stand up-right like a date palm after he has become hunchbacked. They say that whoever wants to better digest food and make his bones grow stronger should use their ‘great elixir’ and he will see its effects within a week. However, when people use their medicine, they only find adverse effects and come to the conclusion that this person had lied to them, after which they begin to curse him. These charlatans unashamedly tell lies and their fraudulent activities pile high like a mountain.

Similarly, when one of them claims that he is a religious scholar and of those who have been given knowledge of the Hadith, at the end his ignorance comes to light and it becomes apparent that he knows nothing about religion. The difference between the scholars and the ignorant is just like the difference between the healthy and those afflicted with tuberculosis—it cannot remain hidden. And I have experience in this regard, for I tested them and found them to be like the dead. They are unique in telling abominable lies and their body is full of pustules of plague like a camel. They gorge on so much food that their stomach is about to burst, and then they vomit it out on the floor. They have become far removed from truth and seeking it, so today they are neither like the flame nor the moth. They have forsaken the Islamic beliefs and the commandments of the beautiful and immaculate Prophet and have fallen like flies on a festering wound. When their filth is removed from them, their hearts grow constrained and then they have neither patience nor virtue. By God! They have obeyed their self and its power over them, and they have cultivated the habits of their lust and its Satan. They are routine visitors to the gates of the wealthy, the well off, the fortunate and the landowner. There are many among them who are drawn to the morning wine instead of the morning prayer and towards the wine flutes in the evening instead of the ‘Isha prayer. Instead of reciting Sharh-ul-Wiqayah and Hidayah1, they are engrossed with adulterous women and fine wine and mutton kebabs. They became keen on listening to songs sung by beautiful, famous and talented singers. And when their wealth dwindled, their money was lost, their low-life friends abandoned them, their pockets became empty, and doors were closed unto them, then they created a trap using the verses of Sufi poets and began delivering sermons and exhortation so that the days of ease and wealth may return to them. You will find them wailing and screaming like a plagued camel in their sermons, while in their hearts they are lamenting about the easy life that they had lost, and their tears will wound their cheeks. However, the laymen think that they are crying from the fear of the Day of Judgement, as is the habit of the righteous, even though they are crying because they have had to part ways with nubile maidens who used to be their drinking partners. They grieve because their happiness has lessened, and wine has become a dream for them. The horror that the lack of means of earning has inflicted upon them forces them to cry, and on top of this they lament having lost all of their friends and fellows who used to be part of their social drinking circle. Despite all this they think of themselves as the full moon and like to be the centre of attention in all gatherings. They give themselves titles such as Maulawi or Faqih or Muhaddith, and yell at those who refuse to call them by these titles and are wroth with them, even though they themselves are not eloquent in Arabic and do not possess any literary tastes. I have called them out repeatedly and have tested them in every way possible. I have presented my poetry before them, showed them my beautiful verses and how beautifully they are laid out, and told them that it is a proof of my truthfulness, my argument and my sword, so if you deny my status then bring forth any example like this. But they ran away as a serpent runs away from the weapons of a warrior. They have inculcated feminine habits, such as applying kohl to the eyes, using perfume, combing the hair, and making subtle schemes to hoard wealth. Some of them curl their hair like women and make buns, so they oil their hair and keep curls. They run away from intellectual gatherings like a fugitive slave. Yet, you will not find even an iota of compassion in them. When a stranger enters their mosque who, for example dyes his hair and blackens it with something, they assault him like hounds or like the onslaught of the disbelievers during the Battle of the Trench, and they tear at him like beasts unless he presents some offering to them, or he retaliates by using force against force. These are a people who consume the weak with their tongues and flee from the strong like cowards. And if someone gathers his forces to counter them, showing them his quivers, arrows and strength, they flee and run away faster than donkeys; and that single person whom they attack is able to overpower entire hosts. To summarise, they assault the weak like a literal tempest, and their little snake is terrified of even looking at a panther. They show compassion only when they get bread and strips of meat. They glorify decomposed bones and deny the one who was appointed by God and resurrected the dead. Do they not know that this is the age of aiding religion and driving away the mischievous ones, for the sun of Islam has all but set? However, they have been hostile towards the truth just for the sake of the love of their friends and worldly pleasure, so they have given preference to this mortal realm and their relations. They seek this mortal world and its high status and seek to get whatever morsels of food are leftover on its tablecloth. Alas! Alas! After the death of the great elders they have been left as headless corpses, for there was no heir after the elders. They claim that they have surpassed all others in jurisprudence, hadith and literature and now hasten forth from all manner of heights, even though they are unaware of the realities of the faith and have not even looked upon the orchards of Islamic teachings, nor have they been given the prowess to pen illuminating writings or the power to bring forth any unique booklet. I did not find a single one from among them who could face me in writing or match me in eloquent composition. I have told them multiple times that I am unique among the literary figures of this age. I am unique in the knowledge of the verities of the Holy Quran. In this regard for me is victory over all those who came before and those who shall come after, even if Sahban Wa’il2 seeks to compete against me.3 So when I called out anyone who could compete against me in this field from among them, no one stepped forward and they hid away like women. They did not dare show their bravery. They could not even draw forth a single good date from their pouch, or even a bad one, [i.e. they could not present any example of their poetry, be it good or bad]. In a nutshell, they have become the personification of Satan in their evil, not even an iota of good remains in them, and they know nothing but ignorance. They are similar to beasts in their enmity. They have wasted away the essence of compassion and sympathy, so it is as if they have made the forest their home. If they see that someone is committing even a small act of ignorance, it is not often that they forgive him, rather they verbally abuse him on account of his mistake or count him among the disbelievers. So just as landowners fight over villages and the branches of trees, these Ulema battle over food and bowls of gravy. They break friendships over grain and prefer juice over their Lord. They fight over dead bodies and dishonestly take away the clothes of the corpses. Every one of them shows his tongue to his foe like a sabre and gnashes his teeth. Alongside this, their profession is an accursed one. The misery of failure and bouts of depression never leave their side and poverty is their lot for as long as they live. Hence, their courtyards remain empty. Just like the farmer who flares up in anger even if a single sugar-cane is plucked from his field and grabs the one who took the sugar-cane and breaks his bones. If someone does not consider them to be absolved of the sins that they committed in their arrogance and gives evidence against them due to his honesty and goes against them in his statements, they beat him up. So, they assault him together in groups and also individually. If they are vanquished in these battles, then they call on their leaders during these calamities, even though they had been taught that oppression should be met with forgiveness and evil with kindness. These are the people who had been commanded to show exemplary moral values, and they displayed nothing but the traits of antagonism and evil. So, these are the people who tried their best to torment me and crossed all limits of enmity. I wish that savage beasts had been my enemies instead of these people, for these people consume the flesh of those who are absent and do not come out to fight themselves. It is as if they are deer; afraid of sharp swords. Woe betide this age! The rich are inclined towards wine, music, women and gambling, and the Ulema towards lies and telling tall tales. They have left Yemenite wisdom and are satisfied by the date stone instead of the date flesh, and nothing remains of them except their prancing, strutting, and swagger. They are no longer interested in glorifying the faith and killing the grass and weeds of ignorance, rather they desire herds of camels, fields of wheat, rice and chickpeas, and a life free of worry. The goblets of their mind are brimming over with arrogance and they have sworn oaths to preserve their preference of this mortal realm and their love for it. They consider me to be one of the enemies of God Almighty as if they are privy to the secrets of my heart or they have come to know exactly what is hidden in my heart. I have had to suffer from them that which allowed me to fully understand the meaning of [severe torment]. They dragged me to the authorities and placed me in fire and all through the summers and the winters I walked with their shackles. They brought out every fool and ruffian to malign me and to cause discord among my people like the accursed Satan. And they do not even apologise for it nor express remorse, rather they continue to grow in their ignorance and have stepped forth in open hostility and war. They eschewed reconciliation and peace, denigrated me, and labelled me as worthless. They said that I was ignorant and did not know Arabic; rather that I was illiterate and did not know a single verb of Arabic. However, when I took solid steps to counter them, they turned tail and ran, like donkeys run from lions and cowards from arrows. They saw in me that which toddlers see when they are stricken with terror, which the sparrows see in the hawk when it swoops down on them from mountain peaks. They thought that I was a goat without horns, but when they were struck by my horns, they shouted that this is a horned bull. Whosoever from among them came towards me armed, I turned him into a bald tree. Since they had set their hounds on the flesh of innocents and harmed the faith with their lies, their punishment was that they should have been the target of whips and should have been flogged, or that they should have been targeted with spears and injured with harsh words. They want to threaten me, but why should I be afraid of them? They are my prey. They call others corrupt but forget about their own selves and deny the truthful without fear. They do not stand in the field of battle; rather, like a rat, they have prepared seventy little holes for their escape. They had made God Almighty a witness to their pledge of remaining silent and had taken an oath with Him, but how quickly have they forgotten it. Truly arrogance has seeped into them and their veins are saturated with it, hence they cannot stop even if they take oaths that they will. They have mustered their armies at the borders to wage war against the heavenly ones. They oppressed us and mocked us. They pretended to be ignorant after knowledge and they feigned blindness despite being sighted as if they had been cast down from some high place or they were dying of hunger despite the abundance of fruits. This is the very reason why the Seal of the Prophets called them mean and wretched; rather the Holy Prophet said that, as far as evil is concerned, there is no one under the heavens who can be compared to them. They are a people who have adopted sin in all of its forms, and you will not find any debauch in the world whose evil is not exemplified in them, rather they possess the evil attributes of savage beasts and cattle. They prefer wheat to righteousness. They leave the love of God for the sake of a single grain of wheat or for milk, like cats. When they are angry you will find symptoms of madness in them and they die a variety of deaths for their desires. Their days are spent in back-biting, verbal abuse, lying, and in making libellous statements, so their hearts are full of enmity, spite and hatred. You will find their tongues to be like swaying spears, unsheathed swords, drawn arrows, sharpened knives and heavenly calamities. They prostrate before the rich and eat victuals of the poor. If it is mentioned before them that a certain person spends on the Ulema and that when someone approaches him he fills his pockets and is one of the rich and noble people, they rush towards him with humility and call out, “O Master! You are the best of creation! So please give us alms and cleanse us from the filth of poverty”. But when it comes to the poor, they drink their blood and curse their forefathers. If one of these so called Ulema is given a position of authority, he oppresses his neighbour and torments him. He does not have any mercy on him, nor does he give him any protection. On the contrary, if he finds the opportunity, he will make him drink from scalding water, even if he is his bosom friend. He does not keep away from acting hypocritically even with his friends and colleagues. To satisfy his heart’s desire, he will find a way and will not care for friend or brother. The one who favours him with all kinds of boons and gives him the goblet of blessings and favours to drink, he will not repay him with even a fraction of it, even if he is his friend or a near relative. He does not do anyone any favours, even if it is as little as a pail of water, rather he will downplay the favours of others through his arrogance and selfishness. He will not say thank you, as is the habit of the righteous, if he is shown any favour by his friend or receives a gift from a guest, rather he receives it with furrowed brows and goes away ignoring the person, as is the habit of the wretched and mean ones. When a guest comes to him in the summer or winter, he does not serve him hospitably and does not honour him with hospitality and respect. He will not even ask him where he spent the night or what he ate, rather his heart is constrained and he becomes like the devil. If he gets wealthy, he deprives people of his boons even if they are his acquaintances.