To be perfect in faith.
To love God.
To carry out fully all duties under divine law, duties to God and to man.
Optimistic faith in God.
Fear of God: To uphold the inviolability of divine honour.
Purity of mind.
To place reliance on God: To try hard but at the same time firmly to believe that divine succour alone brings success.
To pay scrupulous regard to all good morals which relate to God. For instance, honouring commitments, etc.
To discard all false beliefs.
To remonstrate with those who are disrespectful towards God and to try to persuade them through argument to desist from disrespectful and ungrateful behaviour towards God. For instance, to try to make that one understand and think better of God who says that God has been cruel and has given him nothing, for it amounts to being disrespectful to God.
To convey the truth.
Respect for institutions which belong to God.
What are the occasions when certain actions are to be done or not to be done? The answer is both simple and detailed. If I were to try to answer in detail it would not take less than fifteen to twenty hours, even if I tried to be brief. I would, therefore, adopt the simpler course. I will give only the barest outline, pointing out some of the major landmarks:
Not to stop carrying out obligations which one owes to God unless one is forcibly restrained or is justified by another divine injunction. For instance, not to be able to perform Wadu — ablution — because the hand or the face is injured. Similarly one divine Command can override another such Command. This is illustrated by the following example. It is a divine injunction that a woman should wear the veil in public. But this too is a divine injunction that she should lift the veil on the occasion of the pilgrimage to the Kaaba. The second Command overrides the first. As a result, not to wear the veil in the Kaaba becomes a virtue. Again, it is a duty under divine law to obey parents. But if this duty conflicts with another divine Command, virtue consists in not obeying parents in such a case.
Not to do unto others what, all things being equal, one would not like done unto oneself. There is, however, a qualification. What is required is not that a person should do to others what he wants others to do unto him. This is what the Bible says, which to my mind is not quite right. What I emphasise is that one should not say or do to others what one would not like said or done to oneself, presuming the circumstances are similar.
To avoid extremes. For instance, some would either completely stop offering nawafil (voluntary prayer) or would offer nawafil to the exclusion of all regard for domestic duties. Once a case was reported to the Holy Prophet — peace be upon him — to the effect that a certain person was given to observing fast during the day and offering nafl (voluntary prayer) throughout the night. Summoning him, the Holy Prophet — peace be upon him — admonished him:
Your self too has its right over you and you have an obligation to your wife also.
To act in accordance with the particular divine attribute which the act invokes.
How can one determine which evils one suffers from?
By self-examination: When one comes to know what are the various virtues and vices, one should conduct a self-scrutiny in order to identify the vice from which one suffers and the virtues that one does not practice.
By consultation with a sincere friend: One should consult some sincere and close friend who should be asked to study one’s overt behaviour. Of course, he should not set out on a hunt for secret vices. That would in itself be an evil. The function of the friend should be to point out the faults in one’s overt actions, faults of which one may not be fully conscious.
By self-identification: Even a friend is likely to overlook a friend’s faults. To remedy this, one should have recourse to a third method. One should try to identify in one’s own person, the virtues and vices that one is able to identify in others.
By identification of faults by opponents: One can go one better. One should know what faults one’s enemy finds in one and proceed seriously to check up if those faults are really found in one or not. This would bring to one’s knowledge quite a few faults of which one was not aware before. Similarly, one could also check up on the virtues which one’s enemies acknowledge for not unoften, even an enemy cannot help acknowledging one’s merits.
Best method of self-appraisal: The best and most important method to be fully posted about virtues and vices is to study the Holy Quran. When the reader comes across the vices from which the earlier peoples suffered, he should reflect and consider whether he himself does or does not also suffer from them. Also when the Holy Quran mentions a virtue, the reader should check up whether he has that virtue or not. There is another great advantage of such a study. As it proceeds all virtues and vices will gradually unfold themselves, one after the other. This is not possible otherwise. We cannot think of every virtue and vice all at once. Also, recitation of the Holy Quran gives rise to fear of God which should help the pursuit of virtues and avoidance of vices.