Rightful earning

There are many of us who consider the end important but do not give the same importance to the means resorted to achieve that end. We continue to strive to ignore whether the means adopted are fair or foul.

We find that some may donate a good amount of what they earn to charity or in the way of God to placate their own conscience in turn for their misdeeds. In this manner, they convince themselves that they have somehow atoned for their wrongdoings.

The Islamic standpoint on this is clear and categoric. It is not only the end that is important but even the means adopted to achieve that end. If one were to spend out of the wealth achieved by unfair and illegal means towards charity or in the way of God, it will not be accepted by him as Prophet Mohammad has clearly instructed us that “God is pure and will not accept anything but the pure”

Besides that, the wealth earned by being God-conscious and adopting only fair means is already blessed and in Islamic terminology is called ‘Barakat.’ It is an Arabic word, and it is impossible to find a single word English synonym for it as Arabic is a rich language and a single word carries different shades of meanings. So, the word Barakat means blessing, abundance, growth, sufficiency, protection from harm etc.

I remember one of my expatriate friends who was a hardworking and an upright man, sharing with me an astounding experience of his. He was on a trip to India with his family and they landed at the Mumbai airport. When they reached home, they realised that the bag containing his wife’s jewellery was left behind at the airport. The family was stunned. It was futile to go back to search for it. While they were in this state the doorbell rang and they found a man holding the same bag and handing it over to them said, “I saw that you had forgotten it at the airport, and I took to give it to you. By then you had already boarded the taxi, so I followed you all the way to give it you.” Saying this he turned and left, and my friend was too dazed to even ask his name and thank him enough.

This is another form of Barakat.