How Men of Knowledge are Ruined


Men of knowledge are ruined by eight things:
  • greed and miserliness, 
  • showing off and partisanship, 
  • love of praise, 
  • delving into things whose reality they cannot reach, 
  • affectation by taking excessive pains to beautify their speech with superfluous expressions, 
  • lack of modesty before Allah (SWT), 
  • boastfulness, and 
  • not acting upon what they know.
The Holy Prophet (peace be upon him and his family) said, ‘Do not sit with every presumptuous caller who summons you from certainty to doubt, from sincerity to showing off, from humility to pride, from good counsel to enmity, and from abstinence to desire. Draw near to the person with knowledge, who summons you from pride to humility, from showing off to sincerity, from doubt to certainty, from desire to abstinence, from enmity to good counsel.’ 


None are fit to preach to creation except that person who has gone beyond these evils by his truthfulness. He sees the faults of speech and knows what is sound from what is unsound, the defectiveness of thoughts, and the temptations of the self and his fancies. 


Excerpt from: Lantern of the Path مصباح الشريعه
Author: Imam Ja’far ibn Muhammad as-Sadiq (A.S.)
Translator: Fadlallah Haeri