Tradition

مَنْ حَاوَلَ أَمْراً بِمَعْصِيَةِ اللّهِ كانَ أَفْوَتُ لِما يَرجُو و اَسْرَعُ لِما يَحْذِرُ

Imam al-Husayn (‘a) is narrated to have said: “He who seeks to do something through sinning against God will lose what he hopes for sooner and reach what he feared for more quickly.”1

Brief Commentary

Some people imagine that they will reach their goals sooner if they resort to unlawful (Haram) means. For example, someone may be in a financial bind and they may think that by opening up a liquor store, they can save themselves from their financial problems and gain significant amounts of profit. This is while the aforementioned tradition has explicitly mentioned that this is not the case and in fact, they will become even further engulfed in various issues than before.

In other cases, some people may think that because they are constantly suffering from financial issues, once they make more money, they can finally gain a sense of inner peace and calm. They then imagine that the quickest way to make this money will be through various unlawful means. Once they have made this money, they realize that they have not gained any additional sense of peace and, in fact, they are more stressed out and anxious than ever before. This shows us that we should never seek what we need through unlawful means; such actions will only take us further away from our goals.

• 1. Taken from the book: Tuhaf al-’Uqul, p. 977, Al-Kafi, vol. 2, p. 373, Wasa'il Al-Shi’a, vol. 16, p. 153.