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“You left behind mounds of wealth. Say, how did you earn it and
how did you spend it?”
He submitted:
“My Lord, I earned my wealth through trade. Whatever I earned, I
spent on the poor.”
The Lord signalled to the angel standing next to him. He started to
narrate the details. The man earned billions. Initially he had a small
business. He earned huge profits through adulteration and hoarding of
essential goods like, sugar, flour etc. His business expanded rapidly due
to these despicable practices. Later on, he expanded in to other
businesses. However, this time he formed a cartel of criminal-minded
Businessmen. The basic purpose of this cartel was to manipulate the
market in order to inflate prices for various commodities. This cartel
included influential people who used their political connections as well
as bribery to fix favourable prices. As a result, the common man
suffered while the profits of these Businessmen increased from millions
to billions and then to trillions. In order to project a good image of
himself in the society, he donated petty sums to charity from time to
time and earned praise for it.
Once the angel had completed his statement, there was not much
left to say. However, the Businessman was quite cunning. He started to
shout and claimed that what had just been said was not true and that
he was innocent. He claimed that he did everything according to the
prevalent law and in response to the requirements of the marketplace.
He alleged that the angel was lying and that there was no proof against
him. He was wailing relentlessly.
The Almighty replied:
“So you need proof? That shall be provided!”
With these words, his ability to speak was taken away. Suddenly, his
hands started talking. They narrated more or less the same statement
as was put forward by the angel. A similar testimony was provided by
his feet, and by the rest of his body. Finally, his heart started talking and
brought forward hitherto unknown intentions that were not even
recorded in the angel’s ledger.
After this account, there was nothing left to say. The only additional
misery ordained on him was that the angels were ordered to heat up all
his wealth and sear his body with it. That was in addition to the regular
sufferings of the Hell. The angels dragged him away mercilessly towards
his final abode.
===============
One by one, people were being brought in and their cases were
being decided. Some of them were too horrible to watch.
A person was brought in. It looked like he had tons of good deeds to
his credit. Prayers, Pilgrimages to Mecca, Fasting, Nawafils, and all kind
of supplications one could think of. However, once the angel started
mentioning his relations with other human beings, it became obvious
that there were people against whom he had used foul language, some
he had deprived of their belongings, others he had wrongfully accused,
and a few he had beaten up badly and so on.
All of his victims were called in. His good deeds were divided
amongst them in proportion to the grievances caused to them. This
went on until he ran out of good deeds. However, there were some
more victims still in the queue. To compensate them, their bad deeds
were transferred to his account. When it came down to weighing, left
side of the scale weighed a lot more.
The man started to cry, but in vain. The angels mercilessly dragged
him away to the Hell.
Watching some of those cases got me worried about my own fate.
One of them was a scholar. Having been reminded of the blessings
bestowed upon him, he was asked what he had done to express his
gratefulness to God. He boasted about his scholastic achievements and
preaching efforts. He was told that he was lying. He had done whatever
he had only to be known as a great scholar. That reward had already
been given to him in the world; he had become known as a renowned
scholar.
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