CONTENTMENT
By Babatunde Jose
Contentment is a sign of a true believer. By this, we are not saying that those who want to be richer, healthier, more famous, etc. are not believers. The virtue of contentment is closely connected with the virtue of putting trust in Allah. With contentment one feels inner peace and spirituality increases. He does not compare himself with those who are in better conditions, but rather he remembers those who are in worse conditions. For example, if someone is one-handed, he should be content and remember those who do not have hands at all. It is said that a man complained about his old shoes until he saw a man who had no feet. “Contentment is not the fulfilment of what you want, but the realization of how much you already have.” Contentment and patience earn one Paradise in the Hereafter. Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is reported to have said: “Allah will not accept other than Paradise for a believing person who is afflicted with the death of his beloved one from among the inhabitants of the world and shows patience.” (Al-Nasa’i)
The (material) things which ye are given are but the conveniences of this life and the glitter thereof; but that which is with Allah is better and more enduring: Will ye not then be wise?
(Quran 28:60)
The greatest cause for the lack of contentment is greed and avariciousness, covetousness and ‘long throat’. These are very objectionable traits in any human being and they are the root cause of corruption. Imam Jafar Sadiq (as) said: “If a son of Adam (as) possessed two vast valleys wherein gold and silver flowed, he would still wish to search for the third one.” Imam Musa Kazem (as) said: “The world is like water of the sea, the man who is thirsty, the more he drinks water of it the more he becomes thirsty, until the water kills him in the end!” Prophet Muhammed (saws) said, “Riches does not mean having a great amount of property; real wealth is self-contentment.” Sahih Bukhari (Book 81, Chapter 15)
Which brings us to the story of Qin Shang. He was a man who rose from grass to grace and later as a result of greed fell to from grace to hell. He was a corrupt and depraved sociopath who had indiscriminately murdered untold thousands of innocent people. Qin Shang was as sadistic and unscrupulous as a Serengeti hyena. He thrived on manipulation so long as it led to spiralling wealth and power. As an orphan begging on the streets of Kowloon across Victoria Harbour from the island of Hong Kong, he developed an uncanny talent for exploiting people for their money. By the age of ten, he had saved enough to buy a sampan and used it to ferry people and transport whatever cargo he could talk merchants into letting him carry. In two years, he had a fleet of ten sampans. Before he was eighteen, he sold his thriving little fleet and bought an ancient intercostal tramp steamer. This tired old rust bucket became the foundation for Qin Shang’s shipping empire. The freight line flourished during the next decade because Qin Shang’s competitors in the freight trade strangely fell by the wayside when many of their ships mysteriously disappeared at sea without a trace with all hands aboard. Finding their profit margins dropping into the red, the owners of the doomed ships always seemed to find a ready buyer for their remaining vessels and dwindling assets. Operating out of Japan, the company that did the buying was known as Yokohama Ship Sales & Scrap Corporation. In reality it was a front whose parental ties stretched across the China Sea to Qin Shang Maritime Limited.
In time, Qin Shang took a different course from his business peers in Hong Kong, who established alliances with European financial institutions and Western exporters and importers. In a shrewd move, he turned his focus on the People’s Republic of China, creating friendships with high government officials in preparation for the day when they would take control of Hong Kong from the British. He conducted behind-the-scenes negotiations with Yin Tsang, chief director of the People’s Republic’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, an obscure department of the government that was involved with everything from foreign espionage of scientific technology to the international smuggling of immigrants to relieve the country’s overcrowded population. In return for his services Qin Shang was allowed to register his ships in China without the usual exorbitant fees.
The partnership proved incredibly profitable to Qin Shang. The clandestine transportation and trade in undocumented aliens, in concert with the legitimate hauling of Chinese goods and oil exclusively by Qin Shang’s freighters and tankers, brought hundreds of millions of dollars over several years into the company’s many hidden bank accounts around the world.
Qin Shang soon amassed more money than he could spend in a thousand lifetimes. Yet there was a fixed determination in his sinister brain to amass even more wealth, more power. Once he had built one of the largest cargo and passenger fleets in the world, the challenge was gone and the moral and legitimate end of the business began to bore him. But there was excitement in the covert side of his operation. Little did his fellow conspirators in the People’s Republic know he was also smuggling drugs and guns along with the illegal immigrants. It was a very lucrative side-line, and he used the profits to develop his landmark port facility in Louisiana. Playing the ends against the middle gave him glorious hours of exhilaration.
Qin Shang was an egomaniac with a stratospheric level of insane optimism. He held the firm belief that his day of reckoning would never come. Even if it did, he was too rich, too omnipotent, to be broken. He already paid enormous bribes to high-level officials in half the governments of the world. As far as Qin Shang was concerned the future was wrapped in a nebulous fog that never fully materialized. But just for added insurance, he maintained a small army of bodyguards and professional assassins.
But when the end came Qin Shang was felled by a single bullet during a shootout with the forces of the law. He not only lost everything, but also his soul. The Bible said in Mark 8:36 (KJV) ‘For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Those who have ears, let them listen now. 1 Timothy 6:6-8 – “But Godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.”
Socrates it was who said that “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
Prophet Muhammed (saws) said: “Remember death repeatedly. This will save you from longing for the worldly pleasures. Show gratitude frequently and this will increase the graces upon you. Pray to Allah (SWT) so recurrently, because you do not know in which time Allah (SWT) will respond for your prayer. Beware of tyranny, for Allah (SWT) has ordained that HE will support those who are oppressed.”
May Allah come to the support of the oppressed.
Barka Juma’at and a happy weekend!
