4:114 No good is there in much of their whispering, except for him who bids to charity, or the honorable or making things wholesome among the people. Whosoever does this, seeking God’s approval, We shall give him a tremendous wage.
The best deeds of the servants are the three things in this verse: charity, the honorable, and making things wholesome among the people. The good in this verse is not specified for one individual, but rather its profit reaches others. The wonder is not that you should open a door for yourself, the wonder and chivalry are that you should open a door to yourself for another.
Pir Bū ʿAlī Siyāh said, “So what if you make yourself happy? The work is done by making someone else happy.” Muṣṭafā alluded to this: “The worst of men is he who eats alone.”
As for charity, it is of three sorts: with possessions, with the body, and with the heart. Charity with possessions is giving comfort to the poor by expending blessings. Charity with the body is undertaking for them the duty of service. Charity with the heart is being loyal to the beauty of intention and the consolidation of aspiration. This is charity toward the poor. There is also charity toward the rich. It is that you act with munificence toward them and do not expose your need to them; you take back your hope from their charitable gifts and do not covet anything from them.
When charity, the honorable, and making things wholesome come together in someone, from head to foot he becomes veneration itself, the oyster shell for the mysteries of Lordhood, and he is accepted by those who bear witness to the divinity. His name is given out as “sincerely truthful,” and tomorrow he will be gathered up along with the sincerely truthful. This is the great wage that the Exalted Lord has promised: “We shall give him a tremendous wage.”
When misguidance is consigned to Iblis, this is because of the secondary cause. Otherwise, who is Iblis? Yes, he instills disquiet, for that is his job, and then, in the tracks of this disquieting, the Exalted Lord creates misguidance, for guidance and misguidance, felicity and wretchedness, come from God: Whomsoever God guides, he is guided, and whomsoever He misguides, you will not find for him a guiding friend [18:17]. Then He mentions the outcome, the end, the final issue, and the returning place of the two groups: About the misguided sort, He says, “Their refuge is Gehenna” [4:121], and about the guided sort He says, “We shall enter them into gardens underneath which rivers flow, therein dwelling forever and ever” [4:122].
