Venom and Antidote
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Welcome. This is the twenty-seventh book of The Revival of the Religious Sciences, by Imam al-Ghazali. It is about money, and the miserliness that grows from loving it.
Allah says, O you who believe, do not let your wealth or your children distract you from the remembrance of Allah.
But al-Ghazali does not simply condemn money. He gives an unforgettable picture.
Wealth, he says, is like a snake. It carries venom, and it carries an antidote. A skilled healer can take a snake and draw medicine from it. A careless person picks it up, and is killed by its poison.
So the question is not whether money is good or bad. The question is whether you know how to handle it.
The antidote is what money can do for your soul. The venom is what it can do to your soul.
Whoever knows both, says al-Ghazali, can take the benefit and avoid the harm. Whoever knows neither will be bitten, without even noticing.
In this book, we will look at both sides of wealth, the hunger of greed, the beauty of contentment and generosity, what miserliness really is, and the five duties every person has toward the money in his hands.
