into the flower that bears his name to this very day. soul, and between the individual and his fellow-men, thus
One of the characteristics of pathological narcissism, along embracing the entire area of man’s moral and social responsibili-
with arrogance and envy, is ‘entitlement’, the unreasonable ties.” Since man had the temerity to assume the Trust through
expectation held by narcissists that they deserve particularly his own free will, he must continually strive to measure up to the
favourable treatment and automatic compliance because they moral responsibility demanded of him by his acceptance of that
consider themselves uniquely special. Failure to comply is con- self-imposed burden.
sidered an attack on their superiority and can trigger narcissistic Furthermore, the Qur’an urges us to restrain our inordi-
rage. We might reasonably associate such extreme complexes nate personal desires and bear witness to our higher calling:
and reactions with dysfunctional narcissistic personality dis- And every human being will come forward with his erstwhile
orders, but there is a sense also in which such disorders can inner urges and his conscious mind, and will be told: “indeed,
infect a whole society and culture. We can unmindful hast thou been of this Day of
see, for example, some degree of the patho- Judgement; but now We have lifted from
logical belief in ‘entitlement’ in the seductive thee thy veil, and sharp is thy sight today!”
slogan that we are ‘worth it’, or deserving
“THe essence
(Qur’an 50:21-22). To paraphrase Muhammad
of something not because we have earned it, of THe Asad’s detailed note on these verses, they
but solely and simply because we desire and
Qur’anic
refer to the contending nature of the two
demand it. fundamental motive forces within man: on
Two weeks ago I spent some time in
vision of
one side, that which drives (sa’iq), our pri-
Birmingham City Centre before going to
service goes
mal, instinctive urges, inordinate appetites
the airport to catch a flight to Berlin for the
beyond THe
and unrestrained desires (often symbolized as
launch of the German translation of The shaytan), and on the other side, our conscious
Message of the Qur’an. I noticed a glitzy store
promise
reason (shahid), both intuitive and reflective,
called BRATZ, selling designer childrenswear
of reward
or the awakening of the deeper layers of our
and sporting the prominent motto GET THEM consciousness, the “lifting of the veil” that
WHAT THEY WANT. To my mind, there was
and THe
leads to a sudden and striking perception of
something profoundly perverse about this enTiTlemenT our own moral reality.
message, at once insolent and painfully sad.
To praise or
We have already observed how the origi-
The word ‘brat’ has long been a derogatory nal Latin sense of the English word ‘deserve’
word for a rough and ill-mannered child, and
esTeem.”
is related to the imperative of service to oth-
ironically it probably derives from the English ers - to ‘serve well’ and to become entitled
dialect word brat, ‘makeshift or ragged gar- to praise, esteem or reward through meri-
ment’. A poor child might well have worn torious service. But it has always seemed
ragged garments in the past, and might not have learned many to me that the essence of the Qur’anic vision of service goes
social graces, but these disadvantages would have entailed beyond the promise of reward and the entitlement to praise
no necessary defects of character. Today, children can wear or esteem, even that which is justly earned through altruism.
designer clothes from BRATZ, and know that their parents True, the Qur’an promises divine rewards for those who have
will GET THEM WHAT THEY WANT. To be a modern brat faith and do good works, but the ideal spiritual attitude must
becomes a badge of honour in a society in which the acquisi- surely be to go beyond either fear of divine wrath or hope
tion of fashionable material goods becomes the sole criterion of divine reward and to love what is good purely for its own
of superior status, but the brat is no longer the poor child with sake. The insistence that one’s spiritual aspiration should be
ragged clothes, but the well-off child with the swanky clothes based in selfless love is most famously expressed by the great
who is encouraged to believe that he deserves to get whatever woman mystic Rabi’a al-Adawiyya, who lived in Basra in the
he wants. first century after the death of the Prophet: “O Allah! If I wor-
So what does the Qur’an tell us about our ‘entitlement’ ship Thee in fear of Hell, burn me in Hell; and if I worship
as human beings? I have to say that my own reading of the Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I
Qur’an has not conveyed to me any conspicuous or abiding worship Thee for Thine own sake, withhold not Thine
sense of what I am ‘entitled’ to or ‘deserve’ automatically as Everlasting Beauty!”
a result of my status as a human being, but rather it contin- Such self-effacement is of course a lofty aim that abolishes
ually reminds me of the pressing and ultimately inescapable all expectation of personal entitlement and reward. If it sur-
responsibility that status confers upon me. It tells me that passes the expectation of just deserts for worthy service, how
the doctrine of the primordial Covenant (mithaq) between much further does it surpass the deluded and infantile fantasy
God and mankind (Qur’an 7:172-3) implies an absolute sacred that we ‘deserve’ whatever we desire, no matter whether we
Trust (amanah) which imposes on us the duty of steward- have earned it or not. But the ultimate irony may be the under-
ship (khilafah) and demands of us a proactive sense of social lying cosmic principle which ensures that we do in fact get
responsibility, charitable deeds, and good works (salihat). whatever it is that we crave for. So, yes, we get what we truly
Muhammad Asad notes that the term ‘aqd (“covenant”) in the deserve. The sadness is that we may come to the end of our
Qur’anic call to people of faith to be “true to your covenants” lives and, in that moment of lucid spiritual awareness when
(Qur’an 5:1) denotes a “solemn undertaking involving more we perceive our inner state (our ‘moral reality’, as Muhammad
than one party” and he refers to Raghib’s interpretation that Asad puts it), and see what we have become, we wish with all
“the covenants referred to in this verse are of three kinds: the our hearts that we had wished for something else. l
covenants between God and man, between man and his own © JEREmy HENzELL-THOmaS
www.emel.com | emel magazine 31
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