39. While the qualities of those known by the world as the upper classes should be the cause of modesty and humility, they have led to oppression and arrogance. And while the poverty and powerlessness of the poor and common people should be the cause of compassion and bounty, they have resulted in servitude and enthralment.
40. So long as honour and good things are to be obtained from something, they offer it to the upper classes, but if it is something bad, they divide it among the ordinary people.
41. If a person lacks an imagined goal, or if he forgets it or pretends to forget it, his thoughts will perpetually revolve around his ‘I’.
42. The origin of all revolutions and corruption, and the spur and source of all bad morals are just two sayings:
The First Saying: “So long as I’m full, what is it to me if others die of hunger?”
The Second Saying: “You suffer hardship so that I can live in ease; you work so that I can eat.”
There is only one remedy for extirpating the first saying, and that is the obligatory payment of zakat. While the remedy for the second is the prohibition of usury and interest. Qur’anic justice stands at the door of the world and says to usury and interest: “No entry! It is forbidden! You don’t have the right to enter here!” Mankind did not heed the command, and received a severe blow. So it must heed it before it receives one even more severe!
43. War between nations and states is relinquishing its place to war between the classes of mankind. For just as man does not want to be a slave, so he does not want to be a labourer.
44. The person who pursues his goal by illicit means is usually punished by receiving the opposite of what he intended. The recompense for illicit love, like love for Europe, is the beloved’s cruel enmity.
45. The past and calamities should be considered in the light of Divine Determining (kader), while the future and sins from the point of view of responsibility before God. The Jabriyya and Mu‘tazila are reconciled on this point.
46. Impotence should not be resorted to when a solution may be found, and when there is no solution, punishment should not be resorted to.
47. Life’s wounds may be healed, but Islamic pride and honour, and national pride, their wounds are extremely deep.
48. It sometimes happens that a single word causes an army to perish, and