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The Words of Imam Ali (A.S) on Negligence

Negligence 1

O negligent people! O you, who are so indifferent to your obligations and so unmindful of your duties, remember that you will not be excused for such carelessness and negligence. O you, who want to go out of the folds of religion, remember that you shall not be left unquestioned and unpunished.

How is it that I find you drifting away and away from God and swaying towards ungodly thoughts and deeds? You are behaving as if you are cattle whom the pastor is driving through a pasture or a watering place where deadly cattle diseases are raging and they cannot resist this drive, or like sheep who are being fattened on fresh grams and good grass to be butchered and they do not realize they are being so well treated so that when killed they give soft and fat meat. Their vision is so limited that they consider the day they are passing to be the whole span of their lives, and their sole purpose of their existence is to eat and drink.

By God, if I like I can tell every one of you how he started life, and how he is going to end it, from where he is coming and where he will go and how he is passing his days. But I do not do this lest they wrongly consider me superior to the Holy Prophet (May the peace of God be upon him and his descendants), but I shall tell this to such of my faithful follower about whom I am not nervous of apostasy.

I swear by Him who has appointed the Holy Prophet (P.B.U.H&H.P) as His trusty Messenger to carry the highest truth to man, and selected him of all His creatures for this work, that I am speaking truth. The Holy Prophet (May the peace of God be upon him and his descendants) has bequested all this to me. I know who will be damned and who will get salvation. I know the fate of this caliphate and what will happen to me.

O people! I swear by God that I do not persuade you to obey any order of God unless I have myself first obeyed it faithfully and I do not prevent you from any vice or sin unless I have first abstained from it myself.
[A part of sermon 173 of Nahjul Balagha]

Taken from: Islamic Thought

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