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knows a little bit about swimming and he sees some people drowning so he has pity on them and tries to save them but when they grab onto him, they will all drown and so will he. The pain of drowning in this world lasts only a few moments but the punishment for showing off is continuous, and will last for a very long time. Never mind weak people, this is such a difficult issue that even scholars and worshippers can slip up here, in that they imitate (spiritually) strong people by exposing their good deeds but their hearts do not remain firm on sincerity and therefore become sinful due to showing off.
Method of recognising the traps of the Nafs and Satan
One way to recognise the traps of the Nafs and Satan is to question your heart in the following way before showing someone your good deed, ‘If you were told to hide your deed so that people could imitate a contemporary of yours and you will be still rewarded the same for hiding your deed as you would have been for revealing it’, if you still want to reveal your deed and be imitated then you should realise that your intention behind revealing your deed is to show off and not to gain reward, nor to make people follow you or inspire goodness in them, because people would have been inspired even by witnessing somebody else and you would have gained more reward for hiding it. If you did not intend to show off then why is your heart not content with concealing your deed?
(Iḥyā-ul-‘Ulūm, vol. 3, pp. 390)
صَلُّوۡا عَلَى الۡحَبِيۡب صَلَّى اللّٰهُ تَعَالٰى عَلٰى مُحَمَّد
Every Islamic brother should avoid blowing his own trumpet and falling in the trap of the Nafs and Satan, because the human Nafs is
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