this period of time, tears would stream from his blessed eyes. (Hikayat-us-Saliheen, p. 50)

Dear Islamic brothers! Have you noticed the great passion of our pious predecessors for practising self-accountability! Taking benefit from these blessed personalities رَحِمَهُمُ الـلّٰـهُ, we learn the importance of performing this act. Our pious predecessors would remain worried about their deeds all the time, thinking whether these deeds of theirs would become the source of their forgiveness after being accepted, or would prove to be the cause of their destruction after being rejected in the court of Allah Almighty.

Just ponder, when these blessed personalities would perform self-accountability with so much with steadfastness, how much do we sinful people need to do?

The benefits of taking self-accountability and loss of not doing it can be understood well by this example: The businessman of this world can become successful when he succeeds in earning many times more profits than he spends, with his original capital also remains intact. For achieving this purpose, he takes accountability of his expenditures on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis. Not only does he ponder over it from various aspects verbally, but he also writes it down and tries to save it in different ways. Moreover, where he finds any defect, he rectifies it and removes the thing that becomes an obstacle in the way of earning profit. If he does not take accounts of his business activities, he very often has to suffer a loss instead of earning profit. If he still does not wake up to reality after that initial loss, then the day also comes when he even loses his original capital and finally becomes bankrupt.

Similarly, the one who wishes to earn profit in the business of the Hereafter should ponder over the deeds he has performed. He shouldstrive in bettering deeds which help him earn profit, and should stop performing the deeds which are becoming an obstacle in the way