Many monkeys used to live around a mountain village. An animal trader reached there and announced that he would buy one monkey from the villagers for Rs. 100. Villagers became very happy with this offer and started catching monkeys in large numbers. The trader bought one thousand monkeys within a few days for Rs. 100 each. Now, there were very few monkeys left. Only those monkeys were left which were difficult to catch.
The trader made an announcement that he would now buy monkeys for Rs 200 each. The villagers developed a new kind of passion and started to catch monkeys once again with great enthusiasm. They further handed over 120 monkeys to the trader. Now, monkeys were very seldom seen around the village. The trader had 1120 monkeys in his cage.
One day, the trader announced that he was going out of the village for some work leaving his servant to look after the monkeys. When he would return, he would buy monkeys for Rs. 500 each. Now wherever people saw a monkey, they would catch it together. Two days had passed they could only manage to catch nine monkeys. Now, the servant made an offer to the people: This big cage has almost 1120 monkeys. What I can do is that I will sell you all these monkeys for Rs 350 each and when the owner returns, sell him the same monkeys for Rs 500 each.
The villagers became very happy. They spent their entire savings and bought all the monkeys. Thereafter, they started waiting for the trader’s return. The 5th day passed, even the 6th day also passed, but the trader did not return. They ran quickly to the cage of monkeys outside the village, but the servant was not there either. Now they realised that they were cheated by greed.
Dear readers of the monthly magazine Faizan-e-Madinah! This is indeed a fictitious tale, and the villagers mentioned in this tale also seem to be the most foolish people of the world, but the news of cheats and deceits that we hear every day also comprise the stories of stupidity and foolishness in which the cheated person is tempted to become rich overnight, he is told that the return of his investment will be multiplied ‘four times’, the property worth million is sold at a very low price, he is tempted to get the motorcycle of 50,000 for the down payment of just Rs 5,000, etc. Then these scheme-runners vanish after receiving the down payments from thousands of people. By giving people the news of winning ‘the gifts of hundreds of thousands of rupees’ by lot, thousands of rupees are collected. In some cases, people are offered such partnership in which they are assured that their investment will rise twenty times in ten months.
If we wisely ponder over the new ways of frauds and deceptions of the present era, we will find that many people who have fallen into this trap are not different from the villagers selling monkeys.
Now, the question is that how we can save ourselves from different kinds of frauds. So remember, a dishonest person uses greed to trap his prey. We can stay safe if we use our intellect when any unusual business offer is made to us, and but if we make a decision greedily, our condition will not be different from the villagers.
May Allah Almighty protect us from falling prey to fraud and deception.
اٰمِیْن بِجَاہِ النَّبِیِّ الْاَمِیْن صلَّی اللہ علیہ واٰلہٖ وسلَّم
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