“He Is A Freeborn Who Fulfils His Promise” _ An Arab Wise Saying
No doubt, he is a freeborn who fulfils his promise! For such a person knows that it lies in the fulfilment of promises made, good reputation, granite integrity and righteousness while it takes a man who is not under no illusion to deceive or arrogate other people’s rights unto himself to strive to make good his promises.
Human beings as free as they are cannot be freed from making promises or finding themselves in debts as the whirlwind of life releases its fangs to the wealthy, the middle-courser and the poverty-laden of them without making exceptions despite their places of birth, educational institutions attended or the ethnicities they belonged.
Promises are therefore made to save faces , to buy honours or to avoid untoward endings at the hours of danger, moments of disgrace and at the periods of pain! Debts are also accrued in the same ways promises are made!
Some fall into debt so as to avoid being in ignominy and shame in the course of eking out a living or during illness to avoid its pangs or the death it may bring.
Not only that, some of us make unnecessary promises in the moments of excitement and out of the ecstasy we find ourselves in and in our rush of making it permanent, we irrationally make undue promises and enter unsustainable debt!
For examples, some promise ladies they want to marry what their talents or jobs cannot earn for them so as to lure them into marrying them; some promise heaven and earth to God that if He will answer their prayers they will do such and such things for Him or His people or His places of worship not minding the risks involved in getting the promises fulfilled; while others incur debts for courses unmerited of the debts in the first place!
As dangerous as making promises and incurring debt are, they are not bad ideas or acts in Islam. What is bad in the duo acts, to say the obvious, is ditching one’s fulfilment or abandoning the payments whenever one is capable of doing them and when fortunes have come to one’s door steps.
The social implications of not fulfilling one’s promises and not paying one’s debts when one is capable of them are that ,they discourage the doers of good to do more, thereby ,leading to unkindness in the land and making an equal distribution of wealth in the society an unachievable goal.
The spiritual implications of these acts are that they debar who had incurred them but who had later been capable of paying them without paying them from enjoying God’s forgiveness at their death unless the families and friends leaving behind settle them or they be deducted from their property and estates before they are distributed!
Trivialising payments of promises and debts had never been the characters of the role models of Muslims of the past eras.
The righteous people of the prophet, his companions and their followers’ eras had known the implications of trivializing the promises they had promised others and debts they had incurred that they had abandoned the acts afterwards when the prophet (Salla-llahu alehi wasalam) had told them that the forgiveness of God will elude a dead, no matter his or her level of belief and good deeds, if he or she had not fulfilled the promise or debt made before dying unless they are paid by their relatives or friends or deduct from their estates afterwards!
The Prophet’s Disposition To Who Did Not Fulfil His Promise
It is said that whenever the prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) asked whether the corpse to be prayed upon had a promise or debt he had not been paid before his death and the answer was in the affirmative, he would decline from praying on it and say instead ” pray on your friend ( by yourselves) “! Since the prayer of the prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) was a forgiveness and blessing on the dead, he had declined to offer it to those in debt or those having unfulfilled promises on their necks before their demise!
Some times, it is said that the prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam), for knowing the implications inherent in unfulfilled promises and unsettled debts, had had recourse to check the public account of the Islamic community known as Baitul-Maal or public treasure, if it had enough fund so as to settle the promise or the debt of the dead among the believers before he would observe the Janazah prayer on them.
It is therefore, a surprise these days, to see those that are claiming belief in God, in His apostle ( Muhammad, salla-llahu alehi wasalam) and in the day of judgement, trivializing and understating their promises and debts even when they are capable of settling them once and for all, uttering disgusting statements such as ” countries of the world are also in debts” and ” debts are not the end of life”, as if those countries in debts are finding respect and honour in the debts they are owning other countries and as if debts and unfulfilled promises are the beginning of life in itself!
Every Promise Will Be Enquired Into On The Day Of Reckoning
One of the essences of the Day of Reckoning is that every promise made by man while living will be enquired Into! This is what is being affirmed in Qu’ran 17: 34 as follows:
” …and fulfil every promise , for every promise will be enquired into on the Day of Reckoning!”
And Grievously Hateful Are You In Allah’s Sight To Say ( promise) What You Will Not Do
Saying one thing and do another thing is hateful in Allah’s sight not to talk of saying what you do not do! Some people will just promise others what they know they cannot do for all the tea in China and for all the ice in Eskimo without minding the repercussion of their promise and as if God is not between them and the ones they are making promise to!
But in God’s sight, saying what one cannot fulfil is grievously dislikeable! In Qu’ran 61:2-3, Allah says:
” O you who believe! Why do you say that what you do not do? It is grievously hateful to Allah that you should say that which you do not do!”
And to prophet Muhammad ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) it is a sign of an hypocrite to lie when talking ,i.e to say something and doing other thing entirely! The prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) says that :
” The signs of an hypocrite are three; ” when he talks he lies, when he promises he reneges and when a trust is confided on him ,he falters ( he plays false)
In another narration, the prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) adds to the above :” even when he observes fasting, prays ( regularly) and claims to himself that he is a Muslim ”
This is the reason we will need to help our relatives ,families or friends fulfil what they had promised God or man that they could not fulfil due to their demise when we have been privy to the promise!
For examples, when a man has promised God that if He would give him so and so; he would read a whole Qur’an or observe some days fasting or give something tangible out of his wealth to God or build a mosque or repair a Well.
And after God Has made good of his intention, the man could not fulfil his own part of the promise due to incurable disease or sudden death, it is incumbent upon those who will legally share his estate and property to fulfill the promise their man had made before sharing his estate!
If it is fasting, they must fast it; if it is Hajj, they will have to sponsor someone that had gone on Hajj before to another pilgrimage in fulfilment of the promised made by their father, mother or children and if it had to do with monetary matters, they will have to settle them before sharing the estates of the deceased.
Promise in Islam from the foregone, is therefore not a matter one can handle with levity or something one can be insouciant with.
Even, promises made to the non-Muslims , unbelievers and other people other than the Muslims are to be fulfilled.
Today, we see governments making promises to their workers what they will not fulfil not minding the ones they had made hitherto without fulfilling them.
University lecturers in Nigeria have been on strike for close to half of the year because of the unfulfilled promises on the part of her government! What we will say is that those in position of authority in Nigeria must fear God and beware of His power!
They must in apace make moves quickly to end the strike of the University lecturers as soon as possible.
Even Abubakr ( The First Rightly Guided Caliph) Fulfilled The Promised The Prophet Had Made Before His Demise To Another Companion of The Prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam)
Imam Muideen An-nawawi mentioned an Hadith on the fulfilment of promises in his book :” Riyadhu- Salihina ,in the chapter of fulfilment of promises as follows:
” Jabir ( may Allah be pleased with him) said that the prophet (salla-llahu alehi wasalam) said: ” If indeed it had come to me the wealth from the Bahrain I will give you this and that from it! ” And the Bahrain’s wealth did not meet the prophet before his demise.”
” Jabir proceeded that :” when the Bahrain’s wealth came in the reign of Abubakir ( Radiya-llahu anhu), he announced that : he who had a promise or a debt with the prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) , let him come forward to us ! And I went to him and said :” Indeed,the prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) had promised me this and that and Abubakir gave me a share from it and when I counted it, it is five hundred ( he had not specified whether it is dirham or dinar) !
To the non-Muslims that we have made one promises on the other with, we as Muslims must set out to fulfill our promises based on three conditions as explained in suratul- Taobah in the glorious Qur’an as follows:
_ One, we must fulfil the promises made to the non-Muslims who have fulfilled the ones made to us without reneging on it!
_ Two, those non-Muslims who had reneged on the contract or promised made with us, we are not bound to fulfill the promises because as they had reneged on them, there are no promises between us again!
_ And when you fear that the non-Muslims may renege on the promises between you, do to them as they may later do to you! The glorious Qur’an maintains as regards that in Qu’ran 8:58:
” And if you fear treachery on the part of a people ( on promise between you)then throw back on them on terms of equality; surely Allah does not love the treacherous!”
In the same vein, fulfilling promises, is not limited to concrete matters but also involves not releasing the secret shared between two men, a woman and a man and between two nations etc! In this regards, Saabith reported from Annas who was the prophet’s maid ( may the good Lord be pleased with both of them) that the prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) came to me while I had been immersed in the play I was playing with other boys and he greeted us. Then , he sent me an errand and this made me to be late to meet my my mother.
When meeting my mother she enquired:” what has been delaying you?” And I answered her:” the prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) had sent me an errand and she asked me ; ” what was that!” I replied her :” it was a secret and she said: ” do not release the secret of the prophet to anybody”
Annas said:” if I would release the secret to anybody I would have released it to you oh Saabith!”
The Right Of A Debtor
Islam as a religion of this and that which takes every situation of man into cognizance despite the pictures of what will become of people who are trivializing the promises and payments of the debts they are into above, has also recognized the right of a debtor whose failure to pay his promise or debt is no fault of his but a difficulty he is experiencing in the guise of not having the means to settle the debt he is into.
This is what Allah is directing us into in Qu’ran 2:280, when He says:
” If the debtor is in a difficulty, grant him time till it is easy for him to repay . But if you remit by way of charity ,that is best for you if you only knew”
A critical check on the verse above still reveals that afterwards when a debtor persists in the difficulty of not being able to pay his debt to the one he owes and the owner of the wealth sees that the difficulty is a genuine one, what Islam wants from such an owner is to forgone his wealth to the debtor in form of alms-giving if he is capable of doing that and if that will not adversely affect his standing in the world!
This is the explanation of the second part of the verse above which reads:
” But if you remit it ( the debt) by way of charity , that is best for you if you only knew”
In closing, it is crystal clear from the forgone discourse that to be in debt is not a problem in Islam but trivialising the promises and payments of debts is the bigger problem when the one in debt is later found himself in buoyancy but he refuses out of his own volition to settle his debt.
Besides, it is an edifying path for the one who is owned to forget the debt of the debtor if he is capable of doing that without a negative effect on his wealth as a form of alms-giving towards the debtor.