The Dispraise of Al-Hawaa (LOWLY DESIRES)

A rather great excerpt that caught my attention from a book written by Ibn Al-Qayyim where he discusses the importance of controlling ones lowly desires and how to overcome them with confidence and by seeking guidance only from Allah subhanahu' wa'tala.

There is much more to his book but this particular part caught my attention as it reminds me of the society today and how animals are even better than the human beings we see in this world today (i.e, the oppressors in Syria, Palestine (and other parts of the Middle East), the ones partaking in adultery, prostitution etc.)

Please take a quick read and reflect upon yourself. Insha'Allah I will post more excerpts from this book once I have gone through it all.

"That he should not choose for himself a state such that the unintelligible animal is 
better than him. Indeed the animal is able by means of his natural instincts to 
distinguish between beneficial and harmful situations, preferring the beneficial above the harmful. 

For the same purpose, man has been endowed with the faculty of reason. If he does not differentiate between what hurts or benefits him, or, in the case he realizes this but prefers what is harmful 
to him, then the status of an unintelligible animal is better than his. The evidence for 
this lies in the fact that an animal takes a share of enjoyment in the taste of food, 
drinks, and sexual relations that is not  attainable by man, and that it lives a 
comfortable life free from thought and worry. Hence it is driven to its slaughtering 
place preoccupied with its lusts due to the lack of knowledge about the consequences. 
Man will not procure the same damage done to the animal because of the intensity of 
the preoccupying thought, and the weakness of the used male organ, and so forth. Had 
the attainment of what is desired been a virtue, the right of man, who is the pure extract 
of the world, to it would have not been  diminished while making it abundant to the 
animals. In the augmentation of man's share of reasoning, knowledge, and cognition is a 
substitute for that (i.e. animalistic lust). "