By His Eminence: Mohamed Al-Ghazali �May Allah has mercy upon him�

In the arms of unemployment, thousands of vices are born and germs of extinction and vanishing are leavened.

If work is the mission of the alive, then the workless are dead. If our life is the seedling of the hereafter, then the jobless are worthy to be crammed at the Day of Resurrection penniless, having no outcome except the loss and stagnation.

Our Prophet (may peace be upon him) has paid our attention to the inadvertence of many people to the blesses of good health and time given by God to us, saying,� Two blesses are misused by many people: the good health and free time�.

There are many of us who are well- bodied and have long free times yet they face troubles in life without aspiring to a certain hope or a work making them busy; they have no mission to which they dedicate.

Is life created for that? Nay. In this regard, Allah says in Glorious Qur�an,� Did you think that We had created you in vain( for no purpose), and that you would not be brought back to Us? So Exalted be Allah, the True King: none has the right to worshiped but Him, the Lord of the Supreme Throne�(Surah Al-Mum�minin 115-116).

Life is rightly created; the earth, heaves and what is between them all are rightly created. Thus, man in this life must know such right; living upon it. If he had chosen to be contained within a shell of his limited whims and sensual desires keeping him at a far distance from anything, then he would have been in the most miserable residence for his present and future.
What a right statement uttered by Imam Al-Shaf�y who once said,� If you do not keep yourself busy with the right, you will be busy with the futile.�

This is certainly right! The soul is restless. If you do not run in a rapid movement for the sake of projects of goodness, struggle and discipline productivity, your soul sooner is attacked by the aimless ideas pushing you to a whirl of trifles and farces.

The best thing you can employ to safeguard your life is depicting a methodology that overwhelms all your time, giving Satan no chance to touch this methodology with insinuation or misleading.

In Islam, allocating the legislative regulations considers this fact that the human soul should not be let to be filled with the futile. Dell Carnegie explained this point saying,� We do not feel worried when we are devoted to our works. Yet, the free hours coming after these works are the most dangerous. No sooner we have some free time than we are attacked by the devils of worry. Here, we wonder: Do you think we get from life what we really desire? Do you think that the boss refers to something by his notice given to us today? Do you think we are sick? Our brains are about to vain once we finished our works. The students studying nature know that the nature hates the emptiness. Do you want to prove that by an experiment? Make a hole in a bulb free from air and see how nature proceeds to push the air into the bulb for filling the empty space. Similarly, nature tries to fill the empty souls. With what? With passions and feelings. Why? Because the feelings of worry, fear, malice, envy and jealousy push in a fierce primitive power inherited from the Jungle era to fill our souls. These feelings are strong enough that they can destroy the peace and stability within our souls�.
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The educators have the right to take full care of the diseases of the free time and protect the soul against its vices. The ultimate approach to do that is to employ informed policies for the constant construction and continues building. Keeping our times busy with the varied assignments and moving from an assignment to another - even from a heavy work to an entertaining one - are the only ways to protect ourselves against the disease of unemployment and the pollutants of vacancy.

I think that the society can free itself from many evils if it manages the free times, not by making use of them after their appearance, but through creating the opportunities that consume all energies and guide people to what is good for their life and hereafter.

Here, no one will feel jobless or unemployed.
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The reformers have recognized since a long time that the unemployment of the rich is a pretext to the debauchery. The youth, unemployment and richness are the wicked evils. Additionally, the unemployment of the poor means wasting the powerful human capabilities; it means a shameful scattering to the capabilities God put in our muscles, nerves and hearts. The world would have been changed completely if these capabilities had been exploited.

The most worthy systems to be accepted and supported are the ones that consider this fact, setting up the teachings upon it.
Islam controls all these sides within human nature. Most Islamic laws focus on Jihad against the soul and people. On the level of soul, Jihad means weaning the soul from the vices and the inclination to the unlawful sensual desires. On the level of people, Jihad means preventing people�s injustice from spoiling life and disturbing faith as well as reformation. Both types of Jihad overwhelms the whole age moment by moment, letting no chance to the levity , absentmindedness and ignorance.

The Allah�s Messenger (may peace be upon him) was accustomed to ask God for abiding to faith as long as being alive. He prayed to God saying,� O God, I ask for your mercy. Do not let myself aimlessly, reforming all my matters. There is no God except you.�(Narrated by al-Termithy). This kind of awake persistent of asking support is the basis of the psychological integration.

The business of general activities of Jihad is well- known within the Prophet�s biography. He was not restless in fighting polytheism around the four corners of Arabian Peninsula till they have adopted the real faith and piety. Abu-Bakr and Omar followed the Messenger, walking on the same track to the point that Muslims found no way to rest so they led the arms towards the castles of injustice on the earth. After some years, the whole world has become full of the lights of real faith.

What�s happened after the Muslims had given up these duties keeping them before so busy? They fighted themselves; the distresses spread. Then some successors came, making the interpretation of the similar verses of Qur�an a cheap and loose tool of wasting time!! They did badly to Oura�an�s verses, whether the distinct or similar.

If the right consumes all man�s energy, the void will find nothing to occupy. If the right overwhelms man�s heart and mind, insinuations of levity and obsessions of suspicion will find no space.

Dell Carnegie wondered,� Why does something simple like work absorption have the ability to remove worry? The reason for that is one of the basic laws discovered by psychology: it is impossible for whatever super human mind to be occupied with more one thing at the same time.�

This is right; it is relatively similar to what Allah says in the Glorious Qur�an,� Allah has not made for any man two hearts inside his body�(Surah Al-Ahzab - 4). As you can not imagine two things at the same time, you can not combine between two contradictory feelings. We can not be eager to accomplish an exciting activity, feeling worried at the same time; one of the feelings will certainly overcome the other. This simple law helped the psychiatrists in arms to achieve incredible results during wars on treating the soldiers who suffered from the nervous breakdown caused by the war. They said, �Keep the soldiers busy�.

In the eastern societies, the vacancy destroys thousands of capabilities and talents that are screened behind a huge heap of submission and slighting just like the gold and iron buried inside the unknown mines! This awful waste of work and time leads to unlimited disasters on the political, economical and social levels.

It is narrated about Omar that he said,� I admire a man. On asking about him and knowing that he is jobless, he is dropped from my consideration�. In Hadith, � God likes the professional man�. Undoubtedly, many peoples are dropped from God�s consideration; they lose the respect of the people of work and productivity because they are jobless and consumed and perished by vacancy.

I think that the first cause for the retardation of the Arab and Islamic world is the lagging and sluggishness overwhelming its social and psychological life. This great number of generations can not score a slight share of success in life or hereafter without making a comprehensive change in their life style, removing altogether the vices of unemployment and vacancy.

From: Renew Your Life
By: His Eminence Mohamed Al -Ghazaly