A growing concern among Muslims today is the supernatural belief of the Evil Eye, meaning the negative energy that comes from a person silently watching and harbouring jealousy or envy or hasad towards another person’s success, wealth, health, prosperity, relationships, and any other good fortune being experienced by the other person.
How can you and I consciously practice being happy for other’s happiness without comparing our lives with other’s lives?
Freudenfreude is a German term that means feeling joy for another’s joy. And Schadenfreude means to feel happy watching someone’s misery. Sadly the latter is becoming a frequently displayed emotion.
One could argue that the fitnah of social media could be one of the contributing factors that is causing a range of negative emotions – hasad, jealousy, envy, vanity, comparison, to name a few.
Jealousy and Envy
From an Islamic perspective, the story of brothers Qabil and Habil, sons of Adam (a), aptly depicts the manifestation and consequences of jealousy and envy. The underlying cause of jealousy and envy is a lack of self-worth.
If you lack love, respect, and trust in your own self and your abilities, your self-worth diminishes. It makes sense then to be negatively affected by someone else’s joys and accomplishments.
Your negative thought patterns (waswassah) will find ways to justify those feelings of jealousy in ways whereby you hold other people responsible for your own lack of self-worth.
Jealousy is a yearning for approval because somewhere deep in your subconscious mind there is a belief, toxic and unchallenged, that you are beneath others.
This negative perception of self convinces you that you are worth less than another and therefore you feel hurt, humiliated, fearful, and angry with your perceived inequality in worthiness.
Strategies to practice joy for another’s joy
- Express a huge Shukr Alhumdolillah! for everything in your life.
- Become aware of how your body behaves when you feel jealousy and or envy.
- Express this feeling to someone you trust by saying these words: “I am experiencing feelings of jealousy and envy towards….and I need to understand why.” The moment you express it verbally, you are no longer letting the emotion control you. You empower yourself to respond appropriately to this emotion rather than react mindlessly and be controlled by it.
- Pray Tahajjud salah and beg Allah to remove all jealousy, envy, and hasad from your life. Ask Allah to bless you with a joyful heart that always expresses praise for Allah each time someone shares about their success.
- Remind yourself about all of Allah’s favours by reading Surah Rehman.
- Curb your temptations to post every single thing about your life on social media. Take responsibility for your own contribution towards the negative cycle of hasad, jealousy, and envy. Instead of posting to flaunt, share mindfully by acknowledging Allah in your post and then sharing pictures of your family or holiday. Create the protective energy and make necessary dua before publishing the post online.
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