Ghibṭa
Definition
Ghibta is the permissible counterpart to hasad: the desire to have a similar blessing to what another person has, without wishing for that person to lose their blessing. Al-Ghazali's distinction is crucial: the student who sees a colleague's scholarly achievement and desires to reach the same level of knowledge, without resenting the colleague's success, is experiencing ghibta — a healthy motivational impulse. The student who experiences that same colleague's success as painful, who wishes the colleague had not succeeded, or who feels diminished by the comparison, has crossed into hasad.
As understood in the classical tradition of Imam al-Ghazali and the scholars of his school.
Appears in
1 book in the library
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