Wafāʾ
Definition
Wafaʾ is the quality of keeping faith with friends — maintaining the relationship through absence and change, not allowing friendships to decay through neglect, and remembering obligations to friends when it would be easier to forget them. Al-Ghazali describes wafa as the virtue that distinguishes genuine brotherhood from social utility: the person who is your friend only when you are useful, entertaining, or prestigious, and who disappears when you are struggling, sick, or diminished, has demonstrated that they were not a friend at all but a skilled social transactor. True wafa shows itself most clearly in the moments when sustaining the friendship costs something.
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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