TO collect the rent these days one has to be skilled in the game of cat and mouse. Ever heard of a tenant knocking at the landlord’s door to pay the rent? What usually happens is that the landlord has to run from pillar to post trying to get the tenant to pay the rent.
After the landlord’s all too often futile attempts to meet or communicate with the tenant, the tenant may condescend to pay at least a part of the rent. Then the landlord must be thankful for his tenant’s kindness. Some tenants pay off and on, irregularly, as some government offices do.
If a tenant is unable to pay promptly because of his situation, a Muslim landlord should be patient until the problems are solved. On the other hand, the defaulter is most often seen spending lavishly and living in luxury. He has several servants and housemaids, expensive cars, several ordinary telephones in addition to mobiles for each family member. These tenants who refuse to pay the rent often spend their vacations in Europe or America. The reluctance to pay rent is a typical example of the negative trend where other people’s rights are involved. Now I will use the masculine form to mean all human beings. You are a brother or a friend until you demand what is rightfully yours. At that moment, you become a shameless enemy.
Good qualities such as an accusing conscience, remorse and trustworthiness are hard to find these days. Instead people become reckless, considering themselves very strong and capable of doing anything. They forget that God is all powerful. One of these people, your tenant, shouts at you with apparent contempt: “File a case against me in the court.” He is only too well aware that the court will issue a final verdict on a civil suit after years of wrangling. A friend of mine told me once that her brother, who planned to build new buildings in place of old ones, notified some of his tenants six months in advance that they should vacate the old buildings. One of the them refused to comply, even after the heavy equipment began pulling down the buildings. He argued that a landlord had no right to evict a tenant. The tenant challenged the landlord to sue him. The tenant knew that the legal action meant he would be able live in the building for several more years. It was only after several influential people intervened that the tenant complied. He vacated the building only after removing and demolishing whatever he could.
On another occasion, a businessman refused to pay the rent on his expensive apartment for several years; he pretended that he was having a financial crisis. If he knew that his financial crisis was on-going, why did he continue to stay in the expensive apartment and deny the landlord his rightful income from the apartment? Would it not have been better for the tenant to reduce expenses according to his income? Matters have come to such a pass that some tenants who owe huge amounts of rent to their landlords sometimes disappear overnight from their flats to avoid paying their rent.
Suppose you are a guarantor for your friend who bought a car on the installment plan. Suddenly one day you are shocked to discover that a considerable sum from your bank account has been removed because of your friend’s failure to keep up with his installments. If you demand an explanation from him, it means the end of the friendship. What will really shock you, however, is when you discover that your friend has a sizable sum of money stashed away in another bank. It is very unfortunate that some people are never troubled by guilt, even when they wrongly take food from the mouths of orphans. There are others who never bother to settle the debts of their dead fathers who left plenty of property, enough for the needs of their heirs in addition to enough to pay their debts. At the same time, the dead man’s sons claim that their parents are dearer to them than anything in the world and in the effort to perpetuate this love, they name their children after their dead parents. Ironically, the sons do nothing to make their departed parents’ souls rest in peace. (According to Muslim belief, a dead debtor will be punished until his debt is repaid.) If only the son realized that his love for his father was immaterial unless he can release his father from the burden of financial commitment, even if it meant selling all his property and toiling day and night. It is not at all desirable that people should leave the matter to the courts when they are fully aware that the eligible man will get his rights after waiting needlessly for a long period.
Some cunning people scheme to evade their financial obligations by getting insolvency certificates issued in their names after transferring their properties to their relatives or into secret accounts in foreign banks.
I wonder what has happened to Muslims. Some have became as rapacious as hungry animals. They line their pockets with ill-gotten gains. If they continue to do so, they will soon be incapable of distinguishing the unlawful from the lawful. Did their upbringing and models at home fail to show them the right path? Why has the moral and religious education from their childhood failed to instill in them the fear of the Creator in secret and in public? Is it not a fact that many South Asian people embraced Islam after being impressed by the uprightness and trustworthiness of the Arab traders who did business there?
I often say that settling accounts in this world is easier than after death. Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said “If anybody has done an injustice to others in any matter let him exonerate himself from it now before his death when no amount of money can save him. In the life after death his good deeds will be added to the good deeds of the man whom he wronged. If the unjust man has no good deeds left, the other man’s sins will be transferred to his.”
