Jealousy is when you look at others and you feel that you should have what they have. For example, you worked hard for something but someone else achieved it. If you become jealous and hold negative thoughts about that person, it reduces your imaan i.e. making you weaker.
Jealousy is when someone has more knowledge than you and you ridicule them to make yourself happier. That does not improve you or do any good to you. In fact this emotion of jealousy becomes the cause of your destruction. Learn to be happy for others and accept that you can't be the best in everything all the time.
Jealousy is when someone has a better car or a bigger house than you and you do whatever you can to harm them because you cannot digest their success. You pick out and highlight the negatives in order to downplay their success.
Jealousy is when someone has a better job or higher qualifications than you and you say negative things about them to make yourself feel better.
Jealousy is when someone is better looking than you and you pick out their bad points so people laugh at them.
Jealousy is when despite being in line for selection, you are not chosen for the cricket team because someone better than you replaced you and you start to hate them.
Jealousy is when people respect and look up to someone but you don't get that respect and attention so you feel bitter about it.
Jealousy is when somebody prays five times a day but because you don't, you feel the need to criticise something else that they do. It is because you don't want them to be seen as better than you. Instead of bringing others down, it would be better to focus on improving yourself. But you find it easier to say things about people than to take action to improve yourself.
Jealous people don't just say things about those they envy but they act against them, be it openly or secretly. They make it their goal in life to bring others down. In the process, they ruin their imaan as their thoughts, words and actions earn nothing but the displeasure of Allah.
Nobody likes to admit that they are jealous yet jealousy is a major issue affecting human nature. We must be strong enough to overcome and bury this negative emotion before it overtakes us. At the first thought of jealousy, we must learn to stop it because if we don't, it will spread like a disease.
We must do our best to avoid such harmful and negative feelings because they ruin what we have. Instead we need to think that if someone has done better than us, we must work harder in the future or perhaps there are better things that we have been blessed with that they don't have.
A pure heart has no room for jealousy. You should be happy when you achieve something but at the same time be happy for others - because that is a quality that makes you a good person.
