212 chapter five
Treatise on Earnings and Asceticism, declaring that the full reliance
on God and the complete trust in Him, twakkul, does not mean that
a man should refrain from taking lawful means to earn a livelihood,
nor does it mean to live in idleness at the expense of others (Smith,
1977). There is a distinction in al-Muœasibi’s mind, therefore, between
monks in monasteries and ascetic Muslims living in poverty in reliance
on others, on the one hand, and what the genuine flùfìs should really
be, on the other. There is a clear cut distinction between the two
groups. To him, there is no idleness under the ostensible premise of
abstaining from the worldly desire in pursuit of God’s love. Even
taking up the sword in the cause of God is part of the spirit of
flùfìsm, he emphasises.
For his emphasis on ascetic lifestyle and, simultaneously, on the
necessity of earning a livelihood by all lawful means, al-Muœàsibìis
cited among Muslim economic thinkers with his thought included as
a phase in the history of Islamic economic thought (see for exam-
ple, Aidit Ghazàli, 1992, Siddiqi, 1992, and Yusri, 1987). The empha-
sis has been on his teaching of the ascetic consumption and the
lawful pursuit of earning a livelihood. In that sense al-Muœàsibì’s
writing was the first work to have appeared in a published form on
the subject of austerity and ascetic consumption. Needless to say, al-
Muœàsibìdid not intend to have his work classified under economic
writing, if there was any. Rather, he intended to focus on the
purification of the self, the refinement of the soul, the renouncement
of the worldly desire and the desertion of wealth (as he did him-
self ); all for the sake of God, which comes with it the call for aus-
terity and ascetic consumption. Therefore, although he was simply
writing on flùfìsm, not economics, he produced a treatise on Earnings
and Asceticism, from within flùfìsm, in which he fervently contended
that the religiously desired twakkul, the reliance on God while pur-
suing means of earning, does not coincide with the undesired con-
cept of twaakul. Notice the difference in spelling, which is the reliance
on God with no self-exertion in chasing means of gaining an income.
For his influence on the flùfìthinking and his fervent endeavour to
correct their thought on such an important economic issue, his
Earnings and Asceticism is examined later.
After al-Muœàsibì came al-Junayd (d. 289/910), a disciple of al-
Muœàsibì, who followed his master’s footsteps in consolidating the
flùfìschool of thought. With the introduction of new concepts such
as fana", self-naughting, baqa", eternal survival in unity with God and