notifications_active Weekly Meshkat-e Noor Session: Thursdays at 20:30 at Haj Reza Mosque
Dear Professor, in Sharāb-e Ḥekmat you said, “Do not befriend those who feed on cockroaches.” Cockroaches usually live in sewers and feed on sewage. What traits make a person like a cockroach? And what makes people like dogs, jackals, and those who feed on vultures? I would be grateful if you could explain.
Those who grow accustomed to indecency and sin become like cockroaches. Those who follow corrupt people of wealth and power are like jackals. Corrupt people who cause others to suffer are like dogs, while those who await others’ ruin so they can profit from it are like vultures. Worst of all are those who feed on vultures: people who make what is already vile even worse and profit from ever more brazen sins.
**Cockroach-like people:** Those who are immersed in sin and vice, and at home in centres of debauchery and corruption, which serve as their dwelling places and haunts.
**Jackal-like people:** Those who follow in the footsteps of corrupt people of wealth and power!
**Dog-like people:** Corrupt people who cause others suffering and hardship; brazen sinners; raucous, harmful libertines; hirelings of those who lead others astray; followers of Satan.
**Vulture-like people:** Those who wait for others to be ruined and defeated so they can profit from it! The death and destruction of others is their own lifeblood!
**Vulture-eaters:** Worse than the wicked: people who, in addition to having all the traits of vultures, possess further, compounded vices. A vulture feeds on carrion; a vulture-eater profits from what vultures leave behind. They make what is vile even more vile.
These are people who are loathed even among the wicked—that is, they are so evil that even those who are themselves corrupt cannot escape their harm.
Inventors of sin, who pave the way for ever more sophisticated transgressions and the expansion of wrongdoing.
Those who sin from within their sin! Like a drunkard who, while drinking, commits other sins as well!