Imam explains the matter in his famous work "an exposition on Forty Hadith" as following:
Such people, who are ignorant and negligent but consider themselves to be learned and aware, are the most wretched of human beings, or rather the most wretched of creatures. Spiritual doctors are incapable of curing them.
No admonition or advice can have any influence on them, but can even produce opposite results.
They do not listen to any argument. They do not pay any heed to the guidance of the prophets (A), the arguments of the philosophers, and the teachings of the great sages.
We should seek refuge in God from the mischief of the self, whose wiles draw men from sinfulness into infidelity and from infidelity into ‘ujb.
The self and the Devil make people accustomed to a sin by diminishing the gravity of that sin. When that vice sends out its roots into the heart, it appears to be a very ordinary and trivial thing to the person, who commits another sin bigger than the one with which he has become familiar, Imam further explains.
After committing this second sin repeatedly, it also casts away its gravity in his view and appears to be an ordinary thing, and he does not hesitate to commit a still bigger sin. In this way, step by step, all major sins become diminutive in his eyes, and the Divine laws of the Shari’ah, belittled by him, recede into insignificance.
His evil deeds culminate in infidelity, apostasy, and ‘ujb. We shall take up this subject later on.
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