Academic Essay

On Envy

Lessons from the Story of Joseph

Yusuf and Zulaikha (Yusuf pursued by Potiphar’s wife), miniature by Behzād, 1488, Herat, Afghanistan | Wikimedia Commons

Introduction

Jealousy and envy are ripe within our society, infiltrating all aspects of our lives and exacerbated by social media platforms. Whilst it has been posited that social media-induced jealousy is also connected to malicious gossiping, trolling and cyberstalking, research has shown that platforms such as Facebook increase partner-monitoring or surveillance behaviours and are directly linked to intimate-partner violence. Furthermore, jealousy is a major cause of homicide, particularly among intimate partners, with jealousy reported as a root cause of 49% of homicides in one study. Such is its ubiquity as a human emotion, jealousy is a common motive within the classical literary canon. Shakespeare, for example, utilised jealousy in many of his plots, such as in ‘Othello’ and ‘Winter Story’, where there are irrational outbursts of jealousy without provocation. One of the most well-known plots involving jealousy, however, is the story of Prophet Joseph. Told in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament of the Bible, the story was also revealed to the Prophet Muhammad during the Makkan period, and is the twelfth surah in the Qur’an. Revealed after the year of sorrow in which the Prophet lost both his uncle Abu Talib and his wife Khadija and before the Ansar gave their support to Prophet…