I fear God and next to God I mostly fear them that fear him not.

Saadi of Shiraz (c. 1210–1291/92), the great Persian moralist and poet, is best known in the West through aphoristic passages from his ethical works, especially the Gulistan (“Rose Garden”) and Bustan (“Orchard”). The sentiment in this saying reflects the medieval Islamic ethical worldview in which “fear of God” (taqwa, reverent God-consciousness) is treated as the foundation of moral restraint and social trust. In Saadi’s didactic prose-and-verse anecdotes, he frequently contrasts the safety provided by piety and conscience with the danger posed by the unscrupulous—those unafraid of divine judgment and therefore unrestrained in harming others.

The speaker claims that reverence for God is the highest fear, but immediately adds a practical corollary: after God, the most frightening people are those who do not fear God. The logic is ethical and political: a person who feels accountable to a higher moral law is more likely to restrain cruelty, deceit, and abuse of power, whereas someone without such restraint may act with impunity. Saadi’s line thus functions as a compact theory of trust—piety (or conscience) is a social safeguard—and as a warning about the dangers of amoral actors in public life. It also implies that “fear of God” is less terror than moral awe that disciplines behavior.