Abdelrahman Badawy – Luxuries Don’T Last
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AI: Transcript ©
Allah says in the Quran, oh you who
believe,
fear Allah as he should be feared.
Be conscious of your creator as he deserves
when you make your decisions.
And do not die except in a state
of Islam.
May Allah allow us to meet him in
a state of Islam. So
brothers and sisters,
I want to begin this Khutba with a
very brief story.
This story, I wanna give you the timeline,
it goes all the way back
to Al Andalus.
Al Andalus, also known as Islamic Spain.
For those who may be unaware,
the Muslims ruled Spain for 700
years straight.
That's right. 700
years straight.
And it was shortly after the prophet Muhammad
passed away that that that era started. And
the Muslims were a superpower at the time,
and there were so many technological
and, every type of development, educational development, and
so on and so forth.
Now
little bit of a side note before we
get into our story.
If I were to ask you
to fill up a page,
write down everything you know about about
Islamic Spain.
How many of you would be able to
fill up a page?
What about half a page?
It really makes you think, doesn't it?
700
years of our history
because the Muslim Ummah is 1.
If you were became Muslim yesterday, you're part
of the nation. You're part of the Ummah.
It's your history too now.
If you were born 1,000 of miles away,
it's still your history even if it happened
in Islamic Spain, Al Andalus, because we are
1. That is your heritage.
So 700 years of your heritage,
and most of us, we cannot fill up
a page about it.
700
years. Why do you think that is?
They have intentionally
disconnected us from that part of our history.
They did that on purpose by the way,
it was intentional. This is not a conspiracy
theory.
So my advice to you guys
before we get on with today's topic,
I want you to be curious.
I want you to say, you know what?
I don't accept that 700 years of my
heritage, I don't even know what happened. Islam
was in Europe for 700 years, I don't
even I can't tell you much. I can
name a few names maybe.
You should know. This is our heritage, there's
a reason they cut us off from it.
They don't want us to know. They don't
want us to know the rich history of
our ummah. Insha Allah ta'ala, I hope that
this sparked something in your heart. You go
out, you research, go on YouTube, listen to
Islamic speakers in English and Arabic and Urdu
and all kinds of languages telling you about
our history so you can connect, so we
can feel our pride, and we can bring
our ummah back to its former glory inshallah.
Alright.
Now we go to our story.
This story is from the tail end of
those 700 years, at the end of those
700
years. I'll read it in Arabic and then
we can translate it in English.
SubhanAllah.
A long time ago, at the tail end
of those 700 years in Al Andalus,
an an enemy spy
was in the Muslim lands from an enemy
nation and he came to gather intel about
the Muslims. He wanted to see
how how can we harm these people. So
he started to gather his information and he
came across one day, he came across a
young man, Fata.
A young that means roughly early twenties. The
the young man was in his early twenties.
He came across a young man in his
early twenties crying.
And of course he found this to be
strange, you don't usually see a grown man
crying. So he said, hey, what what makes
you cry young man?
And he said,
I've been doing target practice all day. The
man had his bow and arrows with him,
and he had some targets upfront.
And he's been practicing
all day long, hour upon hour upon hour.
And he's trying to get perfect his shot.
He's trying to get better at
bow and arrow.
And he said, after all day I still
did not reach my target, so I was
so frustrated that I started to cry and
you you caught me.
So the spy,
after having this experience, he was so amazed,
he went straight back to his people and
he said,
He said, you you're you're not gonna we're
not we're not gonna be able to to
defeat the Muslims now.
Don't bother attacking,
If we do, we're going to lose 100%.
So he returned to his people and he
stayed for a couple of years. Few years
later, he was on another mission to gather
intel about the Muslims, to spy on the
Muslims again.
And lo and behold, he comes across another
young man
crying.
And he said,
What makes you cry young man?
And listen to his response. The young man
said,
I saved up a bunch of money
to buy my sweetheart
this really expensive, really beautiful ring.
And I was just walking now, admiring the
ring, and it fell from me into the
river. And the river took it away and
I'm that's it. Impossible. I'll never get it
back. So I got so sad that I
started crying.
And so the
spy was so amazed by this story, he
went straight back to his people and he
said, Al'an.
Now
now we can attack.
Now is the time to strike.
The people have become weak.
The Muslims have got their priorities all messed
up.
And their young men are obsessed with this
kind of stuff now, not what they used
to be obsessed with. It's time. And so
they attacked
and he was absolutely 100% correct. The Muslims
had fallen apart and it was very easy
for them to take over and
the rest is the history that you know
fell from Muslim hands until today.
SubhanAllah.
So you see brothers and sisters,
even our enemy knows
that when our priorities
get lopsided, when we lose our priorities,
then they know they can strike us.
All day, every single day, we are surrounded
by hyenas and vultures.
They are looking for our weak points. The
nature of a hyena and a vulture, they
don't attack you when you're strong.
They follow you. They're willing to follow for
as long as they need to. They will
circle you. They will look. They will wait.
As soon as they see weakness, they see
time to strike now.
That's their nature. That's how they operate.
So weakness comes from within.
When that happens, you are giving yourself and
your children, and your people, and your nation,
and your safety.
You're giving it to the enemy on a
silver platter, and then they treat you like
a buffet.
Whoever wants will take what they want, and
there's nothing that we do. We are able
to do about it in that state.
Allah says in the Quran,
Indeed, it is not the eyes that go
blind, but rather it is the hearts in
the chest that grow blind.
Brothers and sisters, they do not fear our
numbers.
We have 2,000,000,000 in this ummah.
What are we able to do?
If they feared our numbers, they wouldn't so
brazenly attack Gaza as they are doing now.
Attack our children in broad daylight. May Allah
lift the shackles of oppression from our brothers
and sisters in Gaza,
and everywhere around the world. If they feared
our 2,000,000,000 numbers, they would not be able
to do that in broad daylight.
In our day today, with our 2,000,000,000 umma,
we can't even send a cup of water
to a a child who needs to drink
without asking permission from the same enemy that
is attacking our child our children.
And guess what? They don't give us permission.
They say, no. We don't give you permission.
And then we say, okay. We're just gonna
have to take it.
What value does that number, the 2,000,000,000 bring
if this is our state today?
However, what does the enemy actually fear?
They fear our hearts.
That is why they do every single thing
in their power. That is why they invest
so much money
to make sure that our hearts stay dead,
that our hearts stay attached to dunya, into
TV shows, and to sports teams, and to
luxuries and comfort,
And and our hearts are divided into different
nations and different tribes and different colors. I
don't like you because you're a different race.
I don't like you because you're a different,
language. You
the enemies drew up the borders for us,
and they said, you don't belong to me,
so you don't belong to me. They love
this. They they cannot
thank us enough for this behavior.
As long as our hearts remain this way,
our enemy says, thank you so much. In
fact,
they laugh at us as they destroy us.
May Allah lift these shackles from our hearts.
I wanna give you guys
a hadith from our beloved prophet Muhammad
in which he gave us a warning,
and he gave us a way to remedy
this situation, a way to fix this situation.
Listen to this.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
was with the companions one day, and he
gave them a warning. He said,
the other nations will soon summon each other
to attack you in the same way that
people invite others to share their dish.
Like, hey, please come. No. You please please
have some of my dinner.
He said that's how they will treat our
ummah.
So somebody asked him, oh messenger of Allah,
will that be because we will have very
small numbers
when that time comes? The prophet
replied, no. No. No. No. You will be
very very numerous at that time.
However, you will be like the froth,
the scum, and the rubbish that is carried
down by the ocean.
Do you know in the ocean, everywhere you
look there's that white foam.
It's so light and useless, it doesn't have
any value but it's everywhere,
but it doesn't have any power.
He said, this is the example of the
at the time. You will not be small
in number, but you will not have
strength and power.
And Allah will remove the fear of you
from the hearts of your enemies.
And he will cast into your hearts.
Somebody asked, oh, messenger of Allah, what is?
And he replied,
love of this world
and a fear and a dislike of death.
We ask Allah to use us and not
replace us. We ask Allah to remove the
from our hearts.
Brothers and sisters,
we need to reevaluate
our relationship with comforts and luxury.
I do not say that comforts and luxury
are haram.
All I'm saying is that we need to
reevaluate our relationship with them. We need to
see, am I overdoing it? Have I gotten
so complacent?
Am I falling into the description that the
prophet Muhammad salallahu alaihi wa sallam just said?
Because keep in mind, they said, oh message
of Allah, why will we be we be
in that weak situation? He said, this is
why.
It's
because your obsession with the world, with dunya
and luxuries and comforts and ease and so
on and getting more and more and more
and your fear and dislike of death.
And that, you know, this is probably a
conversation for another time so we can expand
on it more. When you fear and you
dislike death, it's a cowardly thing, but it
also means that you're starting to doubt the
afterlife.
You're not putting all your hopes and dreams
in the afterlife, you're putting it all into
this dunya. But as we said, that is
a conversation to be expanded on at a
later time.
So we need to reevaluate our relationship
with luxuries
for a number of reasons. The first is
what we just said.
Our enemies
are probing, they're investigating, they're inspecting our weakness.
For as long as we remain weak and
divided, we are we remain a very easy
target for them, and we will never fix
the umma's problems until we fix this issue.
Allah will not change the situation of a
people until they change what is within their
selves, what is within their hearts. So
we need to overcome our obsession with dunya
and we need to teach our kids to
do the same
Insha'Allah.
The second reason why we need to reevaluate
our current relationship with comforts and luxuries,
is because the world is not like it
used to be.
For those who are unaware, it's it's about
time to become aware. The job market is
not like it used to be. We are
in a recession.
The economy is not like it used to
be. Inflation is through the roof and prices
are going up. It's not as easy as
it used to be 10 years ago, 15
years ago.
Even if you have a job, may Allah
bless you and and continue to provide you.
Even if you have a job, job security
is not the same. People are getting laid
off every week.
So I don't say this to make us
feel depressed, and sad, and anxiety, rather I
say this to wake us up.
Why should we reevaluate our relationship with luxury?
Why should you spend less on comforts and
and and, and the excess things like vacations
and this and that? Why? Because the world
is not like it used to be. Because
you need to teach your kids that
the world is getting a bit tough tougher,
so we should get tougher as well.
So we should not spend our summer our
entire summer wasting it. We should be learning
skills. We should be building. We should be
saving some money. That is reason number 2
as for why we should reevaluate our relationship
with luxuries.
I will say
the following words of Omar He
used to say,
Umar Al Khattab radiAllahu Anhu he lived during
the hard times and then he was khalifa
when it was the easy times.
It became a lot easier and the wealth
entered the ummah. So he used to warn
the people, he used to say,
do not get too comfortable
because luxuries don't last.
SubhanAllah. Very wise way of thinking.
Doesn't just mean don't be too comfortable. It
means introduce some difficulty into your life and
in your kids life.
Because they should know they shouldn't be too
spoiled.
What happens when your kids get spoiled
or when you spoil your kids rather? It
means that if life becomes a little bit
more difficult in the future as we anticipate
that it might happen,
they are unable to cope.
They are unable to they don't have any
skills to deal with it. They don't know.
They don't have work ethic.
And so, god forbid, they fail in those
circumstances. So what are some action items we
can take? Number 1,
there are still some weeks left of summer.
I want every parent in here, every older
brother, older sister, every mentor, and every child
as well. I want you to re think
about what you've done with the summer so
far.
And I want you to say, I can't
let my children waste the entire summer on
play and and and phones and Netflix and
and games and this and that,
and they did not learn anything. They did
not benefit.
Depending on your child's age, all children should
be in some sort of classes in the
summer. Come to the masjid for Quran, come
for lectures, come for activities and programs.
The older the child is, the more you
enroll them in other things. And at a
certain age, for the sons, you've you put
them out to work. Make them go and
work. Make them learn the power the what
goes into earning a dollar. If they're older,
you send them to an internship.
They always should be learning, always should be
growing, always should be building. They should know
what the world is like out there so
they don't get spoiled and their brain doesn't
turn into mush. It doesn't rot sitting on
the TV on TikTok and so on all
day long. That is the first action item
we can take. There's always even if we've
made mistakes in the past, we can always
fix from now. And
our kids, we can avoid spoiling our kids
and let them get stronger and more wise
and more ready for the future inshallah.
Action item number 2.
Some of us may be planning a nice
fancy vacation.
Vacations are not haram.
However, I would say,
challenge yourself to cut the cost of that
vacation in half. If you were planning to
spend $10,000,
spend 5.
And the rest,
show your kids. Tell your kids, hey, listen.
We were gonna have this great vacation this
summer. We're still gonna have a very good
one. We'll go somewhere closer.
But the rest of the money, we're gonna
send it to Gaza. We're gonna send it
to Sudan. We're gonna send it to Yemen.
So that our brothers and sisters who can't
find food to eat, they find food and
we still get to enjoy, but they are
more deserving of this extra money. You teach
these lessons to your kids and Allah will
put 10 times more barakah in that lesser
vacation than the one that you plan to
do.
Action item number 3.
Summer is wedding season.
Many of our youth have gotten married. May
Allah bless their their their
union.
And many of our youth are looking to
get married. May Allah grant them righteous spouses.
Many of us are getting our children married
and so on and so forth.
If you are getting married this summer or
in the future even,
I want you Whatever you were planning to
spend on your wedding, cut that in half.
We already overspend.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala loves
marriage and loves for Muslims to get married.
However, let's not turn something that Allah loves
into something that Allah hates by doing all
kinds of haram at our weddings and giving
ourselves a million excuses.
And on top of that, we we are
extravagant and wasteful in our wedding while our
brothers and sisters starve. It's about time that
we wake up.
And these 10 months need to make that
that have passed in Gaza. We're seeing the
most brutal
evil being done to our brothers and sisters.
We're seeing people who can't find food and
drink. It's about time that we start saying,
the world has changed in my eyes
And I can no longer be enjoying at
the peak of my luxury when my brothers
and sisters can't find food. I I I
can't stomach that. I will still get married,
we'll we'll we'll still have events, we'll still
have akhika, we'll still have programs, but we'll
do them with less spending.
Allah says,
Allah says, eat and drink but don't be
wasteful. Allah does not love those who are
wasteful.
So challenge yourself. Cut those costs on those
luxury programs, and those luxury events, and those
luxury things. Cut the costs by half and
you will see that Allah doubles the barakah
for you in in
response. So in conclusion brothers and sisters, we
have three reasons
to reevaluate our relationship with luxuries and comforts.
The first reason is for our enemies.
The hyenas out there, they want us to
be too comfortable because when you're comfortable you're
spoiled and when you're spoiled they can defeat
us and pick us apart like a buffet.
The second reason to reevaluate our relationship with
luxury is for our ummah.
We should not be at the peak of
our luxury while while our ummah cannot find
food. That is not how a believer should
act. So we should cut it down and
send some excess and save some for a
rainy day, which is reason number 3, why
we should reevaluate our relationship with luxuries, is
for ourselves and our kids.
More than ever in this recession, in the
way the economy is headed, in the way
jobs are headed, in the way inflation is
headed, more than ever in our lifetime, we
have to be realize
that easy mode is turned off. We We
are no longer living in easy mode and
we need to prepare our kids for a
future where it might be harder to find
jobs. It might be harder to save money.
It might be harder to spend on groceries.
So
so do not get too comfortable for
luxuries do not last forever. We teach our
kids, make them resilient, treat teach them work
ethic, teach them skills that they will thank
you for for the rest of their life,
and
on
top of that, our will rise through these
efforts by Allah's permission. All three of these
reasons fall under
All three of these reasons
are in the path of Allah and I
ask Allah to reward us accordingly.
Remember, wealth is a gift,
but luxury is a choice.
And especially in the current conditions, it is
a bad choice. We ask Allah to grant
us wisdom. We ask Allah to put barakah
in our risk. We ask Allah to grant
righteous spouses for those who are looking to
get married. We ask Allah to grant a
halal job and income for those who are
looking for work. We ask Allah to protect
our children from being spoiled. We ask Allah
to guide us and to guide others through
us, and we ask Allah to lift the
shackles of oppression from our umma around the
world and to make us a means of
aid for them in word and deed.