Mirza Yawar Baig – Does life seem unreal
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the confusion surrounding the punishment system in Islam, which is designed to reward individual behavior. The importance of learning history and avoiding mistakes is also emphasized. The speaker discusses the realism of life and the choice made by the owner of the game, which is the one who decides. The choice is made based on the right choice, not the rule-maker, and the decision is made based on the right choice, not the rule-maker.
AI: Summary ©
In the name of Allah, and praise be
to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon
His Messenger, Ubaid.
So, Omar asked me another question.
Does it seem, has it ever seemed to
you that life is unreal?
He said, it seems to me sometimes life
is unreal.
Like what we are doing now, we're walking
here, and it doesn't seem real, it seems
unreal.
It's one like this, when you think about
it, it's absolutely clean, pure air.
The phone can't capture it just now, but
I'm seeing flights of geese and duck.
I know they're my lads because I've seen
them before.
If you can catch them, I'll show them
to you.
No, they're gone, okay.
So, there are lots of them up in
the distance there, geese, ducks, and as I
said, they are my lads.
I know that because I've seen them before.
And if you look through there, it's a
picture, can't be very good with this distance,
but all those dots that you're seeing, lots
of dots, these are all ducks and geese.
So, very beautiful.
This water is clean and pure.
This is actually drinking water for the city
of Holyoke.
So, it's clean and pure water, unpolluted, unpolluted
air.
I'm getting information about the pollution index in
Delhi, for example, which I don't even know
how anyone in Delhi does not have respiratory
problems.
Most likely they have.
And then somebody sent me something from Pakistan
that's more than double that, which is, in
a sense, because of farm fires, they burn
the stubble of the crop, so they plant
wheat, and after the harvesting, the dry stalks
and crop are there, so they set it
on fire to clean the fields, and that
creates this huge phenomenal amount of smog and
smoke in the air, which is the killer.
So, none of that.
Here we are walking through this park, which
is four lakes surrounded by forest, and different
kinds of trees in the forest.
You saw my khateras from before, which showed
these same forests in fall.
All those colours, of course, are gone now.
We just have the greens and browns, and
of course the dry trees.
I'm coming up here to some mallards, which
I will show you closer up, inshallah.
So, does it look unreal?
Of course it looks unreal.
And so my response to Omar was, yes,
it looks unreal.
But if you look at it from, not
so much philosophy, but from the lens of
Islam, the religion, the Qur'an, the Qur
'an al-Karim tells us that this life
is unreal.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, Allah said,
verily the life of this world is nothing
but deception.
It is deceiving, it is deception.
What looks positive is not positive.
What looks negative is not negative.
The one who looks strong is not strong.
The one who looks weak is not weak.
The one who looks as if he or
she is immensely successful and powerful, they are
not.
They are hugely unsuccessful.
They're just waiting to be punished, to get
to the place where they will be punished.
And there is no doubt that this punishment
will come, because that is a promise of
Allah.
Allah does not leave anybody unrewarded for what
they do, whether that reward is good or
bad depends on the individual.
And so it is deceptive, very deceptive.
And this is what deceives us.
This is the whole reason why, and just
think about it, I'm just thinking, for example,
why would a Muslim, who knows that Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala has declared war on
the one who deals with interests, any form
of interest, why would a Muslim still take
an interest-based loan?
Why would a Muslim not just take an
interest-based loan, but try to justify it
for himself and for others by giving all
kinds of ridiculous explanations and arguments about it,
and saying how it was prohibited then, it's
not prohibited now, and how these times are
different, those times are different, as if Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala is subject to any
of this stuff that we talk about.
Why would you do that?
Because you're deceived.
Because you are deceived.
Why would we say, look at somebody, I
don't want to take names, but look at
somebody who does something good in one area,
something clever, something smart, but if you look
at their life, their life is like a
cesspit.
Literally, it's like standing on top of a
cesspit, a pit in which the refuse from
latrines is poured in.
And you say, this is the person.
This person is a cesspit.
Because in a cesspit, the biggest lumps rise
to the top.
And that's what we have made of society.
So we say we are the most advanced,
the most educated, we are the most prosperous,
blah, blah, blah, all the superlatives that ever
existed on the face of the planet.
Of course, because we don't read any history,
just the stupidity of that statement doesn't strike
us.
All we need to do is to read
some history, and we don't need to read
ancient history.
You go back a few decades, and you
find how stupid this statement was, because there
were others who made exactly a similar kind
of statement.
And today they are six feet under, pushing
up the grass, and no one to even
mourn or regret their passing.
So, you know, my point is that, that's
the reason why they say in history, two
nice quotes, nations that don't learn from their
history are condemned to repeat it.
And the second one is that the only
thing you learn from history is that you
learn nothing.
It doesn't have to be like that, but
it is.
So imaginary.
So does this life look as if it's
imaginary?
Yes, it does.
And as I said, it is imaginary in
many ways.
Now having said that, we are not spectators,
right?
We are not spectators.
We are in the drink.
Like here, we are in that water.
Life-wise, we are in that water.
Now if you are in the water, you've
got two choices.
You swim, and one day you will get
to the side, and you can walk up
and walk away with your life intact, or
you can choose not to swim, and you
can say, well, you know, I'm a fish.
You are not a fish, you are fish
food, because you will die.
And that's the issue with life.
So life may seem to be unreal, but
we are participants in it.
Whether we like it or not, we are
players.
There are no spectators in life.
And if I'm a player in life, then
I better learn the game.
I better learn the rules of the game,
and I better learn how to play by
those rules, because I'm not the rule-maker,
I'm not the rule-changer, I'm the player.
And the one who will decide if I
won the game or lost the game is
the owner of the game.
It's not me.
So I can't kick a ball into my
own goal and say, oh, wow, fantastic, I
scored a direct hit.
That's right, you scored a direct hit, all
right, but where?
And that's the issue with life.
So Allah swt has given us the choice
of what we want to do with this
life.
So if it seems unreal, yes, but what
we need to do is to make sure
that we don't treat it as unreal.
It is real, it is very real for
us, and we need to take the right
choices.
Allah swt, in His great mercy, didn't leave
us to guess, He didn't leave us to
figure out what to do.
Allah swt gave us the choices and told
us, showed us the paths through His Kitab
and through His Nabi sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
and said, so we know this is the
path that leads to Jannah, this is the
path that leads to Jahannam.
Qul il haqqum min rabbikum fa man sha
'a fal yubin wa man sha'a fal
yakfur Allah swt said, say, the truth is
by Rabb, the truth is your Rabb, and
the one who wants to believe can believe,
the one who wants to disbelieve can disbelieve.
Obviously, inna a'tazana lilkafeena jahannama jami'a If
you disbelieve and if you insist on disbelieving,
then your destination cannot be the same as
the one who believes and you try to
live a life of obedience.
If you see here now, here is one
of the creatures of Allah, that's a squirrel,
and the squirrel is doing what squirrels do
at this time, which is he is burying
nuts, he's burying basically acorns, oak nuts, there
he digs and buries.
Now, this is a huge lesson as far
as we are concerned, because here is a
squirrel who picks up an acorn, which is
food for it, but it doesn't eat it,
it might even be hungry, but it does
eat it, it digs a hole and buries
the acorn, because the squirrel knows that these
beautiful, beautiful days that we are facing just
now and we are enjoying thoroughly, are going
to go away.
Last night the temperature fell to minus two,
so I saw my bird baths and the
water that I leave for the birds, frozen
solid.
So you're already seeing frost, and the squirrel
knows that, the squirrel knows that a time
will come when all of this will be
covered in ice and snow, and that is
when I'm going to need food.
So the squirrel is burying the food, keeping
the food in a nice safe place, so
that when the weather changes, she or he,
I don't know which one it is in
this case, will have the fruit that she
needs or he needs.
So the sense of Akhira, sense of something
which is beyond what is visible, is there
even in animals and birds.
Squirrels, on a side note, squirrels don't always
remember where they buried those oak seeds, and
that is how oak trees grow, planted by
squirrels.
And America is full of them, of oak
trees planted by squirrels, because the squirrel buried
the acorn and forgot where it was.
I'm going to go up this little elevation
here and try to show you a picture
of a very large flock of geese, which
is there on that water.
I hope I can see it.
It's imaginary life.
See this beautiful, absolutely fabulous color of this.
OK, there it goes.
Let me see now, if we can show
you this thing.
It's not the greatest picture, obviously, but I
guess that's the best we can do, given
the circumstances.
I ask God to help us to learn
the lessons and to always, always, always remind
ourselves that this life is a test.
Does it appear unreal?
Yes, because it's a simulation.
It's a test.
And that's the reason why Allah also gave
us istighfar and tawbah.
He gave us an eraser in our hand
while we are writing our paper.
You can also erase.
If you write something wrong, erase it.
Make sure that when this paper is submitted
to the examiner, that it only has good
in it, that it only has things that
you really wanted the examiner to look at
and to examine you on and to reward
you on.
That is the choice we have.