Mirza Yawar Baig – Put Allah first
AI: Summary ©
The decision to become the strongest and most experienced leaders in the world was a pilot program that showed that Islam worked in every corner of the world. The speaker shares a story about a woman who struggled with a test and eventually succeeded, but ultimately struggled and ultimately succeeded. The idea of Islam's test for success is discussed, and the speaker emphasizes that it is not a simple concept.
AI: Summary ©
My brothers and sisters, the thing I remind
myself anyways, choose Allah, choose the obedience of
Allah.
If you see the Sahaba, they were ordinary
people like us, they were people, they had
families, they had businesses, they had problems, they
had difficulties, they fell sick, they died, their
business did well, their business did badly, and
so on and so on.
There is no difference, it's just the difference
of time and place.
But other than that, if you take life,
if you take the challenges they had, same
thing, they were people like us.
But in a period of 23 years, they
went from being the most oppressed, the weakest,
the most troubled people to becoming the leaders
of the community, the leaders of their entire
community.
Those days were the days before nation states,
so I can't say country because it's not
a country, but that area, the whole of
in 23 years, the leaders of the Hejaz,
and after that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
gave them the rest of the world, rest
of the literally known world, well, all the
way north to practically to the boundaries of
Europe and then east all the way to
China and India and so on.
Now, what happened?
How did that happen?
Alhamdulillah, I've been studying this for many years,
and if you ask me to tell you
in one line, I will say the one
line was they took one single decision, which
they made that decision completely non-negotiable, like
to say in Urdu, atal, cannot be changed,
no matter what.
And everything else will be changed, will be
altered, will be molded to suit that decision,
right?
Now, what is that decision?
The decision they took was that Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala will be obeyed.
We will obey Allah.
So now you say, okay, I agree, we
obey Allah, but there is no but.
There is no but.
We say, no, no, no, but you see,
I have my work schedule, no but.
I will obey Allah.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, about the
salat, he said, has been prescribed at specific
times.
When the time for salat comes, I will
pray, period.
This is non-negotiable.
No, but my boss does not give me
time off, I will pray.
I will ask for time off.
If I don't get time off, I'll say,
deduct my salary.
If he says, I will sack you, I
said, no problem, take the job, keep the
job, but I will pray.
Non-negotiable, right?
Similarly, eating.
What Allah made halal, I will eat.
What Allah did not make halal, I will
not eat, no matter what.
No excuses.
No excuses.
Similarly, earning.
I will earn only from halal sources.
If you say, no, no, no, but you
know this country, that country, no, no, no
country, no nothing.
What is halal, Allah made halal, I will
earn from this.
If you do this haram thing, you will
become more wealthy.
No, I will not become more wealthy.
I will get the anger of Allah, and
that is not wealth, that is musiba, that
is the worst thing I can get.
I don't want that, right?
I will obey Allah, as simple as that.
Everything else will be molded, will be altered,
will be modified to sort the obedience of
Allah.
This is the single change that the Sahaba,
Ridwanullahi alaihi wa sallam, made in their lives.
And the result of that was that 14
centuries later today, when we take the name
of the Sahabi, we say, radiyallahu anhu.
Right?
Now, what did they do to them?
Because of this test, did their lives suffer?
Did they become poorer?
Did they become worse off in the dunya?
No.
They actually, the world completely transformed and changed.
They became the leaders of the world.
Now, the time of the Sahaba, the period
of the Sahaba, as I have mentioned many
times before, I call this the pilot program.
Like in business consulting, when we want to
introduce an intervention in an organization, we don't
try to introduce it to the whole organization,
because it becomes too complicated, too complex, too
big, too varied.
So we say we introduce it in one
place.
So there is one location, one factory, one
business, one part of the business.
We do it there.
We make it succeed as what we call
proof of concept, means that this shows that
this concept works, concept is successful.
And then we take it and we cascade
it down to the whole organization.
So the time of Nabi Salaam, the time
of the Sahaba, in my view, historically speaking,
was the pilot program to prove the concept
that Islam works.
That Islam is not some impractical theory that
came from somewhere, you know, a bunch of
Middle Eastern Arabs, they did something.
Well, I'm not Arab, I'm American, I'm Australian,
I'm Indian, I'm something, you know, doesn't work
yet.
No, this is something which is universal, which
works everywhere in the world.
This was proven by this experiment, a highly
successful pilot project, which proved the concept that
Islam works.
And what does it mean by Islam works?
It means that if I put Allah first,
Allah is first, but if I acknowledge that,
and if I put Allah first in my
life, then my whole life will change and
I will become the most beloved, the most
influential, the most powerful, the most successful person
that exists in my society.
This is what the Sahaba proved.
Let me tell you a story of today's
world.
One of my very good friends, Alhamdulillah, is
Sheikh Yahya Ibrahim in Australia, Hafizullah from in
Perth.
Now, he tells a wonderful story.
He says that, I think he was in
Canada or something at that time before he
came to Australia.
He said that there was an exam, he
had an exam, and this was an exam
in psychology.
So it so happened that exam was on
Friday and the timing of the exam was
the timing of Salatul Jummah.
So he said he went to his professor
and he said to the professor, look, I
have this, I have to go and pray.
And he said, in any case for him,
additional issue was that he was also the
Imam.
So he said, I have to go and
pray, I am the Imam.
And this test is exactly at that time.
And so can you permit me to do
the test, you know, before?
So instead of doing the test, say Jummah
is at one o'clock, he said, can
I do the test at twelve o'clock?
The professor said, no.
He said, you have to come and do
this.
He said, I have to pray.
He said, I don't care, not my job.
You have to pray, you decide how to
pray.
Don't pray.
He said, no, don't pray is not an
option.
I have to pray.
It's up to you.
Do what you want, but test time will
not be changed.
So Sheikh Yahya Ibrahim says, I decided I
am going to go and pray.
And then we'll see what happens.
So he said, he went to pray and
he said, as soon as the Jummah finished,
he said, I ran back and I came
to the to the test hall, the exam
hall.
There was only 10 minutes left.
There's 10 minutes left for the test to
finish.
So he said, I went there, I took
the question paper from the professor.
The professor had a, you know, a smiley
smile on his face.
He knew I was going to fail.
He said, and there are 80 questions, 80
questions to answer in 10 minutes.
By then you were less than 10 minutes.
So he said, question number one, I marked
C.
Question number two, I marked C.
He said, something told him, mark C, I
marked C.
And he said, this I did for all
the 80 questions.
He said, I just marked C.
I didn't go to * with it.
I mean, I don't know.
I don't even have time to read the
questions because in the 10 minutes, 80 questions,
I can't even read it.
He said, I just marked blindly, I marked
C from one to 80, every question.
He said, I gave the paper inside.
He said, next morning, we go to the
class, the professor comes and he's handing out
the papers.
And the professor says, we did something yesterday,
which we are never going to do again.
He said, what we did was, we set
the question paper in such a way that
we wanted to test your risk-taking ability
and your confidence, your psychological confidence in yourself.
So he said, we set the question in
such a way that the right answer for
all the questions is C.
The right answer for all the questions is
C.
And guess who got 100%?
Yeah, yeah, you're right.
And I said, I didn't even think about
the question.
He said, I did not even read the
questions.
The man puts Allah first.
He says, I have to pray Jummah.
Allah made Jummah first.
Test, no test, whatever I have to.
He does that and Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala takes care of his issue.
He says, 100% in the test.
He said, nobody, all class, nobody, I mean,
obviously, nobody will mark, even if they're guessing,
nobody will mark the same A, B or
C or whatever for every question.
He did that.
And he didn't do it consciously thinking that,
nothing, he just did it because out of
just desperation.
But Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala made it
such that this turned out to be the
right thing to do.
So I remind myself when you, Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala has his ways.
Our job is put Allah first, because Allah
is first.
Do what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala told
us to do.
Don't do what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
told us not to do.
And do it in the way of Muhammad
Rasulullah.
That's it.
Life is easy.
Success is easy.
We just have to do what Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala ordered us to do.
In the way of Muhammad.
Ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to help
us to do that which pleases him and
to save us from that which does not
please him.