Mustafa Khattab – Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People
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AI: Transcript ©
I bear witness that there is none worthy
of our worship except Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
and I bear witness that Muhammad Sallallahu Wa
Salam, peace be upon him, is the seed
of the Prophets and the final Messenger to
all of humanity.
Whoever
Allah guides, there is none to misguide, and
whoever Allah
leaves astray, there is none to guide aright.
Alayom insha'Allah salahuahu aluwajeevaan
su'alimuhimjiddan
So inshallah, in today's book, by the next
20 minutes, I'll try to answer this, question
in everyone's mind. So Muslims ask this question,
and non Muslims ask the same question. So
the question is,
why do bad things happen to good people?
And I see a lot of things, like
people, like some Muslims, they are not practicing,
they are Muslims by name, they are not
practicing, and as soon as they start to
pray and practice,
something terrible happens to them. Their life before
practicing was easy,
Then, once they became practicing, problems happened to
them.
And I've seen some brothers and sisters who
accepted Islam.
Before Islam, their lives were easy. And as
soon as they accepted Islam,
problems happened to them. And they come to
me and say, Well, I was healthy before
Islam, and when I accepted Islam, I had
a brain tumor.
I found out that I have cancer.
My cat died.
Something terrible happened to them.
So on and so on and so forth.
Someone, for example, will start practicing, or he
or she is a good person, they are
not harming anyone, and their life is difficult.
They get laid off,
they lose their mother, their child dies, and
so on and so forth.
So the question is, why do bad things
happen to good people? And some people even
ask, is this a sign that Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala doesn't like me anymore? Allah hates
me?
So this is the question.
So inshaAllah, I'm gonna try to answer this
question. To start with,
Allah
tests us in different ways. Sometimes He will
test you with a good thing, like money,
a position, a good health, or He will
test you with something terrible, like the loss
of a family member, the loss of a
job, your car breaks down, and so on
and so forth. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
says in the Quran,
Allah says it in at least a couple
of places in the Quran that I will
always test you, I'll put you to the
test
with good things and bad things
to see if you are really truthful, if
you are honest with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
or if you'll be up to the test
or not.
And we'll give you different reasons why Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will test us, but basically,
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will test us with
the good and the bad.
If If you read the Quran, you see
so many stories. Some people were tested with
good, it turned out to be something terrible
for them, and some people were tested with
something bad or something evil and it turned
out to be something fantastic for them.
Again Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says it in
Surah Baqal.
It may happen that you hate something
from the bottom of your heart, and it
turns out to be something beautiful, something good
for you. And maybe you will love something,
and it turns out to be something,
catastrophic, something disastrous
for you.
Take for example in the story of Karumun.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala blessed him with money,
lots of money. He was a billionaire,
like Donald Trump. He was a billionaire, he
had lots of money.
How did he use his money?
So his money contributed actually to his destruction.
It didn't benefit him.
Say for example, the man of the 2
gardens in Suraqaaf that we eat on the
day of Jum'ah. He was very wealthy, but
he was arrogant,
so it didn't benefit him.
Allah
attested some people with,
their
throne, for example.
He
was in a very high position.
He was hiding in the land, but he
was arrogant and he was abusive, and he
was destroyed at the end.
So something good, people have used, and it
turned out to be something bad for them.
And this happens to you sometimes.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will bless you with
something, and it turns out to be something
terrible for you. There's this brother
I met in Vancouver.
He came many years ago. He came in
the 19 sixties.
So I used to joke with him, I
told him, You you came right after the
first people that were stamping your passport when
you came in the 19 sixties. It came
a long time. So he got married
to a lady,
and for the first 3 or 4 years
in the marriage, they didn't have any kids.
He was very disparate. He was crying, You
Allah, give me a son, give me a,
you know, a baby.
Eventually Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala gave them a
baby.
They had a pool in their backyard.
The baby was crawling, and the baby fell
down in the pool, and for the next
20 or 25 years, the baby was in
a coma.
And he was dependent on all these tubes
and life support.
So the father was telling me,
this incident, and this kid, I was desperate
and I was praying. And when I Allah
gave me the baby, I thought this is
the best thing that has ever happened to
me, and it turned out to be a
disaster. Because this kid destroyed my life because
of what happened,
all the money I spent,
I had to he divorced his wife. His
life was devastating.
So he said, maybe it would have been
better for me if Allah didn't give me
a baby. So it turned out to be
bad for me.
In some other situations, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
will give you something bad, you think it's
the it's the end of the world, and
it turns out to be something good for
you.
So now put yourself in the place of
Yusuf Alaihi Salam Fil Beir, in the well.
What would come to your mind? I'm finished,
my life is over, Khadas, I'm gonna die.
This that's it, I'm done.
Then he came out, they put him in
jail.
This is the end of my life. It's
over for me.
All this contributed to him being the Aziz
of Egypt, the 2nd strongest man in the
country,
in the richest country of the time.
So all of these bad things contributed or
paved the way for him to hold his
position. So it turned out to be something
very good for him.
And also for Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam, when
the people tried to kick him out of
Mecca, it turned out to be something good
for him because he found receptive people in
Madira, he established a Muslim state, and they
became powerful.
Something good.
You read in the story of Musa, when
the people of Araun tried to kill him,
he had to escape to Madia,
only to meet his wife, they got married.
On the way back to Egypt, he lost
his way, according to Surah Qasas and Suratah,
where he found when he got lost, he
found the fire on the bush, and this
is where he spoke to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala, he received Darizalah from Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala. So it could be something bad, but
it turns out to be something very good
for you.
And only Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala knows what
is good and what is not good for
you. Because we only see a little bit
of the picture, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala sees
the whole picture.
So, you should trust Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And some of the scholars say, if you
were to look at the Qadr of Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, and the different options, and
the different scenarios that Allah has in store
for you, you would only choose what Allah
already chose for you.
So you should have rida' and plana'a with
the Qadr of Allah
and you shouldn't question or protest.
Now, to answer the question,
if something bad happens to you, does this
mean that Allah hates you, or he's not
happy with you? Well, not necessarily, because we
see a lot of hadith in which the
Prophet says,
Inna Allah
I will get to this in a minute.
And the Prophet SAW says in another hadith,
No one was tested
more than the Prophets. Ashadul Nasibtilaal
alambial.
So no one was tested more than the
Prophets.
So, for example,
Prophets, some Prophet lost their lives, Zakariyah and
Yahia alayhi wasalam. They were killed.
Some Prophets were faced with rejection.
People were kafir in their message.
Some of their followers were abused and killed,
like Muhammad and so on and so forth.
I think, by reading the stories in, Qasas
al Anbiya, and the stories of Sahaba and
the Prophet
I think one of the biggest challenges that
faced the Prophets,
this is the biggest Ibtila they have, is
when they have a kafir in their family.
Like, say, for example, in the story of
Ibrahim,
think the biggest challenge he had was that
his father was a Kafir, a disbeliever,
and he was his enemy.
In the story of Nuh, his son was
a Kafir, and he was against his father.
In the story of Lut,
his wife was his enemy.
So why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is doing
this? Because the Kufar at the time of
Nuh and Lut and Muhammad SAW A'SILAM, they
would say, if this religion was good,
their the Prophet's family would be the first
one to believe in them. But this is
not true. In many cases,
your own flesh and blood would be against
you, and this would be used against you
by the enemies. So the lesson that Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala is trying to teach us
is that Hidayah comes from Allah,
not from the Prophets. The Prophets are just
a means, they're delivering a message. So this
is why the son of Nuh was Kaafir,
the son of Ibrahim was Kaafir,
but the wife of Eran was a believer.
How did that happen?
It's Allah,
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala works in mysterious ways. So
sometimes you have good people around you,
maybe
Allah's Qadr for you not to be good,
and maybe you would have evil and wicked
people around you, and it turns out you
become a good people. So Allah
works in mysterious ways.
And I also mentioned the story like Muhammad
he lost his children, 6 out of the
7 children died in his lifetime, he lost
Khadija,
he lost Zaynah bintu Khuzaima
So he had so many challenges in his
life, and still he was smiling and he
was happy with the father of
So now back to the question,
why does Allah
allow bad things to happen to good people?
So if your philosophy in life
is that bad things will happen to bad
people,
and nothing bad will happen to good people.
If you think that Allah will not put
you to the test
and trials and Imtila because you're a good
guy, this is just like when someone who
is vegetarian, who is standing in front of
a bull, they think that the bull is
not gonna attack them, just because you're a
vegetarian.
Well, it has nothing to do with it.
So this is part of the grand scheme
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, the big picture.
He will test people for good reasons.
So,
one good reason that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
will test you, when someone takes shahada and
becomes Muslim, when someone who is not practicing
started to practice,
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will test you with
a tilah
to refine you,
to see how strong your faith is.
Those who work with jewelry and gold and
stuff, they know that the fiercest or the
strongest the fire is the purest gold that
you will get.
All the junk will be melted in a
couple of minutes. What remains
is the fine gold, and this is why
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is testing the Prophets
and the sahabah, although He loved them,
someone like Abuja,
someone like Abu Lah, they lived an easy
life, although they were enemies of Allah. You
see someone like Muhammad SaaSalaam,
Bin A'radaylaahu anhu, and so on and so
forth. They were the best, and they were
the most beloved to Allah, but they were
tested.
So, most of the time it has nothing
to do with love and hatred in this
case.
So Allah
will test your faith to see how strong
your faith is. Is your faith in Allah
real, or this is something just superficial?
And Allah
says it at the beginning of Surah Al
Qabud.
Aliflamim
Do people think
that once they say we are true believers,
that they would not be put to the
test?
I tested those who came before, so
so Allah will distinguish
those who are true in faith, and those
who are faking, those who are lies. So
this is the first one. So Allah
will point out those who are true in
faith, and those who are faking.
Number 2, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala would put
you through the test because He loves you
so much.
Maybe you did something bad, you made a
mistake. You're a good person, but you make
mistakes. We're all human beings, we're not angels,
we make mistakes.
There are 2 options here.
Option number 1, you don't make tawqa before
your death, and you will go to akhla
with a sin, and on the Day of
Judgment Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala would question you
in front of everyone, from the time of
Adam till the day of judgment. We're talking
about billions of people, and this would be
a huge
humiliation for you in front of everyone.
Or, the other option, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
will put you to the test,
and when you are patient, Allah will remove
your sins.
Where do we get this from? From an
authentic hadith, Yatul Midi Yapul An Abu SAW
A'SALLAH.
So the Prophet SAWHSA wa sallam said in
this authentic hadithi at Tirmili, that Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala will be testing the believers, men
and women,
in terms of their wealth,
and health, and their family, and children, until
they meet Allah with no sins.
Which means that every time Allah will test
you, and you are patient, He will remove
your sins from you.
So I'm gonna request you please, if you
can move up, please, because people are waiting
outside.
Move up please.
So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will use your
patience in this difficulty
to remove the hardship from you.
Number 3, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will put
you to the test
and make it difficult for you,
and sometimes you will remain in the difficulty
for a long time for a good reason
because Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala wants to bring
you closer.
Why? Because Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala He created
us,
and He knows us better than we know
ourselves.
He knows when things are good for you.
You live a comfortable life, you have the
money, you have the car, you have a
good wife or a good husband, you have
kids, a good paying job,
why do you need Allah?
Most of the people, they turn their back
to Allah
But when things are difficult for you, you
don't have a job,
you don't have kids, you are sick, in
and out of the hospital,
then you'll always be making dua to Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And this is mentioned in
many places in the Quran.
So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says, When I
shower
My favors on people,
they turn their back on Me, Falas, they
don't pray, they don't need Me.
But when things become very difficult for them,
they always come to me crying and begging.
So this is what happens, I see a
lot of people when they have exams, their
time is very limited, they have their finals.
So they pray on time, although their time
is very limited.
As soon as they succeed,
they don't have time for salah, although they
are afraid. They have nothing to do. So
Allah
knows it.
When someone goes to jail, or someone goes
to the hospital for a surgery, or a
sister goes to deliver her baby, they make
dua.
And when Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala delivers the
baby safely,
and when the person gets out of jail,
when they leave the hospital and they become
healthy,
most people don't pray, and they don't remember
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Also,
the reason why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will
keep the Iqta'ala for a long time, is
because if he answers your du'a quickly,
you will take the rimah and run away,
and you never pray again. So Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala will keep the Iitira for a
long time, because He likes to keep your
company. He likes you to keep praying and
asking Him, and this is something good that
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala loves.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala loves
it when people pray to him and ask
him. But human beings, when you ask them,
most of the time they say, No, I
can't give you. Or even if they give
you and they put a smile on their
face, I call it a screensaver,
in their heart they're inspired.
They pray, You Allah, take him. Why is
he always
taking my car? Why is he always asking
for money? They're not happy! So this is
why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala would put us
to the test. Another way, very quickly insha'Allah,
and we'll continue next week insha'Allah.
Another way,
bad things happen to you, so Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala will save you from something worse.
Back in the 19 nineties, there was,
for example, there was, the World Cup, I
think it was hosted by European country. There
was a journalist from Egypt,
he missed the flight to go and watch
and report the World Cup.
He thought it the the flight was gonna
be at 9,
9,
AM 9 PM, and it turned out to
be 9 AM in the morning. So he
missed the flight. He was 12 hours late.
He was crying every step of the way.
Next morning, first thing, he got the paper,
and it says that the flight
crashed in the Mediterranean,
and he was dancing in the street.
So Allah
allowed something bad to happen, so he can
save him from a worse situation.
There's also the story,
it was lower than he was back then.
There was a doctor
who was traveling from, say, Cairo to Alexandria
or, say, from,
Saint Catherine's to Ottawa, and on the way
his car broke down. He was visiting his
family, and he was going to his house.
He was staying by himself in Ottawa. So
on the way, his car broke down. So
he had to spend the night in a
motel in Mesasaya. When he went to his
house in the morning, he found that that
the roof of his house collapsed on his
bed. It's a true story! So he was
mad when his car broke down, then when
he went home, he said SubhanAllah Allah, save
me from death!
So you never know, it could be something
bad, and it turns out to be something
good. And the last point for today,
maybe Allah
would take something good from you,
to give you something better than what He
has taken from you. Maybe they will fire
you, you will get laid off, only to
find out that Allah gave you a better
paying job, a better job.
In the story of Abu Salamah Radhaal, and
the story is in the Sahib Muslim.
So what happened when her husband died, Abu
Salamah,
she was crying, and she was sad,
she heard the Hadith from the Prophet SAW
Hassan inside Muslim,
when something bad happens to you, and you
say Allah
So, in this hadith in Sahih Muslim,
the Prophet
says, if Allah takes something from you, and
you say, Allah,
give me the reward
for my patience in this difficult time, Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will give you something better.
So whenever Musa Salaam used to say this
hadith, she would say, Who is better than
Abu Salam? Woman Khayyum min Abi Salaam. Who
is better than my husband? I can't see
anyone.
Then after her Idda, the Prophet SAW proposed
and he married her, Fakkal attaqur wallahi
laasoo wallahi sallallahu
khayum min abi salam So when the Prophet
SAW proposed after her Idda, she got married
to the best man ever and she used
to say, wallahi,
the Prophet SAW
is a 1000000 times better than Abu Salam.
What a great honor to be married to
this man. So always look at the full
picture, and thank Allah for choosing this color
for you. We'll continue next to him, insha'Allah.
So inshaAllah, just for, the time, I'll make
a couple of quick important announcements,
and we'll continue the announcements after our salaam,
inshaAllah.
So this event is coming up on November
26th.
We call it the Anatolia Motivation Conference. This
is the first time we have it, and
it's a very fantastic conference. We got some
of the top speakers in Canada,
from GTA, from Niagara Falls, and from other,
places.
So we
have 11, 12 speakers. So Insha'Allah, November 26th,
we have this conference from 12 at noon
till 9 at night.
So this is something beneficial to the families,
for your children and and youth, so make
sure inshallah,
they come.
So, the subject and the theme for this
year is Proud Muslims and Successful Canadians.
So, the speakers will talk about,
beautiful
examples and, incredible examples from Islamic Islamic heritage,
and some,
good examples from their own personal,
stories. We have a bazaar, we have babysitting,
and so on and so forth. So inshallah,
make sure you come. The tickets are available.
Make sure you benefit
from the Erlendberg,
discount. Until
November 19th, the tickets are $15.
After November 19th, it's gonna be 20. For
kids, 4 years and under, free. Unless you
wanna use the babysitting,
service, $5.
Children, 4 years to 12 years old, there
are only $5. If you wanna use the
childcare,
free. So, inshallah, this is very beneficial, and
we hope that Allah
will give us the benefit. If you want
to,
buy your ticket online or know more about
the, event, go to the website anatoliamotivations.com.
Anatoliamotivations.com,
and the tickets are available also downstairs. There
is a table, you can buy them inshallah.
The second and also important announcement,
we have a beautiful program for the youth,
Saturdays,
6 to 8 pm
at the Frankie McKigney Frank McKigney Community Center,
every Saturday, 6 to 8. This is a
beautiful program
for the youth, the boys 13 and up.
InshaAllah, they can join us for 2 hours.
We pray Baha'i HaNisha together,
and we, play together basketball, volleyball, soccer, and
so on and so forth. And we also
I give them a lecture at the end
for 15, 20 minutes. So this is a
very good program for Tarbiyah. If your kids
are here, 13 years and up, boys, they
can join insha'Allah. I'm trying to start a
program for the sisters as well at the
Masjid here. So insha'Allah, make sure you encourage
your kids to attend. It's only $5 every
Saturday,
6 to 8 at Frank Mahickney. We ask
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to give us the
best in this life and the best in
the life to come. And we ask Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to give us suffering in
difficult times, and we ask Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala to help us to be grateful to
him in good times.