Omar Usman – The Story of Three People
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
The prophet
shared with us a story from Bani Israel.
He said that an angel was sent to
test different people,
and so he came to a man who
was a leper. He had a skin disease.
And so the angel asked him that of
all the things in this world, what would
you wish for?
And the man said, naturally, I wish to
be cured of my leprosy. I wish to
be cured of this disease. When people see
me, they're repulsed. No one wants to be
around me.
And so the angel says you'll be cured
of your disease.
And of the wealth of this world, what
do you desire the most?
What's your favorite type of wealth?
And he said that I I prefer to
have kams.
And so the angel tells him that he'll
be Allah will bless you with a pregnant
camel
who will produce many offspring.
And so then the angel went to a
man who was blind,
and he asked him the same thing. He
said, of all the things in this world,
what do you wish for the most?
And he said, I wish to be cured
of my blindness.
So the angel said, Allah will cure you
of your blindness,
and of the wealth of this world, what
do you what do you wish for the
most?
And he says, I like sheep.
And so he's given a sheep that will
end up becoming a flock.
And then he comes to a man, and
those of you familiar with the story in
the English, it says he came to a
bald man.
This seems kinda weird that he'd come to
a bald man. He mentioned 2 other severe
things, but, actually, he came to someone that
has something more like alopecia,
where the hair follicles don't even grow and
it's a sign of an autoimmune disorder.
So he came to this man, and he
said, what do you wish for? He says,
I wish to be cured of this. I
wish to be cured of this baldness that
is a result of this.
So the angel says, you'll be cured of
this, and what type of wealth do you
like?
And he says I like cows, and so
you'll be given a a herd of cows.
So some time goes by, and now their
wealth multiplies many fold.
The offspring give birth to more offspring and
more offspring and more offspring.
It's as if you were the originator of
McDonald's, and now every single franchise
is giving you a cutback.
So they were unable to accumulate vast amounts
of wealth in this way.
And then after some time, the angel comes,
and he comes in the form of
a leper
to the man that was afflicted with that
receiver.
And he says, oh, man, Allah has blessed
you with a lot.
Can you help me? I'm traveling. I need
a little bit of provision for my journey.
I need a little bit to get over
and keep going.
And the man says, no. I'm sorry. I
can't help you.
Diego says, I remember you.
You were that man that had leprosy, and
you had no possession, and nobody wanted to
be around you. And now look what you
have. Allah has blessed you.
And And he says, no. You got the
wrong person.
I inherited this. I work for this. This
is my business.
You don't know what you're talking about.
So he turns him away.
He comes to the man that had the
baldness,
and he comes in the same form as
a man afflicted with the same disease.
And he says, oh, Allah Subhanahu has blessed
you with a lot.
I'm traveling. Can you help me with some
provision on my journey?
And the man says, no. I'm sorry. I
can't help you. So he says the same
thing. He says, I remember you.
You used to have nothing. You were like
this. You were like that,
and now you have so much.
And he says the same. He says, no.
You've got the wrong guy. I'm a self
made man.
Then he goes to the man that was
afflicted with blindness,
and he goes in the form of someone
who's blind.
And he says, Allah
has blessed you with a lie.
In his name, can you please help me?
I'm traveling. I need some provision.
And the blind man says, indeed.
I used to be just like that.
I used to be blind, and I used
to have nothing,
and Allah
restored my eyesight and blessed me with wealth.
In Allah's name, take whatever you want. It's
yours.
Everything you see here, take whatever you need.
I don't care. It's all yours.
So the angel informs him. He says that
I was sent by Allah
to test you and your companions.
And Allah is pleased with you and displeased
with your companions.
Allah is pleased with you and displeased with
your companions.
Now there's something very interesting about this story.
More so than just the general lessons that
we understand at a face value,
there's something deep about the decision making process
that these three men went through.
What was it in their minds that made
them say something one way or the other?
Something that's become popularized nowadays is the concept
of an abundance mentality or scarcity mentality.
And you find people talking about this a
lot.
They'll say do things for the sake of
goodwill.
Pay it forward.
When you do good things, when you help
other people out, when you do things for
the sake of doing good,
you get good karma in return.
You put good things in the universe and
serendipity
occurs.
They go through great lengths
to try and describe something that they've observed,
but they can't describe.
You read something that's written from a completely
secular point of view, from someone that might
not even believe in god altogether.
And they will tell you, they will attest
to the fact that when they donate money
to good causes,
they find that the money comes back to
them.
And they will say, I don't know how
to explain it,
but if you want to get wealthy, you
need to give.
And what's happening is that we know the
answer.
We know that there's an element of barakah
that Allah
puts into place.
That when you do something good for the
sake of doing good, when you do something
good for the sake of Allah, when you
do something good to help someone out,
Allah puts blessing into
it. He puts in it.
And people observe this phenomenon, and they can't
describe it, and we see it right in
front of us. We understand exactly this concept
of
in our time, in our wealth, in our
life, in our families.
So we see this concept.
But what the 2 men who failed this
test were operating from was not this mentality
of abundance of doing good and helping people.
They were operating with the mentality of scarcity.
And we know the ayah of the Quran
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us.
Shaitan threatens you with poverty and orders you
to immorality.
While Allah promises you forgiveness from him and
bounty, Allah is all encompassing and knowing.
Meaning Allah
is teaching us
about abundance,
that his mercy is so vast
that it encompasses everything.
There's nothing that is not touched on this
earth except it is touched by the mercy
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
It's abundance.
But when a person thinks in this frame
of scarcity,
when we're actually being told that this is
a very complicated and complex trick of shaitan.
That shaitan is the one
that when it's time to make a decision,
when you start to evaluate your actions, when
what you're about to do,
and you start to act on feelings of
fear and feelings of loss,
that these whispers are actually a trick of
shaitan.
Allah
doesn't tell you that you will lose. It
is shaitan who tells you that you'll lose.
It is shaitan that causes this mentality,
that if I help these people out, it's
gonna decrease
my wealth and my assets and my business.
That's the mentality of shaypon.
But the mentality of abundance, the mentality of
forgiveness, the mentality of attaining barakah,
Take whatever you want. It's all yours.
I'm fully confident that I have a lord
who will provide for me.
And so we see this mentality played out
in many different ways.
The obvious example here is that of giving,
Of giving salaba, giving zakat, giving charity.
We know when we we hear every time
someone comes to fundraise, we hear the same
ahadith. Right? That when you donate, Allah
will increase many folds.
That when it's time to give, there are
so many shayateen tugging at your hand to
go back in the pocket.
Right? We hear all of these different things,
and yet we know
that when we give, Allah
will give.
That's part of the abundance.
But part of the scarcity also comes into
place in other arenas of our life.
It comes with sometimes even how we interact
with our deen. It comes with how we
even approach our knowledge and our time.
Right? These are you know, time is a
fixed asset.
If I give my time to one cause,
I'm not gonna be able to accomplish something
else. If I give time here, I'm not
gonna be able to do this.
But what do we find? We find that
when it comes to being active, when it
comes to doing work in the community,
when it comes to contributing any type of
good work, we find the same handful of
people at the forefront of every single project.
And we wonder how are they able to
balance all of these different things.
But it's because when they start to do
good and they and they dedicate their time
to goodness,
Allah
puts blessing in their time.
Find the same thing with our knowledge, and
this is something very interesting.
I had a coworker once whose son was
about 9 years old,
and he came to me and asked me
at work one day, and he said, you
know, my son wants to do the hifs
of the Quran,
and I'm kind of bored.
I said, what are you worried about?
He goes, well, I'm worried that if he
starts to memorize Quran, he's not gonna be
able to learn other things that he needs
to succeed in life.
And he actually made this analogy,
and this was shocking. He said, I feel
like as if his mind is a hard
drive.
If I put something in, it's gonna displace
something else.
So if he starts to memorize Quran and
learn this and this and this, it's going
to displace the knowledge of math and science
and English and history.
And I don't want him to not succeed.
And so I introduced him into another coworker
who worked in a high position in the
company who was a Haqas of Quran.
I I said, no. When you start to
work and we do this work, Allah expands
your mind.
He expands it. He doesn't constrict it.
You know, many times we we tell parents
tell their children,
You know, don't don't spend time at the
masjid now. Don't start studying now. Don't involve
yourself in this now. Right now, your focus
has to be on your studies. Your focus
has to be on this. Because if you
start to sacrifice those things, you won't be
successful
as we operate in this manner.
Another characteristic that comes into play
is that we sometimes fool ourselves,
and we jump to these extreme conclusions
to justify not doing something.
We might have an evening class,
and the time for Maghrib is short.
And so we're sitting in that class, and
the time for Maghrib comes in.
And we say, you know what?
And these are the gymnastics we do in
our mind within the span of about 3
seconds.
We say, if I have to leave the
class to go pray,
I'm gonna miss something important in class.
And if I miss something important in class,
I'm not gonna do as well on my
exam. And if I don't do that well
on my exam, my GPA is gonna be
low. And then I graduate with a low
GPA, I'm gonna have a hard time finding
a job. I'm gonna have to settle for
a bad career. And when I start off
in a bad job, I'm never gonna be
able to progress. My career is gonna be
a failure. A lot doesn't want me to
fail.
I'll just sit in class and not premonter
today.
We jump so far ahead
to justify our inaction,
to justify that I'm going to lose something.
Many people tell sisters, don't wear the hijab.
Why? Because if you do, you won't get
married. You won't get a good job. You
won't be able to do this. You won't
be able to do that. You won't be
able to do that.
We immediately jump to this scenario that the
at the moment that we act to do
something.
The moment that we sacrifice something for the
sake of Allah,
we only see fear and loss. And there's
only Shaifaan that threatens us with fear and
loss. So we have to understand when we're
making decisions, when we're assessing different things,
are we acting on something out of fear?
Are we acting on something out of potential
loss?
Because if we are, then that's the decision
making paradigm that Shaifaan pushes us to.
That's the decision making paradigm that Shaifaan moves
us toward.
But what Islam teaches us, what Allah
teaches us,
is to have abundance,
that when you do something good,
you'll get more in return.
It's narrated that when the prophet
some of the companions, when they went to
Madinah,
A lot of the companions
were having trouble drinking water.
They were used to drinking what? They were
used to drinking Samza.
And so now they came to Madinah, and
the water tasted a lot different.
And they went and complained. They said, we
just can't drink this water.
It tastes too different. It's not like razam
zam that we used to enjoy.
And so he told them he said, there's
a well in the city called Rumah, which
is just a little bit further ahead, further
outside.
There's a well there, and the water there
is sweeter,
and it tastes much closer to Zamzam, and
you will enjoy it. And in fact, I
will guarantee paradise
for whoever can secure this well for us.
So Rahman ibn al Hilaire, he heard this.
And so what did he do? He ran.
He jumped on the opportunity.
He went over there. There was a Jewish
man that owned the well, and he said,
hey.
How much do you want for the well?
I'll give you name your price. I'll pay
you.
And the man says, sorry. I'm not interested
in selling it.
He goes, what about I'll give you you
know, we promised paradise if you sell this
well. He says, no. I'm not selling this
well.
I want nothing to do with anything. I'm
not selling
it. So Rahman says, okay. Let me make
an arrangement with you. How about
I pay you rent
on the well every other day?
The days that I I rent it, I
have it, and the other days, you own
it just like normal.
Guy says, okay.
It's a good business deal. Let's do it.
So they make this arrangement. Now what happens?
On the day that Uphman is renting the
well, he tells them, well, hey. The water
is free. Come take whatever you want.
He just gives it away.
And so now no one is going on
the other day to buy water from the
other man. And so he gets frustrated, and
he says, okay. Fine. I'll sell it to
you. This is the price. Oman says, okay.
Here you go. He pays it. And then
the Rahman made it a what? He made
an endowment.
Gave it to the Muslim community.
You water for everybody.
Some years later,
5 years, 10 years later,
one of the companions comes to Rafnan of
Bilhafur An, and he says, I wanna buy
this well from you.
Uthman says, no. Man says, no. No. Come
on. What how how much do you want?
How do you value this asset that you
have?
I'll pay whatever your prices. I'll double it.
I'll triple it. I'll quadruple it.
Pay you 5 times the amount.
What's the valuation?
Usman says, no. I'm not selling you.
So the Sahab, he gets frustrated. He says,
you're crazy. I'm offering you so much money.
No one's gonna make an offer like this
to you.
And Usman says, no. Indeed. I have a
lord who multiplies my good deeds manyfold to
the point that it's not anything that you
can ever match.
I wanna leave this as an endowment because
the reward that I'm getting from my lord
is far greater.
This was the mentality by which he operated.
He didn't see the purchase of the well
as a loss.
It may have been a sacrifice.
It may have been a sacrifice,
but it was a sacrifice that he knew
that once I performed the sacrifice,
I get something far greater in return.
It's seeing that longer picture instead of that
immediate, however much money he may have lost
in buying it. But it's seeing the bigger
picture. It's having that tawakul, that faith, that
strong iman in Allah
that when I take one step toward him,
he comes running to me.
That he loved when his creation sacrifices for
him.
We just have to do our part.
Many of the Jewish tribes in Medina were
blessed with a lot of wealth.
And so the news of the prophets of
the law of Hari was on the coming,
they didn't wanna believe this message.
One of the reasons
was financial.
They controlled all the trade routes at that
time
that passed through on the way to do
the pagan form of Hajj.
Right. So they had a monopoly. They had
built up a lot of wealth.
And so when the prophet came, they had
no interest in following him.
They're not gonna give anything.
And so Allah tested them.
He tested them by taking away their wealth
and giving them poverty.
He took away their wealth and gave them
poverty.
And in response, they said,
And they said the hand of Allah is
chained.
They said, Allah's hand has become tied up.
Allah's hand has become tied up. He can't
give us anything else.
Chained, and then Allah responds, indeed chained are
their hands and cursed are they for what
they say. Rather both his hands are extended
and he spends however he wills.
He spends however he wills.
His hands are not restricted.
We know the hadith of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi was a moor he told us.
He said Allah's kingdom is so vast.
Allah's kingdom is so vast
that if every single creation,
every single person
was to ask for everything that they wanted,
kingdom, wealth, riches, family, you name it.
If they were to ask for every single
thing that they could possibly want,
and Allah granted every single person what they
wanted,
it would not decrease the kingdom of Allah.
Not even the amount that a needle dipped
in the ocean decreases the volume of water
in the ocean.
The needle dipped in the ocean takes out
more
than Allah's kingdom would be diminished if He
gave everybody what they want. That's how vast
the kingdom of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is.
And now, we don't say things like Allah's
hands are chained.
Sometimes
we say something a little bit similar even
in just.
We make du'a as we should, even sometimes
for trivial things.
We make du'a that that the light stay
green and we speed through.
And when the light stays green, we come
out on the other side and we say
what? We say, I should have made du'a
for something else.
Right? The du'a gets answered, and we say
I should have made du'a for something else.
As if although this is not the intent,
but it's almost as if because one du'a
was answered, another du'a cannot be answered.
And this is not the mentality of the
believer.
The mentality of the believer is to understand
that Allah
is a samad.
Right? Like we say in Surah Abu Allahu
Samad.
Allah
is the one. He's the one that created
all of these means.
All of these means that you seek. All
the business that you're trying to do. All
these different things you're trying to do.
You know, when we when we talk about
scarcity, one of those things is this mentality
that there's a fixed pie.
Why do people cheat each other in business?
If he has a store and I have
a store, he's stealing my business.
I need to drive him out.
This is the way that we think. We
think that there's a fixed amount there, and
we have to fight each other. The winner's
gonna come out on top.
All of these means that you're seeking to
build whatever it is that you're building,
Allah is the one that created these means.
So ask him.
Ask someone.
He is the one
that is not dependent on anybody else.
He does not need anybody else.
He does not need anyone to sustain him.
He is the one that sustains everybody.
He is the one that everybody else needs
to get their sustenance,
to get their provision.
But Al Samad is not just material provision.
It's also the provision of the mind and
the heart and the soul,
The spiritual nourishment, the mental nourishment.
All of these different things that people see,
Allah is the one to seek it through.
And so this is the way that we
understand this.
Because if we don't, if we follow that
mentality of shayvon, what happens?
We know, for example, the evils of envy,
that this is one of the greatest diseases
of the heart.
But at the root cause of envy is
what?
That you see someone that has something that
you want,
and in order to get it, you feel
that they must be deprived of
it. Why did they get it and not
me? Why were they given that and I
wasn't given that? This is this is the
essence of envy.
But the true believer understands.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is Kareem.
He's generous.
He can give everything to everyone, and it's
not going to affect him. It's not going
to affect his kingdom.
So rather, although I follow the means, although
do I do what I'm supposed to do,
I I go, I study, I work, I
do all things that are within my capacity,
that's the action of the limbs.
That is the action of the limbs.
Go to school, go to work, trade,
study, all of these things are the actions
of the limbs.
But the action of the heart
the action of the heart is to have
full reliance,
full faith
that it is only Allah who
will bless me whatever it is that I'm
seeking.
He is the only one that can provide,
and so I must ask him.
I take the medicine that the doctor prescribed
me to cure my illness,
but as I'm doing that, my heart is
making go. I'm asking Allah to grant me
Shifa'a.
One of those scholars gave an analogy.
They said, when it comes to legal rulings
of zakah,
the fit rulings,
a child
who obviously has no wealth
of their own in their name.
But a child is not a child of
a wealthy parent
is not eligible for
because it is assumed
that the parent will provide for that child.
So you don't give charity. Even though there's
no child that has wealth in their name,
You can't give them the obligatory charity if
they have wealthy parents. Why? Because it's an
assumption that the parent will take care of
that child.
And the smallest said in the same way
we find that analogy.
We'll let them up a little hard time.
As much as in need that we are,
whether it's financial, whether it's physical, whether it's
spiritual, whether whatever the case may be,
however much we find ourselves in need,
We are
not truly in need because we have someone
that provides for us.
We have someone that is looking out for
us. We have a lord that sustains us,
that loves us, that forgives us.
He's just asking that we try.
He's asking that when we make a mistake,
we say that we're sorry.
He's asking that we take out a few
minutes today to pray to him. That we
take out a few minutes and read his
book.
That's all that he's asking in return.
But we have a lord that will provide
for every single thing that we need regardless
of what anybody else has.
And this is the mentality, this is the
attitude
of someone with strong faith.
I do what I'm supposed to do. I'm
going to do my work, but ultimately
ultimately, my heart relies on Allah
because he is the one that will sustain
regardless of what anybody else has, regardless of
what else is going on in the world,
regardless of the economy and this and that
and all these other things that are constantly
scaring us and making us fearful.
We act with the mentality that Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala will provide, that you will bless
us, that you will put Baraba in what
we do. As I mentioned in the beginning,
this is something that people who don't believe
in Baraba have observed
and struggled to explain.
And yet we have the explanation, yet we
struggle to implement.
We struggle to implement.
So we ask Allah
to put Barabah in everything that we do.