Shadee Elmasry – Good Envy, Bad Envy, Jealousy & The Real Meaning of Dunya
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snout hamdu lillah wa Salatu was Salam ala Rasulillah who he was
some human who Allah. Today, we're talking about three things that
are usually connected to one another but are actually
completely different. The first is envy and jealousy. People
constantly confuse envy and jealousy. And one of the sources
of happiness is that a lot of times people imagine that if they
have certain things, though, they're going to be happy. In
contrast, they don't realize that happiness, there's more to
happiness, or really the feeling of serenity is what people are
looking for. The feeling of being of calmness and peacefulness in
their heart and peace in their heart is actually more involved
with removing certain things than adding and rarely ever is adding
something material what people need, alright, that's rarely what
people need. What people need to remove are certain things that are
emotional, you could say, or we would say it may be spiritual, but
envy is the number one thing and the removal of envy. Firstly, you
have to know what it is in order to remove it. So if you don't have
this book, this is one of the books that's really I recommend
everyone to have in their library. It's the shortened version of hiya
OMA Dean matassa here Illuma Dean. All right, if you don't have this
book, I don't even know if this actual orange one is still in
print. It's a very neat looking orange one
translated from Arabic by Marwan Calif, okay.
And he takes all 40 books of the here and summarizes it into this
little book right here. Okay. And Imam Ghazali himself is the one
who abridged his own book, mmm, because he bridged it, and then
Mattawan translated. So envy, number one you have to know is the
sin or the wrong action, because it's the sin of the heart itself
without it and if mule button Allah says be careful of the
outward sin and the inward sin, okay, and as we begin, I want to
first welcome the group from Mr. Vidal, who is going to be sharing
this the stream? Alright, so any questions that they have? jolla
feel free to, to put it up? Right away?
But the point is that what we're saying is that said it said that
the sin of the heart of envy is its own punishment, is there can't
be something worse, or worst punishment on this earth than to
have this and so it's a sin. That is its own punishment, that's
envy. All right. So it's the most it's a sin that his own
punishment, because the one who's envying number one, it has because
it tells us they're not he said, he's miserable in this life, okay.
And number two, he ruins his future, because the one who envies
he spends his time looking and hating and thinking about someone
else. Whereas in order to actually do actions, you have to actually
be not thinking about anyone else except your own self. Right? You
got to be thinking about your own self in order to do anything. So
the envious person is number one, but thought like he's is useless,
because he's constantly thinking about others, thinking about
others is going to drain you from doing your own thing. So there's
the first thing that if you love yourself, you remove me from your
heart, forget righteousness, forget goodness, if you love to
feel good, you remove me from your heart, because the first source of
misery is your own self, and the feeling of envy inside yourself.
The second source of misery is fit as being a failure, you're gonna
you're not going to succeed when you're thinking about others.
Okay? So he says, Now the actual definition of envy is that someone
hates to see the blessing of Allah bestowed upon his brother. So in
other words, when you see that someone has some namah has some
good that you hate. It's something inside you gets triggered, and you
hate it. You hate to see the good come on someone else. Right? You
just it bothers you that someone else is glistening and shiny and
has everything good, right? So that bothers you. So you have to
detect that. And the first step if you want to people want to talk
about being good or spiritual, what have you. The first step is
to remove this from the heart. And now well, what's where does that
come from? Envy itself is not one of the root is not the root
sickness, many will think envy is the root sickness is not envy.
Well, look, you don't envy snails who are really, you know, living
really well. You don't envy Jaguars? Why? Because you don't
care about their life. You don't care what they have. You don't
envy birds. You only envy other humans. Why? Because you love
dunya okay, you love their dunya Alright, so humans you only envy
that what you love. All right. You only envy something, if you wish
to have it yourself. And that's why because Ali says that the
exposition on envy has to be connected to the exposition on
deprecation of dunya All right, hope dunya love of dunya and here
we have
To define dunya now to sow love of dunya is actually the root of
envy, right? Envy is not its own sickness by itself rather love of
dunya is the root sickness. So what here is dunya? Dunya is
described as everything that takes a person away from the remembrance
of Allah.
That's the actual definition of dunya. All right, everything that
takes a person away from the actual remembrance of Allah from
the remembrance of Allah azza wa jal be it even if it is a virtue,
okay, in that respect, if it's taking you away, so so. So what
are the Imams virtue, envy? For example, they envy the writings of
each other, the followers of each other, right? They envy that they
envy knowledge, they envy high Eseni versus lowest and need,
right. That's what they envy. So every group is going to have
something different that they envy. Okay, the old bed they envy
the comet, right? Well, a real avid a real Olia. They've purified
themselves from this envy in the first place. But everyone envy
something different if you go to Wall Street, okay. $20 billion.
You're a second class citizen. Right? If you had $20 billion, and
you went to one of these banks and said, I want you guys to invest,
let's say, Goldman, or Deutsche Bank, or one of these banks, and
you ask to invest 20 million, they hang up the phone, right? It's
nothing. There, these people are dealing with institutional wealth
that is hovering around the billion dollar. Now we're talking,
right? Once you start hitting 500 million, 700 million, now you're
worth our time. Alright, the trader will now pick up the phone.
So in any every world, right? In every zone, there's a different
thing that people envy. Right? So there's no dunya does not have any
one definition. Except that it is everything that distracts a person
from the remembrance of Allah azza wa jal, and anything that triggers
a person's envy, you consider that your dunya. If you envy it, it's
your dunya. So for me, the concept of how much money you have, it was
never something that I ever would have thought of who cares, right,
but rather who you studied with? Or how high your SNR and how many
years you sat with so and so that's something people envy. And
that's, there's some good to that which we're going to cover, right.
But the concept of how much money you have no one cares about that
right? In this in the world that we know. But in some worlds,
that's what they care about. So in every sphere, there's something
different that people envy. And that's why you have to know that
the definition of dunya is very fluid, and it could change. And
everyone's got to define the dunya for themselves. So what is it that
you envied? That's really what you consider dunya that's what's
distracting you from Allah azza wa jal, the only way to cure yourself
from love of dunya is to constantly almost brainwash
yourself, and tell yourself constantly, that you will never
have it. Right? To constantly make yourself imagine a world well, you
will never have it. And that's why the song What is the sign that
dunya is leaving the heart? It is that when you start despairing
from ever having what you want, right? So yes, when you despair
from having what you want, that's the sign that dunya is clueless
coming out of the heart. So people desire fame, they desire women,
they desire rich husbands, they desire handsome husbands,
physically fit husbands, they do all these things that they're
desiring cars, homes, right? beautiful children, right?
Daughters, that have beautiful sons that are successful,
whatever, people are envying our companies, right, these people who
have companies, they compete in companies, right? It's like a
sport. It's like a game. The politicians have their own envy.
So once they they've told themselves to convince himself
that it's gone. Alright. At that point, though, here's the thing a
Chevy said,
you can have something provided that you've already convinced
yourself that if you don't have it, you'll still be happy. Right?
That if you don't have it, you'll still be perfectly fine and
perfectly happy. All right. If you're perfectly fine without it,
then you could have it. Right. So a Chevy says the sign that
something is no longer dunya for you, is that if someone takes it
away from you, your heart doesn't skip a beat. This is the sign that
something is not done yet. So it is true that there can be people
out there who have a lot, but they have no dunya there's no love of
dunya inside them.
Right? There's no love of dunya inside.
I don't know this dog is going on. As long as he stays on his side of
the fence and has no problem.
The neighbor had a dog the dog passed away. His neighbor has been
barking at me for four years.
That neighbor's dog because he had never got close enough to me to
sniff me and say no my scent. Hug
been coming home for four years, he's been barking at me. But
sadly, the other day he died.
So the other dog is pretty lonely. He they used to bark at each other
and talk to each other, but the other dog is lonely in any event.
So when he hears me now talking, he's barking at me now because
other dog got bored since he his friend died. In any event, so how
will person knows that something to them is not done yet? Then ask
yourself, alright, if you lost it, is it a problem? Now, here's
something else, there's something even more, ask yourself if your
worst rival got it, and you did it? Would you get envious, right?
Would you move on the inside? Because a lot of people don't have
a problem with not having anything. But they do have a
problem with their enemies having it right. And everyone's got some
rival out there. Everyone's got someone that they got, you know,
some maybe lesser than others, but like less harsh than others, but
everyone's got someone that they butt heads with. They don't get
along with. That's normal, unnatural, okay.
But you have to ask yourself, if what I wanted was given to my
enemy and rival? Would I then have that same feeling of peace? Will
it? Will I be at peace? Right? Or will I be able, and for a moment,
we never stop having these problems, right and never stop
having these sickness on the inside of the heart and the sins
on the outside of the heart. And our message is for those people
struggling with the sins of the outward or the inward is that this
life is a constant struggle. This Dean is no left lane on the dean,
whenever you see someone who thinks that they found the left
lane of the dean, where they're going to achieve the right
something, you know, quickly. They're fools, you should know
that they're going to crash and burn, right? They're probably
actually setting themselves back. Just the thought and the idea and
the imagination, that there's a left lane and this Dean is one of
the most naive things in the world. And you're probably just
setting yourself back a couple of maybe a decade. Right? When you
imagine yourself that there's a fast lane in the dean, this Dean
is one of those lifetime affairs. And Allah azza wa jal has told us
shown us over and over and over this deen is a lifetime affair,
it's decade after decade after decade. So you don't worry that
there is no left lane, there is no group of people out there that if
there's any one group of people who would actually be able to
surpass more than anyone else, it's people who study, that's the
only thing I can think of that's texturally that Allah has told us
that in terms of who Akasha fear of Allah, that they will surpass
others is studying, right? And studying is something that no
one's ever going to do forever, right? There's always a time where
you can do it full time for a while, or you could do a lot, and
then life hits you. And then you slow down, everyone slows down. So
even that, all right, you can catch up, if you're, if you're
plugging in an hour a day, or 30 minutes a day, or even two hours a
weak, right, you will learn you will eventually learn as solid as
long as someone's, you know, plodding away and plugging away,
you will learn so the door of knowledge is open. And with the
internet even. And I don't believe in solely relying on the internet,
you have to actually meet scholars, but everything has come
to you. It's just about discipline. And these machines,
the problem with these machines, they do make everything so much
easier. But anytime I found myself trying to get a software to make
something that I'm doing easier, I found that three hours go by
comparing software's try new software's, well, you to get this
software, you actually need this plugin. And and then it actually
says, Well, you if you're trying to do this, forget that software,
you actually need to do this. And three hours go by because there's
so many options, right? That honestly, if I had a pen and
paper, I would have wrote more, right, then trying to find a
shortcut through the internet. So I actually have a little specialty
of mine and I got broken computers, which is web broken. So
I got a web broken computer and I achieve so much more. On a it's a
computer with no internet. So if I'm studying something, writing
something even reading PDFs, right, when you're disconnected,
you can do so much more, this whole connection thing is such a
mirage, right? Because yeah, you're connecting you to the thing
that you need, and 3 billion other things that you don't need that
waste your time. And anyway, that's a diversion. So
the idea of dunya is that which you don't mind losing, and you
don't mind your enemy having it either. At the same time, there
was a US president who said he was running for office. He said, I
actually don't want to be president, but I can't send the
idea of my enemies being president. Alright, so his enemy
and him and his arch rival were running against so that's dunya
and all this is envy and how to get rid of envy. Now there's
something called good envy. Right and envy, it's synonymous in this
sense
because in the Hadith, the prophet
Allahu alayhi wa sallam used the word env. In the Hadith, he said
Allah has set up in the fifth and attain and the automat so that
they don't confuse it, they gave it the word of HIPAA. And the word
of HIPAA means that you don't dislike, you're not upset. You
have no anger toward or any ill will, towards someone with the
namah that has a blessing.
But you do have a desire for it for yourself. Right. And in this
there's a tough seed of self seed as a separation, the tough scene
being that, if the issue is that you want it for yourself,
and it is a good thing, then it's good. And the prophesy centum
pointed to two things here. And he said knowledge and sadaqa. And
from this knowledge and sadaqa fall, in other words are symbolic
for all everything good. All right, everything good, seen and
unseen. Every like fasting, like chastity. Like
someone who has access to pure food, someone who has ability to
lower their gaze, someone who has manners, all of these, you should
when you see it, you should desire it for yourself. There's no zone
and righteousness. So remember, her dad even talks about
falsehood? And he says, somebody will say that they have zoo hood,
but in righteousness, so and hamdulillah they have to hedge it.
Well let them have to hedge it. And I'll give sadaqa No, it
shouldn't be like that. Rather, every time you see the good for
someone, you should ask for it for yourself. You ask May Allah grant,
give them the baton and grant it to me as well. Right? So you
shouldn't see someone making had to say 100 I let them have it,
right? No, in dunya, you could say, oh, they're, they're rich.
Let it let them be rich and Hamdulillah. They can have it. I
don't need it. Right. But for the good. Right? You don't do that. So
that's the first thing that's the HIPAA now becomes not sinful. But
it becomes inappropriate or blameworthy if it's something of
what is basically the Khaled, right? So they're rich. So
Hamdulillah, I'm happy for you, I want you to be rich, but I need to
be rich to just because you're rich. So this is not considered
like sinful. This is not something that destroys the heart. But it is
something that is inappropriate for a moment to be chasing dunya.
And every time you see that someone has dunya you're gonna go
get it right every time. Okay, they receded their lawn. So we're
going to reseed our lawn. Well, the lawn is perfectly fine. Yeah,
but there's like three shades greener than ours. So we're going
to redo our lawn, they went and got themselves a luxury SUV. Well,
we're doing fine with our SUV. But no, we got to get ourselves a
luxury so that they don't have a luxury that we have, we don't
have, right.
They put up they redo the siding of their house. All right, we got
to redo the same thing. So this type of thing is inappropriate,
okay, it is appropriate, if it has a functional value benefits. So if
everyone in the neighborhood is doing something, your actual house
property is going to go down. If you don't do the same thing. So
you end up having to do it. Right, you have to do it. And by the way,
there's some material dunya that certain professions require you
having and other professions, sort of it's inappropriate to have. For
example,
if you're a surgeon, if you're a brain surgeon, and let's say
hypothetically, I'm going in for a brain surgery, and I'm going to
see the doctor, and I need to see his opinion and check him out.
And I go in and this guy pulls up in a rickety old beat up Honda,
right? You know what I'm doing? I'm reversing out and finding
another doctor. Because you need a doctor who's successful. And
that's why all the doctors they got their Tesla's and Mercedes.
And that's they have to have that. Think about it. Just think about
it. You're going in for heart surgery for brain surgery, you
come in on the doctor, and he pulls in and some beat up thing.
Well, listen, if you're such a good doctor, why aren't you rich?
Right? So he needs to have that. Likewise, lawyers, lawyers, real
estate agents, okay, they all and some of them, you can even it's
tax deductible as part of the expense. Okay, all these Wall
Street guys, which I mean, half of that stuff is all not even half
70 80% of that stuff is all bedding, and it's all come out and
it's all sinful from that element. And from that aspect to begin
with, okay, but these guys, I mean, your value is what you're
investing. Okay? So if you're going in and dealing with these
business types, you better go in with a $3,000 suit at minimum
right at minimum, okay, and maybe forget driving in you need a
chauffeur. So certain jobs and you have to understand this require
certain material, images, certain material
A standard that you have to keep. Now other jobs are the opposite.
Any intellectual job, it's just not fitting, right? And you should
be in the middle, neither too poor that people will think that.
Alright, you're probably going to ask me for money eventually. Or
too rich that you're distracted. How will you thinking about ideas
in the realm of ideas? If you're, you know, that rich, right, so
it's got to be a middle and you'll you'll tend to find anyone who's
in any cerebral intellectual subject, like professors. You
know, they have their Subarus, and their Volkswagens and maybe the
Audi's right, but they're, they tend to live a different
lifestyle, because it's expected for them to be in the realm of
ideas, right, rather than the realm of other things. Right. Now,
charity work.
There's a whole debate on these charity people how much they
should be making, like these charity managers of charities,
there's always a big debate on should they be rich? Should they
not be? Well, why is this guy flying first class hat? Why is he
making this salary? My money is going to charity, and he's taking
it right for his salary. So there's all sorts of debates on
that.
And by the way, most in most cases, the guys who make a ton of
money in charity as CEOs of charities, they also actually
bring in a lot of money. So they make a smaller percentage than a
lot of other people, but they rake in so much money because they're
so good at what they do. So anyway, that's what we call HIPAA.
And it's good if it is a matter of Dean or
righteousness. I'm wondering how long this guy is going to
weed whacking here. I waited till he finished and now he started up
again.
Are you can start putting in your comments or questions, because
we're about to
cover the last thing here, which is more something to do with the
English language than anything else. And that is that has to do
with jealousy. Jealousy is not envy. Jealousy has nothing to do
with envy. Jealousy is something that basically doesn't exist in
the English language what we have, and that is it is zero, right?
Zero jealousy and we translate it as a hero. And the hero is that
you love a thing so much. All right, you love something so much
that you don't you can't stand the idea of anyone misusing it. And we
Muslims have to have Vera for our deen. And we have to have a Vera,
for the opposite genders in our families. And in general for the
Muslims. These are the three things that a Muslim has hear
about. So you love your deen. You can't stand anyone, right misusing
it. All right. And so here are the prophesy. centum said, when the
theater comes upon a person sometimes they act out so
rationally, right? And the Prophet seat was always forgiving when a
woman acted with Vera, right? And say that it shows up. So when they
acted with Libra, for the prophets, I send them and they
were so angry that anyone else was giving him attention, right? Any
of the other women,
so he always forgave it. He always forgave that one time said I Isha
came in. And she saw it was her day prophet was in her house, he
had guests, she saw that one of the other Mothers of the Believers
had brought him food. And she's thinking, this is my day, right?
So she walks in, right in the middle of the men and women are of
the guests. And then as she's walking out, accidentally flips
over the plate of food, right? She flipped it over. So they got
covered with dirt. They fell on the ground and covered with dirt.
So the prophesies have just left. And he said that audits omocha
them. And many, many other times. They had Vita and the Prophet
never blamed them for that because VITA is a good thing. Okay,
jealousy in our in the West is considered a bad thing. Well,
that's why the families are all destroyed. It's actually a good
thing. That a man for example, what kind of man would allow some
stranger in adolescence to take out his daughter for 1617 years,
you're raising and this daughter is living in your house? And some
Pimply kid is coming to take her out, and they're gonna come back
to in the morning. Right, right. And in the movies, if you notice,
they always want to make it look like the dad is a fool. Right? And
that this 17 year old kid, he always gets away with it. And
after all these years, all of a sudden, this girl gets a drive
away.
Even some stranger, right? I mean, it's absolutely disruptive to
remove theater from families, and remove theater from the Dean of
Muslims. And whenever some heretical group comes out, and you
just flip out, because what they're saying, they say, oh, you
can't have a discussion, and you just have to calm down, et cetera,
et cetera, right? And they want to make you look, right, like you're
not a professional, you're not calm, you're not academic, because
you have some heat up for your dean, when they're bringing you
something so contrary to what everyone knows to be true, so
that'll be enough for the opposite gender in your family, for your
deen, number one before that. And number three, is for the Muslims
at large. Right? I'm Muslim, for example, we have this a hobby, who
when a non believer in Medina, pulled pin down the garment of a
Muslim woman, he didn't. He didn't know this Muslim woman, it wasn't
his relative or family.
And she moved. And she became makeup, right? Like her body was
showing her hair was showing and her everyone was showing. So he
got up and fought him. And he actually killed him. And then they
killed him. Right there. That guy's friends killed the Muslim,
right and a war almost broke out. The that Jewish tribe went out,
gathered their troops against the prophets, Allah when he was
selling them, right. And the Prophet sighs he beat them to it.
Right. And then they were expelled for raising up weapons, all right,
against the province against the Muslims, like it's a rebellion,
basically. So
that is a hit up for the general Muslim for the Muslim, right,
whether males or females that type of abuse, and that should exist.
So be careful that they're trying to actually remove your manhood
remove everything good about you by removing Greta, right from
within us. And that's something that it's only related to this
subject of envy, because of the linguistic confusion between envy
and jealousy, right envy and jealousy and Allah azza wa jal, he
says, he has realized himself, right and what is it for that is
Believers do what is prohibited he becomes full of gear why because
he wants to be levers to be pure. He wants them pure, and he wants
to be able to give them right from his reward. Right and he wants
their heart to be for him. So when he sees their heart meat leaning
towards what is bad, right, he becomes angered and wrathful for
that. Alright, so let's take your comments and questions.
Can you please mention the name of the text the text is Mukhtar said
I'll show it again here. The matassa Hiya, Aluma. Dean. All
right. The
Emmanuel has earned his own
abridgement of the Illuminati that's what it is.
All right, again for anyone that for those joining from the messy
blood in Toms River, sent please send in your questions and
Inshallah, if I don't get to them in the live stream, I'll get to
them written later on. For why as Ahmed says is in lira
honor, yeah, it's honor, like honor, like
it's something that I value, and I'm not going to let someone else
degrade something that we value.
The question is, what is the title of the book mean in English, it
means the revival, or mcdata is the abridgement and here is the
Revivification or the revival, and odo Medina is the knowledges of
the dean.
Joshua presses that explains what I feel when I hear these new
atheist like Sam Harris, speak about Islam drives me crazy. And
they're actually I guarantee you have never picked up a book on
Islam, yet they are able to philosophize about it and in any
other time a theologian speaks on a subject they try to retort back
and say listen, stay in your lane, but clearly.
Clearly, they feel the the right to concert to
pontificate on subjects that they've never studied. Why was it
bliss envious of Adam was it
arrogance or envy IBLEES was obsessed with the idea that he was
of the highest station of the created beings, in nearness to
Allah azza wa jal, and he was that was the station.
He was from the highest of the created beings. Right? And when he
was told that there will be a creation, more beloved to Allah
than you, then he went into a rage. So his obsession was really
about his presence, in the sight of Allah, his love of Allah was
really his love of himself. He imagined it to be love of Allah,
but it was love of himself, of having a high station with Allah.
And if it was about, if you truly love someone, then you love what
that that one loves, right? So if he truly has his belief, and his
love was solely for Allah azza wa jal, then, at that point, what he
should have done is say, Look, if that's what Allah loves, and I
love it, too.
Yeah, in Pakistan, they actually do care about theology.
In Pakistan, they care about theology. And that's because the
Brill V groups in Pakistan, they are serious about theology and
guarding their theology. And they might not be like to be called,
they're barely not saying, in a bad way, it's a good thing. But
they
they are, I guess, you could really say,
really serious about al Qaeda. And they've really guarded Sony off
data very well. Alright, probably them and the Syrians more, more
than anyone else?
Alright, what else we got? Let me just refresh this thing.
All right, if there are no other comments, we'll go once and twice
and then we'll wrap up but we can always get to the questions later
on. So don't worry about that. But for now,
we'll wrap up if there aren't any other Q and A's
All right, yeah, I know that this wasn't the best time because
people want to do this after maghrib. The problem is with after
mother is that
I just got office hours and other obligations in the evenings but
we'll try to find a way to do it in the evening but for now,
we got to do this in the afternoon and people who catch up
we'll post it people to catch up and we can get get to the if there
are any discussions or q&a afterwards. So for now, does that
Gameloft get some onic Allahumma behenic Nisha Illa Illa into the
software corner to where they could also add in an insert
another few little Edina mo I'm going to Florida how to what to
ask somebody whatsoever. So somebody said I'm on a
chronometer.