Suhaib Webb – The Sixty Fourth Hikam The Height of Delusion & Negligence
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Welcome back to the hikam of Imam Imata
Allah. Hope you guys are doing amazing. We
live in an age now where unfortunately there's
a very shallow reductive approach towards theology,
especially within the Christian community, the gospel the
prosperity gospel sort of championed by Joel Osteen
and others that, like, the more God loves
you,
the more your relationship with God is right,
the more your wealth will have might.
So the correlation and causation between strong human
and faith
to wealth,
that's extremely problematic because it also allows us
to militarize the poor and poverty.
And that if we're not careful, we'll see
that poverty and people being poor is the
scourge of Allah, is the adab of Allah.
Islam Islam is very very deliberate and careful
about this because it would create social injustice,
it would create arrogance and also as deception.
Some of the greatest enemies of Allah in
the Quran
were very wealthy people who had everything they
wanted in life.
You can start with the followers of Nuh.
You can start
with you can look at, you know, over
and over again,
the people of Mecca, Right? They had wealth,
but they were not beloved to Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala. That also leads to arrogance.
So Islam
is very deep and deliberate in making sure
that any notions of
growth in faith
and nearness to Allah
are not tied to the material
unless we use those material for his worship,
but are tied to our obedience and our
Ibadah.
I did not create jinns and human beings
except to worship. Worship me. They say
I didn't create
jinn and men
only to and women only to earn wealth.
So the purpose is ibadah.
Wealth may be an outcome of that, but
it is not
indicative of my state with Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala. That's a very shallow understanding.
So imam ibn al ta'ala is gonna help
us understand this from an Islamic perspective, and
he says huff. Means to fear. If you
go to the dictionary
anytime you have a word, the trilateral root
has a alif, wa, or yeah in the
middle of it, when you want to make
it an order, you're going to remove
that alif, that well, or that yeah. That's
why they're called weak letters. So for example,
fear.
So So
he
says fear Allah's excellence with you. What?
Good Lord, that's terrifying.
So now I have to think constructively
and critically about the wealth I've assumed
or about what I would consider to be
a good life.
I have to not
get caught up in the shallowness of it,
but I have to see how am I
using it. As the prophet
said,
a person will be asked about his or
her wealth, how they earned it, how they
spent it. It's deeper than just the
acquirement of wealth.
It's a little deeper. So the sheikh, he
says,
And wealth here, I'm talking about it because
that's
unfortunately where the world is today. But it
could
be related to physical,
looks. It could be related to,
you know, our kids are doing well. It
could be related to, I got into my
favorite graduate school. Anything that I determine as
being from Allah's Ihsaan to me, I have
to look at it
with the eye of caution
and make sure that it is coupled with
what? Here he says,
fear Allah's Ihsan to you
and you're consistent
sinning against him.
So that means that no matter how great
things are going, no matter how many likes
I'm getting, no matter how I'm blowing up
on social, whatever
people see as success,
if it is coupled with my sin and
evil,
I have to be careful of that Ihsan.
Because in Islamic theology,
it's no longer.
It's
is a very important word in our theology
from
are stairs or steps.
Is on is a bicycle because you it's
moving like this.
Is a motorcycle.
So here,
he's saying be careful of things going well
for you in life
if you are consistently sinning.
Why? He says, SubhanAllah.
Because that's istidraj. What does istidraj mean? The
stairs?
It means that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala opens
the gates of his wrist and his bounties
to people who are heedless of him. So
they assume that these bounties are actually a
sign
of Allah's love and grace,
and so they increase in sin.
Allah says in
Surat Al An'am, the 6th chapter after
And after they forgot
what we reminded them of, fatahna alayhim
abawabaqulishay,
we opened up the floodgates of dunya for
them.
We opened up the floodgates,
and and they continued their their evil.
And suddenly we seized them with punishment.
They were not aware. They were not aware
of the punishment nor were they aware of
what That this was istidraj.
How do I know if it's istidraj?
A a a test which is
coming at me,
a test which is like I'm assuming,
hey you know what, like this is
a blessing,
but actually I'm drowning, man.
The blessing is deception.
How do I know if it's istidraj
or nama?
Let me look at my obedience to Allah.
Let me look how I treat other people.
When Saydna Jibreel came to the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam and read the Quran with him,
the prophet would become more and more generous.
He turns a blessing
into, like, moral responsibility
to worship.
Allah says,
because those people, they were they were. They
thought their wealth
was an indication
of their wealth with Allah.
That their material wealth, that their material success
was
directly correlated to their relationship and success with
Allah. Allah says,
We are going to slowly
and surely
test them. We're going to slowly
and surely
sink them in these nai'am
from where they're not aware.
So the lesson,
and this is from Allah's justice before someone
starts to get into waswas, Oh why would
Allah do that? Because Allah is just.
I teach this in the second
series at Swiss alan Theology, the master's creed,
this section that whatever Allah does is either
from His bounty or from His justice, and
this is from His justice.
For the Muslim, it's it's an act of
justice
because
we are heedless,
and it's a way for us to be
held accountable for our heedlessness.
For the disbeliever because of their rebellion against
Allah and their open rebellion against his, you
know, the community, the righteous people. Okay, well
they will
see namah
as a sign of Allah's love, but actually
it's going to bring a greater punishment
for the injustice that they have and and
and act on others.
So we take a quick lesson. Let's step
back and make sure that we're establishing the
obligations,
the that's why we have a class at
Swiss on fiqh, that we have our beliefs
and assumptions, our psychology, and our emotions are
regulated within the framework of Islam. That's why
we teach theology.
And then finally, that we put our hearts
in the right place, and that's why we
teach this class.