Tom Facchine – Ayah Series #15 – Surah Al Ma’un
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the importance of belief in one's religion for one's ability to act ethically. They also mention that belief in God is a fundamental part of one's identity and that it is crucial for individuals to act ethically. The speaker emphasizes that belief in God is not equal to belief in one individual's availability and suggests that individuals may need to set themselves on a firm foundation to achieve their potential.
AI: Summary ©
One of the main lessons and assaults of the mayor on there's a lot of them, even though it's a short surah is that what you believe has a very important impact on your ability to act ethically, and this is a very radical notion in our time and age because people want to believe that the your religion doesn't matter that it's just like part of your culture, whether you believe in God or don't believe in God, whether you believe in one God, you believe in a million gods, whether you believe in this religion or that religion, it's all the same. And everybody has the same capacity to do good things to be a good person, right? We get this all the time. Like, what if he's a good
person? Like, what does it mean to be a good person? Alright, Allah Spano Tata, one of the lessons in sorts of matters is that believing in Allah gives you a much better likelihood and develops your capacity to be a good person much more than if you don't. And that's why he says, Alright, Allah, the Kennedy will be Dean, have you seen the person who rejects religion? Have you seen the person who rejects faith? What What's he going to do? How are we going to know what's the difference, it comes down to actions, he's not going to take care of the orphan, he's not going to encourage people to feed the poor. Now somebody could say, somebody could say, Wait a second, this is not true. Allah
is wrong, I could say, because we look around in our society today. And we see that there are secular and atheist and agnostics that they they give in charity, and they have charitable foundations, and they help people. Okay, that might be true sometimes. But what's going to happen when war breaks out, what's going to happen when doing the right thing is actually against your material interests. Anybody can be a nice person when it's easy, right? Who's going to be a nice person, when it's hard, who's going to be a nice person when being a nice person or a righteous person actually might get you killed? Right? In those situations, a person of faith is not equal to
a person without faith, a person who believes in Allah is not equal to a person who doesn't believe in Allah, a person who believes in an afterlife is going to be in a much better situation much more likely to do the right thing, even if it kills them than a person who only believes that we only have this life and I'm worm food after that. So Allah subhanaw taala tells us that yes, what you believe in matters. There might be exceptions. Or we might say that some people, their belief is imperfect, right? And so they're not really good exemplars of this, but in general, the general thrust is that yes, what you believe in matters and if you want the capacity to act ethically,
especially when it's hard, then you need to first set yourself on a firm foundation and that foundation is the things that you believe in