Tom Facchine – Rich Muslim, Poor Muslim

			Shaykh Abdullah used to tell us that sometimes a lot keeps a rich person rich for their own good.
And sometimes he keeps a poor person poor for their own good. Now, what he meant by that was that,
you know, money and wealth is not an inherent good, it's not always a good thing. Some people, if
they have money, they'll use it to worship Allah, they'll use it to fund MSG, they'll use it to help
people who are vulnerable and poor. And some people, they're simply building the case against them
on the Day of Judgment, they're using their money for bad things. And it's not always just, you
know, consuming things that are haram. Sometimes it's just getting distracted, and living a life
		

			that's dedicated to entertainment and pleasure and just sort of chasing these sorts of things.
Whereas when it comes to poverty, you know, there's some people there, they're poor, and it is a
test for them, right. And that's why the Prophet alayhi salatu salam used to actually ask or seek
refuge from poverty from a lost pounds audit, because sometimes when you don't have enough to
survive or subsist, it can put you in a situation where you sin, either you're going to steal
something, or you're just not going to have the, you're not going to have anything in your tank,
when you need to be patient when you need to persevere when you need to hold on, to relying upon a
		

			law and obeying His commandments. But sometimes, sometimes being poor is better for a person, right?
Because sometimes, if that same person, if they had money, they would blow it all and lose focus and
things like that, maybe they're able to focus on what really matters, maybe they're not liable to
get as distracted, if they're kept in a certain sort of degree of poverty. That's not too bad. It's
not sort of, you know, breaking their back. But yeah, they're, they're struggling. And so this is
why, you know, we can't necessarily look at somebody and say, and this is a huge problem in the
United States, United States, we have a huge stigma around poverty, right? And if you go back to the
		

			writings of the setup, and the times or the setup, you know, they talk about some of the poor people
were like, the saints of the Ummah, right, you know, they raise their hands and make dua for rain
and the rain starts to fall, and they actually have combat and miracles, you know, by the, the will
of Allah subhana, WA Tada, right. They didn't have this sense that we have in in America today,
where we look at poor people, and we they have stigma, and we actually blame them, because of the
kind of it comes from a lot of different directions. Part of it is Protestant Christianity, part of
it is, you know, capitalism, but we see somebody who's poor, and we blame them, basically, we think
		

			that if they had made different decisions, then they would have been successful, or they would have
had more money or they would have had a home or, or whatever it is, and we forget as Muslims that
risk is the terminal by Allah subhanaw taala, right. It doesn't matter what you do in the, in the
grand scheme of things, Allah subhanaw taala has already decided what your risk is going to be, and
it's going to get to you, no matter what you do, right? And the last bout Allah tells us, He gives
us what we need. He gives us the balance of messages in the Quran, if you look to it, right. It says
that you're going to be asked, well, let's assume the element in 2019, you're going to be asked on
		

			that day about every blessing, right? Sheikh Abdullah used to give it the example of somebody who's
on Hajj, right, you're going because this is based on a Hadith of the Prophet salallahu Salam, where
the poor person is going to enter agenda 500 years before a rich person, even just for the fact that
the rich person has to be asked about all that blessing. What do you do with it? How did you use it?
Did you use it responsibly? Were you grateful for all these sorts of things, the poor person, if
they were able to base upon on to Allah and keep their faith intact? They're not going to be held up
at the gate. They're not going to be checked at the door. They're going to be in the express line.
		

			And the angels are going to say, You know what, go right ahead.