Yasmin Mogahed – Is this global pandemic a punishment
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Look at the circumstance we're in right now. Here we are. It's Ramadan, the messages are closed. We can't go to community of dogs we can barely see our families. You know, we're in this lockdown there's, there's uncertainty, there's fear. What is all of this mean? You know a lot of us are very confused. Is this a less anger? Is this a love punishing us for something? And so what we have to do is put this into perspective. First, let's look at what Allah says in the Quran, Allah subhanaw taala says in the Quran, that sometimes he allows us to taste a lesser affliction, before the greater affliction, okay, so, so here Allah has has explained that there are two types of
afflictions there. So Allah subhanaw taala is saying that there is a lesser affliction and there is a greater affliction. Now, what is the difference between them, the lesser affliction is intended to wake people up, it's not intended to destroy it's not intended to punish, it's actually intended to bring us back to wake us up to make us realize that Whoa, you know, like, imagine that your house is on fire, right? How are you going to know that your house is on fire initially, before you see you know, the the fire in front of your eyes, you're gonna know that your house is on fire because you have a smoke alarm that goes off and it beeps right now that smoke alarm is intended as a warning,
it's a wake up call, it's telling you sort yourself out before your house burns down. Right? That's what that's the purpose of an alarm, is that it's, it's telling you and it recognizes there's smoke and then it goes off and it tells you take out this fire before it burns your house down. Okay? This is the same concept Allah sends us afflictions that are lesser and nature in order as in order to wake us up like a smoke detector, like a smoke alarm, and to allow us to, to, to address the fire before it burns your house down. Right. So this is how we have to view what is happening around us is that these are actually Mercy of Allah subhanaw taala in disguise, if you look at the smoke
detector, that's actually a mercy for you. I know smoke detectors are really annoying when they go off, right? It's like a really obnoxious sound. But that noxious sound is actually a mercy for you Why? Because it's telling you that there's something you need to fix in your house, right. And if you don't fix it, your house is gonna burn down. Similarly, there's a lot of stuff we need to fix inside ourselves. There's a lot of stuff we need to fix in the way we treat people. There's a lot of stuff we need to fix in terms of how we interact with our families in terms of how we interact with God, in terms of the the stuff that's in our hearts, there's a lot that we need to fix. And so Allah
subhanaw taala allows us to to have this wake up call so that we can fix it before it's too late. And this is the difference between the lesser affliction allowed double Edna and the greater affliction and other upper level Akbar is an affliction that comes to wipe out a nation right? This is, this is the ending, right? This is like what happened to Pharaoh at the end of his life, even though Allah sent actually lesser afflictions to Pharaoh in order to give him a chance as well to wake up and to fix himself. But he didn't. He refused every single one. And so what happened is the at the very end when Allah subhanaw taala, allowed the Red Sea to drown him that was the greater
affliction that was that we'll talk about because it, he couldn't come back from it. And so the lesser affliction the smoke detector in in my analogy, it gives us an opportunity to come back to to repent, to fix ourselves, it's like, it's like an opportunity right now. It's a pause. And then on top of it, Allah gives us Ramadan, right? And it's a pause, so that we can look at our lives and we can look at ourselves and we can ask what needs to change? What do I need to fix? Have I have I abandoned the Qur'an? Have I have I have I, you know, not kept the ties of kinship? Have I been? Have I not been good to my parents? Have I not been keeping up my responsibilities? You know, how
have I been treating people? And wait a minute, do I have diseases internally that that are now becoming manifested, for example, selfishness, right? A lot of people are they're they're, they're becoming exposed not not just to the world, not to others necessarily, but to themselves that like this, this knee jerk reaction that when there's a scarcity, Neff CFC myself, myself that that people want to hoard for themselves. That's an indication of a disease internally of selfishness. Right?
Are we thinking of others? Are we just simply wanting to cover it for ourselves? So these are all things that the circumstance allows us to see so that we can rectify