In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the worlds. My dear respected brothers, sisters, elders, I thought today it’s a good idea to look at the, what I like to call the other side of the picture. We live in a world today where thanks to what news is presented and how it is presented, we have a very dark and dismal and depressing picture of our life and times. And that is because only bad news sells. And in a profit-driven world, ruled by predatory capitalist barons, nothing which doesn’t make money can survive. For example, the root cause of our environmental crisis is that when net worth is measured only in dollars, then wood has value, not a standing forest. So felling of forest makes profit, but left untouched, it represents what we call unexploited opportunity. Having said that, let us see what the reality of our world is, really, by comparing it with what it was 50 years ago. That is within my lifetime. I’m not talking about ancient history. Take infant mortality, malnutrition, treatment for heart disease. Running hot and cold water in the bathrooms when you turn on your shower. Elevators, refrigerators, televisions, is that a blessing or not? Telephones and a thousand other conveniences that we take for granted were either not there or were in a very nascent stage, which you can only see in a museum today. My father, Rahmatul Ali, before the age of 40, had three heart attacks. And the only treatment was to take rest and not eat oily foods and not eat too much meat and so on. That’s it. Because angioplasty and bypass surgery had not been invented until then. Neither had cataract surgery. In my city in Hyderabad, one of our nobles, Fakhrul Mughal Bahadur, built a palace in 1870. It stands today, which has 600 rooms. 150 of them were furnished with Louis XVI furniture from France. Today, the cost of Louis XVI chairs ranges from $2,400 to $24,000 per chair. Now, I’m not saying that Fakhrul Mughal paid that price, but obviously he still paid a fortune. But that’s not the point of my story. My point of my story is to ask you to think about this. When you are standing in your shower with hot water raining down on your head, adjust it to just the right temperature and reflect on the fact that this wonderful palace didn’t have a shower with running hot and cold water. It also didn’t have flushed toilets. It also doesn’t have air conditioning, which in the summer in Hyderabad where the temperature goes to 120 degrees is useful. Remember that money was not the issue. The technology didn’t exist. Now, go further back in history and look at all the great monarchs and their palaces and the luxury they lived in and so on. And you will realize that some of the most common essential conveniences that we are used to and we believe we can’t do without them were not available to people who ruled entire nations. My question is, are we conscious of this and do we thank Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala for it? Gratitude is the platform on which happiness runs. We all want to be happy, but how many of us are consciously grateful? Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala began his book with reminding us to be grateful. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. All praise and all thanks is to Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala, the creator, protector, sustainer of the universe. Rabbil Alameen. We read this ayah in every rakat of every salawat. Do we contemplate on it? Do we reflect on it? And do we count the number of things that we need to thank Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala for? So let’s start doing that right now. Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala said, Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala said, Allah said, which means, and He, jalla jalaluhu, has granted you all that you asked Him for. If you try to count, just count, we’re not talking about being grateful and expressing grateful, just count. If you try to count Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala’s blessings, you will never be able to number them. Indeed, humankind is truly zalumun kafaa, truly unfair and truly ungrateful. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala to save us from being in that list. And then Allah said in the same surah, surah Ibrahim, Allah said, which means, and when your Rabb proclaimed, if you are grateful, I will certainly give you more, I will increase my blessing. But if you are ungrateful, surely my punishment is severe. I advise myself and you to make a list of the top ten things that we should thank Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala for and do that in tahajjud, in sujood. And do this every day and see how your life gets transformed. See how your heart will be full of happiness. Expressing gratitude to Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala is also to express it to those people in our life who Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala sent his blessings through. Parents and siblings and children and spouses and teachers and friends and grandchildren, many more. Do we thank them? Specifically thank them? Do we express our gratitude for what they do for us? And how that impacts us? Just think of one of them and imagine that you are attending the janaz of that person. See how you would feel. Imagine life without them. For many of us we can’t even imagine that. Yet, when they are with us, we take them for granted. Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said about people who are ungrateful in the hadith of Abu Hurayr radhe al-anu and Abu Hurayr radhe al-anu and the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam kaala la yashqurullah malla yashqurunas Abu Hurayr radhe al-anu said and reported that Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said whoever does not thank people has not thanked Allah. Now, we say that Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam didn’t tell us to wait until they are dead to thank them or say something good about them, you know. Eulogies and writing letters of remembrance. See it right away. If you haven’t done it, go do it now after the Juma. First thing you do, pick up your phone, call them, go meet them, even better. After all, think about this, if they had done something wrong, or if they had done something which you didn’t like, believe me, there is not one of us who wouldn’t go and search for that person and tell them right there. Even if it is something which didn’t directly harm you or affect you, make one mistake and you will have ten people standing in line to say you made that mistake. So why wait to thank and praise when you don’t wait to criticize or you don’t wait to express your dis, you know, whatever anger? Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam used to say good things about his Sahaba all the time and he said that in their presence or in the presence of their closest friends in the full circle of the world, all the time, and he said that in their presence or in the presence of their closest friends in the full knowledge that this would be conveyed to them. Imagine how happy, for example, I will give you some examples from the Seerah, imagine how happy Abu Musa al-Ashari would have been, how happy he must have felt. When he was standing in Salah in the Masjid and he was reciting the Quran aloud and he felt the presence of someone behind him, when he finished his Salah, he made Salam, he turned around, it was Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam told him how much he loved hearing his recitation. And Abu Musa al-Adheil said, Ya Rasulullah, if I knew you were listening, I would have recited longer. How he must have felt, think about that. Why did the Nabi alaihi sallam need to stand there and tell him this? You could have gone, you could have appreciated and gone away, he didn’t do that, he stayed there. Imagine how Abu Umar al-Khattab must have felt when somebody told him that Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said that when shaitan sees Omar coming down a street, he changes his direction and goes down a different street. How Sayyidina Abu Umar must have felt when he heard this. Imagine Umar al-Nafsani sallallahu alaihi wa sallam’s pleasure when he was told that Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam took the bayah on his behalf under the tree of Ud-e-Biyah. And Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala said Laqad radiya Allahu anil muminina idh yuba’iyoonaka tahata shajara fa’alima ma fi qulubihim fa’andala sakinata alihim wa asabahum fathan qareeba wa maghanima kathiratan yaqudoonaha wakan Allahu aziz al-Hakimah. Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala declared that he was pleased with those people. He said indeed Allah was pleased with the believers when they pledged allegiance to you. The believers when they pledged allegiance to you, O Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam under the tree, he knew what was in their hearts, so he sent down serenity and tranquility upon them and rewarded them with a victory at hand and many spoils of war they will gain for Allah is almighty always. And that is one, on a side note, that’s the reason why we Muslims do not criticize the Sahaba for anything they did because who are we to judge those who Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala said that he was pleased with. Finally, imagine how Abu Bakr radiyallahu anhu must have felt. When he heard Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam himself, he heard his saying in Masjid al-Nabawi, a sheriff packed with the Sahaba on the Thursday before the Monday when he passed away sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. He said which means Allah is witness that I have fulfilled everyone’s right and returned everyone’s favour except that of Abu Bakr. And Allah will reward Abu Bakr on my behalf. Imagine how Abu Bakr siddique would have felt when he heard the Rasul alaihi wa sallam saying it in front of him right there. There are many other stories about the way Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam appreciated and encouraged those with him so that they loved him more than anyone else. The operative question is what are you and I going to do differently starting now, starting today? Because the only worthwhile purpose of learning is to apply it. That is what transformed the life of the Sahaba, what they did, not only what they knew. The Sahaba, Ridwanul Alayhi wa alaihi wa majmaiyin obeyed the commands of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam without hesitation in the way that they learned from Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. They didn’t question the commands of Allah or the way Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam taught them to obey the command. They heard and they obeyed. No arguments, no hesitation, no doubt. I say this saying, may Allah forgive me and you and the Muslims, so forgive him, he is the Forgiving, the Merciful.
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