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Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, alhamdulillahi rabbil ‘alameen, wa salatu wa salamu ala ashrafil anbiya wal mursaleen, Muhammadur Rasulullah ﷺ, tasliman kathiran kathira. And my brother and sisters, Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la said: How can you deny Allah? How can you disobey Allah? How can you deny that He brought you to life from death? You were dead, then He gave you life. Then He will cause you to die, and then He will give you life again. Then you will return to Him. And you will be gathered towards Him. How can you deny Allah when this is the case? We should think about this. Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la is telling us to reflect on our reality. That we did not exist at all until a certain time in history was mentioned. This is our life’s truth. If you think about it, when a child is born, nobody says “Ahmed” or “Hassan” immediately. They wait until the baby is named. But before that name, there was nothing. The baby existed without a name for a moment.
Think about this: many babies die almost immediately—same day, maybe a day later, maybe two days later. So what do you say? Who died? A baby with no identity, no name. Similarly, we are told we live, Alhamdulillah, but eventually, we die. Allah gives us life, success, names, movement, wealth, strength, help—everything comes from Allah. Sometimes people chase these things thinking they are competing with Allah. Kings and emperors have given themselves titles like “Shadow of God.” They forget that the person dies. When they bring the janaza into the masjid, what is the announcement the Imam makes? “Bring the body.” You used to call him by his name, his title, his honorifics. Now he has none. There is no name, no title, nothing left behind. This is our reality.
Imam Ghazali said how tragic it is that the body which will decay is pampered, while the soul which is eternal is neglected. How tragic that the body which will decay is pampered, but the soul is neglected. We eat for the body, we exercise, we bathe, we take care of the body; we should do that. This is an amanah from Allah. Nothing wrong with taking care of yourself, you should take care of yourself. But if you deliberately neglect the body—for example, substance abuse, or doing things harmful to the body—you will answer to Allahﷻ. The body is an amanah. You can’t say, “No, anyway it will die, anyway it will decay.” No way. It is your amanah; you must take care of the body. So, what about the soul? Whose amanah is the soul?
Just as the body needs food, imagine this: you are very hungry, right? You haven’t eaten for days, two days. Then somebody calls you and says, “Come, I’ll give you a meal,” and you are dying for a meal. You become weak, you need the food. At that time, this person sits you down in front of a big flat-screen TV and projects pictures of fantastic foods, beautiful fruits, and fantastic dishes—your favorite foods. What will it do to the hunger? When it decreases the hunger slightly, it will actually increase the hunger, no? It will make you even more hungry. Because I was hungry already, now I am seeing this food, my mouth is watering. My pain is actually increasing, my problem is increasing.
Because the food for the body is not an image. The food for the body is physical food. Instead of all those images, if you give me one slice of bread, that will be better for me. If you give me one piece of meat, that’s better for me. One egg is better than looking at pictures of eggs. Because the egg and the meat and the bread is actual food for the body. If I eat that, it assuages my hunger and gives me some strength. Our souls are hungry. The soul also needs food. Just like the body needs food, the soul also needs nourishment.
What is the food for your soul? We often get confused. We think our soul is fed by retail therapy, shopping, or distractions. If somebody is sick, his body is sick; do you say, “Go take some medicine”? Yes. But what is the medicine? You have to first identify the sickness, right? Then you can prescribe. This sickness—of the soul—is the disease. So, what is the medicine prescribed for it? That sickness is a sickness of the soul. The heart is sick. The kalb is sick. You are going to solve that in… [unclear] I don’t even know the names of these malls. I never go. I am allergic to malls. So whatever the name is. If your soul is sick, that cure is in that mall. Or have a holiday. Go on vacation.
The problem is that we are so disconnected from our soul, that in theory we know we have a soul because everybody says we have a soul. Can you feel it? Do you know it? Why not? Because we are so completely immersed in this dunya. I mentioned my experience with the first time I went to see a 3D movie in an IMAX theater in California in San Francisco. When I was sitting in the movie wearing those 3D glasses and there was surround sound, and it was a movie about sharks, so when the shark comes literally it feels as if it’s going to eat me or something very real. At that time, if you could monitor, I can tell you myself: was I thinking of Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la? Was I doing zikr? Was I thinking of my job? Was I thinking of my wife? Nothing. I’m in the movie; I’m not thinking of anything except that movie because that movie is so real. And if somebody had put monitors—like an EEG machine for my brain, an ECG machine for my heart—and they did all that, they would find the machines freaking out, right? All the neurons in the brain are firing because they are seeing fear and threats, completely unreal. There is no threat, there is no sea, there is no shark. You are sitting peacefully inside a theatre, looking at something on a screen, but the mind cannot differentiate that; it sees that as real.
We are not talking about little children; we are talking about grown people. Everything follows this pattern. We do not need to be fooled by art. Art is good, Alhamdulillah. But what does it teach us? It teaches us deception. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ told us that every true person knows these things are not life. Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la said: “Truly the life of this world is nothing but amusement and diversion.” He said truly the life of this world is deception, it is temporary, it is deception, it is something we will have to leave behind. So I am not saying don’t work and don’t build, no. If building wealth, if accumulating wealth was haram, there would not have been laws of inheritance. Why would you worry about leaving anything behind? Because Allah has made provisions for those who believe.
If you are not supposed to earn wealth, if you are not supposed to save, if you are not supposed to build wealth, then where is the need for loss of inheritance? You have nothing to leave behind. So Alhamdulillah, earning wealth is halal. It is permissible. The question is how do you earn it. This is the deception. Deception does not mean that the car is not a real car. It is a car. It means that people give you cars so they can count on you later. They say, “I’ll give you this car worth 50 lakhs” or “This car worth millions.” Think about what Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la created us with. He created humans as drivers. He gave us the ability to drive over His creation. We are not valuable in ourselves; we think a small metal object adds value to us. And he gave us cars. I drove my sister’s Mercedes in America. So we needed some gas. I told him I’ll go fill up gas. I went there filling up gas at the gas station. One American guy came in a beat-up old Chevy. He parked behind me. He comes out of the car, his hands on his waist like this, hips like this. He walks all around the Mercedes. He says, “Man, must be nice to be rich, huh?” So I said to him, “You don’t need to be rich to drive this car.” What? He said, “You do not need to be rich to drive a Mercedes.” What do you mean? I said, “It’s not my car. It’s not my car. We’re talking about driving the car. Why should I be rich? To drive a car, I need to be a driver, period. I don’t have to own the car. I can borrow your car and drive.” This is the deception. This is the deception. To think I own it. You don’t own it, man. This adds value to me. How can it add value to you? You are insulting yourself. You are degrading yourself. You are demeaning yourself if you think that your car adds value to you. If you think that the watch you wear adds value to you. I always say, some people buy a watch to tell the time, some people buy a watch to tell the world. You are demeaning and degrading and disgracing yourself.
We degrade ourselves thinking something created us, or an engineer made us. No, we are creation. We do not say our car makes us good; no, no, we all agree. Alhamdulillah, it is permissible for you to use it. But ask yourself: why am I doing this? What is running in my mind? And don’t fool yourself. Be very honest with this. We do all this. Clothes. They always say, “Clothes make the man.” What kind of garbage is that? Your character makes you. Not your clothes. You have a sherwani hanger, coat hanger. What is that? How can the clothes make you? Language is very suggestive. Language is a reflection of what is in the heart. So we have these phrases in the language, and all languages—I mean, I am speaking in English—so I am giving you the English version. There are stories of Mullah Nasruddin. In the Arabic language, there are stories about another person like this. Mullah Nasruddin is in Farsi and Urdu, and he was a man, a very wise man, but he pretended to be foolish. So Mullah Nasruddin went home, he put on a nice brocade shawl, he put on a nice big turban, and he came. The guard let him inside. When they sat at the table, Mullah Nasruddin took the food, he took the rice and he put it in the pocket of his shawl. Then he took some curry and he put it on top. He was like, “Are you mad? What’s wrong? What are you doing? You’re ruining your clothes. How do you put the food on the clothes?” He said, “No, no, I’m feeding the one who was invited.” I invited you. No, no, no, you didn’t invite me. You invited these clothes. I came and your Darbar turned me away. Now when I come wearing these clothes, he lets me inside. So who was invited? The clothes. So I’m feeding them.
Look, think, reflect. Look at us. We get fed by the world’s deception. This is our honor’s sickness that we are showing. That our presence and our status gives us success. And remind ourselves that we did not bring anything with us. Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-A’la will take us back. Have. We ask Allah to give this to us and to keep it with us and to put it full of barakah InshaAllah and keep us in His hifazat and to become our protector as He always is. And we ask Allah to take us in that state when He is pleased with us. That is what we need to focus on. We ask Allah to be pleased with us. We ask Allah to enable us to please Him. We ask Allah to make it easy for us to please Him. Thank you.