Auto-generated transcript:
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the honour of the prophets and messengers.
Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and his family,
and peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and his family,
My brothers and sisters, one of the most important things for us to do is to become grateful people.
To become among the shakireen, the people who are grateful to Allah.
You know, if you think about this, today we live in a world where we seem to be surrounded by bad news.
In the newspapers, this and that, and all kinds of stuff all over the place.
But give it a little bit more thought.
Today, if you look at our lifestyle, and I’m not talking about the lifestyles of the high and mighty, the rich and famous.
I’m talking about the lifestyles of ordinary people like us.
We have lifestyles, and we live in comfort that is superior to the loyalty of the West and the East in medieval times.
Far better than the kings and queens lived in Europe, and far better than the kings and queens lived in the East.
Europe, I don’t even want to talk and compare because their lifestyles are different.
But if you look at the lifestyle, it’s pretty sad if you look at the parameters.
Say, for example, let’s take two or three parameters to judge the lifestyle.
One, let us take health.
You know, these were the days before penicillin, days before antibiotics.
It meant that if you got a wound on one of your limbs, which was very, very common for all kinds of reasons,
not just wars, but, you know, exercise, practicing with weapons, working in the fields, just playing, anything, right?
If you got a wound in one of your limbs, and they had some very brutal ways of dealing with it,
with those things, and if it didn’t work, if it got infected, which it did,
you had a very good chance of losing the limb itself or having to get it amputated.
And amputation also, including, for example, treating the wound if it needed to be stitched, amputation, everything.
Remember, these are the days before anesthesia.
So amputation was that they would grab you, put you on a…
table or on some platform, hold you down,
and then somebody would either take an axe or a saw and do the job.
Not a nice image at all, right?
But that was medical treatment.
Infant mortality was through the roof.
There was not a house in which some child had not died.
Many women died in childbirth.
And it didn’t matter because disease does not differentiate between royalty and nobility and the common folk.
The treatment that they had in the West for disease was practically one thing, which is bloodletting.
So if you are sick, they opened a vein in your arm or…
somewhere and they drained blood, sometimes quite a lot of blood.
And they believed that this was something which cured you.
It actually killed you because you had now also to deal with loss of blood.
In the East, it was slightly better because medical treatment was a little bit more developed, but not particularly more.
Food could not be refrigerated. There was no such thing.
People used to eat food, which if you eat today, you would die.
Because meat would be almost putrefying when they were eating it.
And that’s why they used a lot of spices to mask the stink of rotting meat.
This is as far as food and health is concerned.
Again, in the East, it was better.
Especially if you were wealthy enough, you managed to get some decent food.
But in Europe, it was very awful.
There was obviously no heating and cooling and so on and so forth.
So in the summer, you got hot. In the winter, you got cold.
You froze.
In the West, in Europe, they believed that bathing was dangerous to health.
So they never bathed. Never bathed.
They never brushed their teeth because they didn’t know anything about oral hygiene.
So by the time a person was about 30 years old,
they would have lost most, if not all, their teeth.
They had pyria.
Their mouths stank worse than the worst drain.
And this was normal.
This was normal.
And they never bathed, so their bodies stank.
They believed that lice,
and things like that in the beard, in the hair, on the skin was normal.
This was how human beings were supposed to be, full of lice and so on.
It’s eye-opening that it was only during the Crusades
that Europe and Europeans, including European royalty,
were exposed to things like bathing and toothpaste and toothbrushes.
And they were the first to have a bath.
And they were the first to have a bath.
And they were the first to have a bath.
And some of them brought that back to Europe.
Many of them got condemned for that reason.
They said, you have become, you have left Christianity
because you have taken on the ways of the heathens.
But that’s when things like oral hygiene, physical hygiene, and so on,
started coming into Europe.
It came from the Middle East.
Education didn’t exist.
The…
Libraries of kings had three, four books.
Eastern part, especially the Muslim world, was far, far, far ahead.
Especially in Spain, southern Spain, in Cordoba, in Andalusia.
And then a little bit before that, Baghdad.
These were centers of learning and amazing centers of learning.
This was…
This was, you know, as far as education was concerned, it was fabulous.
But not the West.
Take, for example, let’s come to the East.
Take, for example, Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal.
In Shah Jahan’s time, which is the 17th century,
India accounted…
India by India, I mean the Mughal Empire,
because that’s what India was, the Mughal Empire.
And the fact that the Mughal Emperor was the owner of the empire,
it meant that one person.
Um…
Um…
Um…
Um…
Um…
Um…
It accounted for 30% of global GDP.
Which meant that the net worth of Shah Jah as one person
was equal to one-third of global GDP.
Right?
Obviously, he didn’t own it all in the sense of
it wasn’t sitting in his pocket.
But it was something which, you know, which he had control over.
Despite that,
the Red Fort, which was his house,
there was no running water,
there was no hot and cold water,
there were no flushing toilets,
there was obviously no air conditioning and heating.
You know, none of these things,
which physical transportation,
the fastest transportation was a horse.
The king usually rode on an elephant,
which is much, much slower, right?
So obviously nothing faster than that.
Obviously, I mean, I need not even say that,
I mean, no planes and stuff,
but not even anything faster than a horse didn’t exist.
So, you know, horse or horse carriage.
Let’s think about that.
I mean, all of these things today,
we have and we take it for granted.
Pen, paper,
and not even going into computers and blah, blah, blah, whatnot.
The simplest things that we use
to make a living,
which we use today,
and which we take for granted,
without even thinking,
were not available even
to the most powerful
and the wealthiest of monarchs
in medieval times.
Right?
Now tell me, what do we have to grumble about?
So I remind myself anew,
let us become
people who are grateful to Allah SWT
for all that He has given us.
So,
as an exercise,
I will do it myself,
and I do it myself,
and I ask you to do it as well.
Make a list every morning,
when you wake up,
keep a diary,
make a list of 10 things
that you need to thank Allah SWT for that day.
Even if you have to repeat the same 10 things every day,
write it down.
On one sheet of paper,
write down 10 things I need to be grateful for today.
Right?
The ability to have,
like I’ve been going for walks to this place,
called the Longmeadow Conservation Area,
which is a wetland.
And there are two families of swans there
with little cygnets.
And I’ve been taking some photographs of those swans.
Absolutely fabulous, beautiful.
And I thank Allah SWT.
Allah SWT gave me the ability,
the possibility of going there,
of seeing these things,
you know, full color vision
where I can appreciate what I’m looking at.
Allah gave me a beautiful camera
to use,
love for photography,
you know, good friends,
people go with me to walk with me there
and we have great conversations.
I mean, imagine,
these are daily things, right?
And so beautiful.
So write down,
make a list of 10 things
that you need to be grateful for
and thank Allah SWT for those 10 things.
And in those 10 things,
if some of them are people,
they will be,
then find those people,
and thank those people.
It’s very important to do that.
Find those people
and thank those people.
Because if it wasn’t for those people,
then you would not be able to,
you know, enjoy those blessings
that Allah SWT gave you
to those people.
Maybe your parents,
maybe teachers,
maybe friends,
maybe whoever.
Thank those people for being there for you.
And may Allah bless you all.
And may Allah bless you all.
And may Allah bless you all.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (9.5MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | Youtube Music | RSS