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Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, wa salatu wa salamu ala ashrafil anbiya wal mursaleen, Muhammadun Rasulullah ﷺ tasliman kaseeran kaseera. My brothers and sisters, in our lives we need metrics; we need ways of measurement to see if we are successful or not. Without them, we do not know if our efforts are working or failing. Therefore, if you have some *ma’arat* (standards) against which we can measure ourselves, I can say whether I am successful or not succeeding.
Now, these measurements will be based on the ultimate goal that I have to achieve. For example, if you are going on a journey from here to Bangalore, then Bangalore is the destination. The measurement involves direction and speed: by when should I reach Bangalore? If I say I must reach there in four hours, I must maintain a certain average speed along my way. This is how it works. This is how life works. What is your goal? And based on that goal, what is the standard you are measuring yourself against?
In our lives, Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-Ala gave us a goal. That goal is the purpose of our creation, which Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-Ala said: “And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me.” By worship, we mean obeying Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-Ala. We must know Him and obey Him throughout our entire lives.
To illustrate this and give us clear indicators of who are the winners and losers, Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-Ala described incidents from the lives of different people in the Quranul Kareem. He presented them as contrasts. For example, Allah told us about the life of Pharaoh of Egypt—Ramesses II, however it was—and at the same time, He told us about the life of Musa ﷺ.
If you compare the two, they were both human and from the same place. Who is a winner and who is successful? Who is a loser and who is a failure? I am not saying purely in terms of devotion or Islamic knowledge; nobody would say Pharaoh is a winner and Musa is a loser. But when we look sincerely at their outcomes, Pharaoh was a monarch, an emperor with inconceivable wealth. Today we cannot even think how much wealth the Egyptian emperors had. If you just look at their tombs—the pyramids, the Great Pyramid in Giza—it is visible from space.
Now, what does it take to build something like that? What kind of economy supported such building? It is a completely useless building if you think about its utility. It is not a dam on a river which gives us agricultural land, nor is it a great factory, hospital, or university. It is a tomb. It has no value whatsoever. Yet there was this whole empire, kingdom, and dynasty able to build those pyramids over generations. So what kind of wealth did they have? Yet we are saying they were not successful; they were failures.
In contrast, consider Musa ﷺ. The Rasool Allah said he had one cloak (*mishlah*) which he used to spread on the ground to sleep at night and cover himself with it during the day. When he went from Egypt to Madhya, he had only one cloak. His shoes got worn away, so he walked barefoot. He was a big man, very fit and tough. He grazed sheep for ten years. How many of us here would choose grazing sheep as a career? How many will be willing to graze sheep for ten days?
Go stay with the shepherd here. Eat what he eats, sleep where he sleeps. Will we do it? Even as a curiosity, even just for twenty-four hours, go sleep in the bush in the open and wake up in the morning. I’d say it’s wonderful if you ask me, but we will not do it. We will not even do it for one day. The reason is because we should be very careful of hypocrisy. Because Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-Ala will ask us: if we say Musa Alayhi Salaam was successful and Firaun was unsuccessful, but in our lives there is more *Firauni-yat* (Pharaonic behavior) than *Musa-i-yat*, then what is the answer for that? What are we chasing? Are we chasing what Pharaoh chased or what Musa ﷺ chased? We have to decide this for ourselves. It is not for others to convince us; we must reflect and think and ask Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-Ala to make a step forward.
Obviously, we cannot reach the level of Musa Alayhi Salaam, but at least we can take his path and direction. He was going on jet-powered skis and I am walking, but still at least I am on the same road. I am not in the opposite direction. Take Yusuf Alayhi Salaam as another example. Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-Ala gave us that story too—Yusuf in the house where he was a slave, and so on. See the comparison.
So, Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-Ala gave us these examples to show us that the real winners in the sight of Allah are those who were obedient to Him and followed the Deen. Allah sent Islam, which is what the prophets did. But in worldly terms, they did not have money, wealth, executive authority, military power, or political authority. Yet Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-Ala is showing us Ibrahim Alayhi Salaam as a beautiful example. What did he have? Nothing in terms of material wealth. But Allah said, “He is an Ummah in Himself.” He was a people by himself. Can anyone want Him? One man became a nation.
Allah in Haqqal Qur’an Nazil Farwa’i says, “Kaana Ummah”—He is by Himself a nation. One man, Ibrahim Alayhi Salaam, Allah called him a nation. And this Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is from his progeny. Take Rasulullah ﷺ himself; even though later on when he came to Madinah through conquests and various things, he had access to wealth, his own chosen lifestyle was very frugal and simple. His standard of living could have been much higher than I am saying it was. I’m not saying he would have lived like a Persian emperor or the kings of Rome and Persia. But definitely he didn’t have to live with that level of simplicity. It was by choice.
So why did he choose that? Because the purpose of life, the *ma’at* he has, is: “Life must be completely and totally obedient to Allah.” The number one focus should be to please Allah in our ibadat (worship) and actions. In that process, if wealth comes in a halal way, alhamdulillah. We are not against wealth; Islam is not against wealth. But if that wealth is coming at the expense of other things, today we are living in a world where the wealth of the world is concentrated in the hands of eight or nine people. That’s it. I’m not talking about countries or corporations; I mean individuals. Eight or nine individuals have more wealth than fifty percent of the population of this world. They own currencies, governments, your email, your identity, YouTube on which we do all our propagation, and they can shut it down in one second. They own the media. So all the so-called news that comes out, which gets us excited, comes with the permission of the owner of that media. What you are getting is not necessarily the truth.
Despite that concentration of power, there is an unprecedented level of poverty. Why? A person’s wealth is now *deerisked*. You are young but don’t even have the right sort of money. You want a job but don’t have the right connections. You are so rich yet want a lot of money. You want to live like a king, but you have no money to feed yourself. You want to be rich. What is business? It is like a father to his son. It is just a hard thing and will get better. We have science, technology, and all sorts of stuff. What we don’t have is heart. What we don’t have is kindness, compassion, or feeling for each other. We are from a religion where Rasool Allah said this whole ummah is like one body; if the head pains, the whole body feels it. But do we see that in action?
So, the reason I am saying this is because we have to measure ourselves against standards, and Allah Ta’ala gave us the standard: the standard of the Ambiyal -e-Usra (Prophets), which is the standard of Rasulullah ﷺ. That’s why we have the Seerah, to study it, understand it, learn from it, and practice it in our lives. Because at the end of the day, it’s only actions that count. It’s not how much you know, it’s how much you do that makes a difference. We ask Allah Ta’ala to help us be people of action—actions based on the way shown to us by the Ambiyal-e-Usra and Rasulullah ﷺ. We ask Allah to help us live a life where He will be pleased with us because in the end, when we meet Allah Ta’ala, we will be happy. Only that will count—not how many possessions we had, not how long we lived, not how much money or authority we held. The only consideration between success and failure is whether Allah Subh’anaHu Wa Ta-Ala was pleased with me or not. We ask Allah to make us among those who He will be pleased with.
Wa sallallahu ala Nabeel Kareem wa ala alihi wa sallam. Al Fatiha. Bismillahir-Rahmanir-Raheem.