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In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds.
And peace and blessings be upon the Prophet and the Messengers, Muhammad and the Messenger of Allah.
Peace and blessings be upon him and upon him and upon him and upon him and upon him.
Peace and blessings be upon him and upon him and upon him.
My brothers and sisters, it so happened that I’m out here in Ashli Yawar that we must see.
One of our most favorite places for walk, to walk in.
And I have one Omer with me.
And he mentioned a book that talks about the wealth of Rasulullah .
And the author seems to claim that Rasulullah ,
and like whatever we have heard and read about him ,
that he was a very wealthy.
person.
And it’s just that he was very generous.
And so the wealth didn’t stay with him.
And he gave it all away.
Now, his generosity of course is beyond question.
We know that.
The question is, was he wealthy or not?
And this book, this person has written.
So one has to read that.
I don’t want to comment on that.
But the point I want to say here
is the importance of
our attitudes,
which for the most part get
formed and colored
very unobtrusively,
very insidiously,
and
you know, in a very
unremarkable manner.
But they guide and become
the filters through which
we view the world.
Wealth is one of them,
which is that we come from a,
today we come from a world
and a culture which
absolutely worships wealth
in every sense of the term.
We worship wealth.
We worship the wealthy.
The wealthy are our role models,
irrespective of how they,
forget about being Muslim or not Muslim,
even non-Muslims,
they are our role models,
irrespective of how they earn that wealth,
whether they earn the wealth in
ethical ways or unethical ways.
I’m not using the terminology of
halal and haram because
somebody might say,
well, you know, they’re not Muslim.
So I’m saying ethical and unethical,
which is applicable across the world.
We don’t ask any of the questions.
We just say, well, you know,
who are the role models, so and so.
I always remember this.
I remember the first time I was in India,
I was in India,
I was in India,
I remember this half amusingly,
where one day in our masjid here,
I was speaking,
I was doing a harasa for our youth.
So we had a whole house full of young people
and obviously almost every single one of them
came from practicing families.
Most of them from people who,
whose parents come to the masjid
at least once a day,
sometimes more than once a day.
These young people,
at least the boys,
if you guys see them,
many of them come at least once a day.
So mashallah, good, good kids,
good youngsters.
And my question to them,
I said,
name for me three of your role models.
This is the,
the reason I described all this in such detail
was because to give you the background.
So this is a meeting,
a gathering in the masjid.
And I was in the middle of the masjid,
and I was sitting there,
sitting in the masjid.
The question is asked by the Imam,
two people who are practicing Muslims.
So I said,
name for me three role models.
Guess who they named?
Elon Musk,
Jeff Bezos,
Warren Buffett.
Three role models.
Now,
so I said,
well, I appreciate your honesty.
I mean,
I’m not going to fool anybody.
So you didn’t say,
Abu Bakr,
and Omar,
and Osman,
Rabbi Al-Anuma,
Raja Al-Anum.
You said who your real role models are.
But my question is,
now you need to do the next step,
which is,
you question and say,
why are these people role models?
So take Elon Musk,
for example.
Take the,
take space,
space X.
All right.
Take Tesla,
take anything that he is associated with,
because he has this aura of being somebody who is into high technology.
Ask yourself one question,
which is,
did he invent any of those things?
And the answer is no.
So you are in awe of him for what?
So you are in awe of him for the fact that here,
here is a businessman who takes something which somebody has invented,
converted that into a revenue generating model,
and became humongous devils.
I agree that that’s also a skill.
And there is a,
you don’t need to be an inventor to become wealthy.
You need to be someone who is smart in a business sense,
who can take an invention from somewhere and convert it into a revenue model.
So nothing wrong with that.
I’m not criticizing that.
But the point I’m making is,
therefore,
when you say that,
you respect him for his technology,
that’s a lie.
You respect him for his wealth.
If the same Elon Musk was not sitting on that pile of money,
what would you say?
I take it a step further and say,
Elon Musk’s personal life,
Jeff Bezos personal life,
in terms of their fidelity,
in terms of their,
you know,
Elon Musk does not have an issue of fidelity because he has no wives.
Fortunately,
man has a wife.
Fortunately,
married anyway.
But with Jeff Bezos,
we have that.
What do you say about somebody who,
because of being caught in an adulterous relationship,
ends up losing a huge chunk of his wealth?
Is that a sign of somebody clever that you want to follow?
Or is it a sign of somebody who does not even have business sense?
Right?
Who can’t even keep it hidden.
So what are you respecting?
But this is our trend,
that we respect money.
It doesn’t matter where the money comes from.
As long as there is money,
we have respect.
So I seriously want you to think about this and say,
what is my attitude?
And take that,
you know,
say my attitude towards wealth,
for example,
or my attitude towards knowledge.
What is my attitude towards knowledge?
Which kind of knowledge do I feel has more value?
Now,
of course,
the standard Sunday school answer,
like I call these Sunday school answers,
because
standard Sunday school answer is
the Quran.
Highest level of value for knowledge.
Great.
And the next question would be,
if that is the case,
when you go and listen
to a
person who is making tafsir of Quran,
do you ask the question,
what is this person’s connection with the Quran?
At a very basic level,
does this person know the Arabic language?
Has this person read the Quran?
Can this person read the Quran correctly,
which is tajweed,
which in the Islamic education system,
a primary school student should be able to read the Quran correctly with tajweed.
So if somebody says he reads tajweed as a other language,
he think what is tajweed is all we do
to teach people is liquid hashing.
Or if because the head is not lacking��
Has this person admitted for tahid meaning you should not go to school?
Yes.
I do such papers that they can study it.
Oh,
Emily
had this same required.
Yes,
Bahadur Udum. And what did he do? He was able to say one hadith in Arabic. And just the,
without the sanad or anything, just the wording. And we say, mashallah, mashallah.
What are you mashallah-ing? So the thing is, the standards drop. So now, my point is,
when you’re talking about question of knowledge, which is the most important,
whereas if someone gives a lecture of, I remember many years ago, in the 70s,
in Hyderabad, we have something called the Administrative Staff College of India.
So the Administrative Staff College of India had invited at that time,
a man who was the oil minister of Saudi Arabia. This was around the time when they
the Saudis and the others, the OPEC countries, made an oil embargo, which literally shook the
world. And at that time, it was Malik Faisal, who was the king of Saudi Arabia at that time.
So this oil minister, he was very famous. He came. Now, ASCII, Administrative Staff College of India,
had a lecture. And
he said,
he spoke about,
you know,
the oil economy,
the
dollar,
the oil dollar,
and so forth.
Now, in that,
the place was jam-packed completely.
Absolutely packed.
In that crowd,
so I also went,
I mean, you know,
my father had gone, so he took me along.
I was in college at the time.
So in that audience,
I saw, I’m looking at people, and because I know the place, I know the people.
I’m asking myself, how many people here even understand what this man is saying?
Because he’s talking finance.
He’s talking high finance, he’s talking global finance,
he’s talking finance in terms of, you know, countries and so on.
He’s not talking about your pocket money or your bank account.
So how many people even understand what he’s saying?
And how many people here, my question to myself was,
how many people here came because he flew in on his own jet?
He didn’t fly Saudi Air business class or first class.
He flew in on his own plane.
How many people here are because this is the oil minister of Saudi Arabia?
It is the aura of money.
It’s the aura of wealth which attracts.
So we have to ask ourselves this question and say,
what are these auras that are influencing my perception,
my perception of life in general,
and especially my perception of Islam and my perception of things connected with Islam,
Islamic scholars, Islamic knowledge itself and so on.
What is the value of that?
A very graphic example is ask yourself and ask whoever is involved in our masajid,
generally speaking, what is the value?
What is the izzah?
What is the waqar?
What is the prestige of the Imam?
Right?
There are any number of masajids where the Imam is a servant.
I won’t even say a glorified servant.
He’s a servant of the board members.
And even the board members is not a equal servant of all.
He’s the servant of the wealthy board members.
I know of instances where quite literally,
in a board meeting, the Imam is told, go get some tea,
go get some coffee or something like that,
literally treating him as a servant.
And yet the same people have no shame to stand behind this Imam and pray their salah.
I don’t even know whether the salah is valid because one of the requirements,
I’m not saying this requirement in terms of the shiite, fard and sunnah,
but one of the requirements that you pray behind somebody,
that you respect that person.
If I have no respect for somebody, zero,
then on what basis do I make him my Imam,
even if it is an Imam for two rakat of salah?
But this is how we have reduced the value and the waqar and the position
of the ilm of this religion and the ulama sharia.
So my closing point is to myself and you,
let us examine our attitudes and ask ourselves that when I have an attitude towards something,
what is really driving it?
Especially with regard to religion and so on,
what is really driving it?
So for example,
I was saying about this book,
about the title of it,
the wealth of Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
So before I even go and read the book,
I ask myself this question and say,
what is my attitude towards wealth?
It is my attitude towards wealth.
It is my attitude towards wealth.
If somebody within quotes proves,
find evidence that Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
had more wealth than Sulaiman alaihi salam,
iconically wealthy among the prophets.
If somebody proves and find evidence that Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
had more wealth than Sulaiman alaihi salam,
would my respect and love for the Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
would it increase?
And if somebody proves,
and this is what at least our sources show us,
that he did not have wealth.
And then again,
before I put in qualifiers,
saying not because he could not earn it,
blah, blah, blah,
all that is also indicative of an attitude.
So if he did not have wealth,
his dua,
O Allah,
resurrect me with the masageen,
the hadith where he said that the foqara,
the poor people will go into Jannah 500 years before the wazir people,
and that does not mean that the wazir people will go to Jannah.
No,
his,
with the Ashara Mubashara,
the hadith where he gave glad tidings of Jannah to the 10 people.
One of them was Abdul Rahman ibn Auf,
Radha l-Anhu.
And when he gave him the glad tidings,
he said to him,
I almost thought that Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala was not going to give you this.
Now,
Abdul Rahman ibn Auf Radha l-Anhu started weeping.
He said,
As-Sulaimah, what happened?
Why did I,
why did you say that?
He said,
because that is how long it took for you to give hisaab for your wealth.
Now,
Abdul Rahman ibn Auf Radha l-Anhu,
his wealth,
even the thought that he is giving hisaab because he earned it unlawfully is,
you know,
that thought would be completely devoid of any fact and it would be haram.
So here is a person whose wealth is halal of the halal.
Yet,
the Nabi Ali says something,
you are a gift.
It took so long for you to give hisaab.
Which shows us that wealth,
halal wealth is what you give hisaab for.
Haram wealth is the fuel of the fire in which that person who earns it,
illa mashallah,
unless Allah forgives,
will burn.
So,
you know,
examine attitudes.
Ask yourself,
what am I trying to,
which filter,
what fellow glasses am I looking at this with?
You ask Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala to the dua of Sayyidina Umar ibn Al-Khattab l-Anhu,
Allahumma arina al-haqta haqqan,
wa rizukhna istiba’a,
wa arina al-ba’tila ba’tilan,
wa rizukhna istinaaba.
Wa la show us the truth of the truth.
So the truth behind things.
So we recognize it as true and follow that and show us the evil behind,
the batil behind the evil,
so that we stay away from it.
So help us to stay away from it.
So we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala for this.
Wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam ala ameen.
Al-Kahri wa alayhi wa sahibin.
Naim Ghuram.
Al-Takara.
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