Check out my new car!!!
assalamu alaykum wa rahmatullah,
"O mankind! Verily, the Promise of Allah is true. So let not this present life deceive you, and let not the chief deceiver (Satan) deceive you about Allah. Surely, Shaitan (Satan) is an enemy to you, so take (treat) him as an enemy. He only invites his followers that they may become the dwellers of the blazing Fire..." [5 - 6, 35]
We often hear prideful and boastful statements such as: My son graduated from so and so university, my son/daughter is very successful, my brother makes six figure income, I just bought a new car!, check out my new house!, he comes from a very educated family, my son works at a fortune 500 company, my son's a CA, my daughter's a CEO, so and so is a MD of a huge bank - "very successful" etc... (as I can speak for the bengali community, I am sure most of the world works the same way now).
It seems like by competing for worldly possesions most of us forgot the beautiful hadith of the Prophet (sallalahu alayhi wa salam), "None of you have attained faith, until you love for your brother what you love for yourselves." [Bukhari]. The intense competition for the duniya has led people to rejecting this hadith, by wanting only good for oneself and not his/her fellow Muslim. It is unfortunate that people compete for the wrong things and neglect the halaal competition of competing for the Deen [to be highest of ranks in the Jannah and loved by Allah (subhana wa ta'ala)].
Following is a beautiful explaination of a hadith in Riyadh us Saliheen by Sh. Uthaymeen [May Allah have mercy on his soul]. I took this section from Kamil's blog, a friend in Madeenah Univ doing post grad. InshaaAllah this is beneficial for all of you.
jazakumAllahukhayran,
Fares
------------------------
Shaikh Muhammad ibn Salih al-Uthaimeen said:
"The more people increase in comfort and luxury and the more they open up before the people [with the Dunya], the more evils will open up before them. It is comfort and luxury that destroys a person. Because if a person was to concern himself with comfort and luxury and providing enjoyment to his body, he will become negligent of providing enjoyment to his heart, and his greatest worry will become providing enjoyment to this body that is doomed to become worms and rotten.
This is the ordeal, and this is what has harmed people today. You can hardly find anyone except that they say: "What is our palace? What is our car? What is our furniture? What is our food?" Even those who study [Islamic] knowledge, some of them only study in order to gain rank or status to reach the blessings of the Dunya. As if man was not created for a significant purpose. The Dunya and its blessings are only a means, nothing more. We ask Allah to make us and you use it as a means.
Ibn Taimiyyah, may Allah have mercy upon him, said: "A person should use money as he uses a donkey to ride, and as he uses the toilet to relieve himself."
These are the ones who know money and its value. So do not make money your greatest worry, rather ride on money, for if you do not ride on it, it will ride on you, and your worry will become the Dunya.
For this, we say, that the more the Dunya opens up before the people, and they end up concerning themselves with it, they will lose as much of the Akhira as they have gained from the Dunya. The Prophet (SAW) said: "By Allah, I am not afraid of your poverty," meaning I am not afraid of poverty for you, for the Dunya will open up before you, "but I am afraid that you will lead a life of luxury as past nations did, whereupon you will compete with each other for it, as they competed for it, and it will destroy you as it destroyed them." [Bukhari and Muslim].
The Messenger (SAW) spoke the truth. This is what has destroyed the people today. What has destroyed the people today, is their competing with one another for the Dunya, and them being as if they were only created for it, and not it created for them. So they have preoccupied themselves with what was created for them over what they were created for. This is backwardness. We ask Allah for protection."
Madeenah, Saudi Arabia
24th of October 2010
