Why Your Success Could Destroy You

Who is absolutely enthralled by his own earnings. He has a garden and he is just fascinated by this garden and he comments to himself.

[Silence]

He says about his garden, "This garden, I cannot imagine it will ever see an end." How could it? This garden is too important. He had a huge, huge garden. And of course he had workers and he had and he was supplying the town with with work and with money and he became very influential and perhaps even the town's economy and and commerce all depended on this garden. And so he started to naively think that he was the center of the universe that he could not be done without. What would they do without me in my garden? My garden will never see an end. It can't. Because if this garden were to be eradicated and be no more, how could people survive without it? The entire world hinges on this garden. The hubris. And I I really don't believe that there is such a thing as judgment day. However, if there is a God and if there is judgment, then if this is what God gives me here on this earth, imagine what he has for me in the next life. Because obviously I have been given this wealth and this garden and this position because I am very special, right? And so what did Allah do for him? He completely eradicated that garden. Left nothing of it. He destroyed that garden entirely. Why? Because it was critical for this kind of attitude that humanity be taught that this attitude is the beginning of the end. and these beliefs. I mean, if you think about it now, imagine the richest man in the whole world, you know, whoever that is. Let's say this person has hundreds of billions of dollars. Let's say he has trillions of dollars. That person, what do you think is going on through that person's mind? in when they sit with themselves what do they really believe about themselves I am merely a servant of Allah I am merely a caretaker of Allah's gift this is by Allah no the person believes that I am the smartest I am the greatest I am the best I'm the most important God in the universe quote unquote would not have given me all of this wealth if it wasn't for what they know about me. And this marked a time when the Muslim would live as neighbors with the non-Muslims and they would not be governing the non-Muslims nor would they be governed by them. And this is the early days of Medina. The next story we have is the story of Mos and that marks the era of when the companions began to travel, study and teach. And then finally we have the story of who who possessed every part of the known world of his time. And that marked the time when the Muslim reached all the way to the Atlantic Ocean and all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Every piece of known land at the time was governed by the Muslim. And so this surah surah it marks and details every single stage that this ummah moves through and it has the entire history of this in it and even when this you know this u this atrophied it atrophied in that order as well. He will cover me.

[Silence]

[Arabic recitation]

[Silence]

Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us in the first and opening verses of the Quran, his book, his final revelation to humanity, The greatest of all miracles and all books and revelations ever bestowed upon humanity by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. He begins his book with the verse with the words in the name of Allah the extensively unimaginably merciful and the especially merciful. He follows this by saying, "All praise is due to Allah." All praise, all thanks is due to Allah, Lord of all of the creation. He is the extensively, unimaginably, unmitigated, unbridled, merciful one. And he is the one of specific and a special mercy. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala teaches his prophet in the early days in Mecca and if Allah afflicts you with any harm, none can remove it except for he Allah. And if he is to give you any good or if he is to touch you with any mercy then he is able to do all things and none can stop that mercy. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala describes his creation and says every single thing that has been created by Allah has been measured perfectly and created with a destiny. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us that this is alquran the lofty and brave and esteemed Quran and it is in the preserved tablet of destiny. What do all these verses mean? What is the pattern that we are seeing here? Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala teaches us our place, our position, our attitude, our disposition. And he teaches us what he is and who he is. He teaches us as the first lesson when we open the Quran, the first lesson that he teaches us is alhamdulillah. What an incredible lesson. What an incredible belief. This is why our ancestors, our forefathers, our predecessors, the companions of Muhammad Sam. This is why they were so extensive and expansive. This is why Islam has reached us here all the way at the end of the earth. at the end of time because they understood this lesson. The lesson of and alhamdulillah when we go to start something when we look at the future the present and the future we say this made up. When we look at the present and look at the future and conceptualize the future, we look at them through the lens of bismah. In the name of Allah, I ask Allah for help. I depend on Allah alone for this. I seek in Allah everything that I hope and desire and I seek refuge in Allah from any and everything that I fear. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala teaches us to believe in him and to take every step in bismah to take every step seeking that help and aid from Allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala what a beautiful verse and the meaning of.

[Silence]

Creation. Oh yeah. And then.

[Silence]

Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala teaches us in just this one word these two words the person is saying, "I seek aid in Allah and I praise him with every name that is his, every name of his that I know and every name of his that I do not know. I seek aid in Allah in this." That is the meaning of this. And Allah teaches us who to rely on that we have that we always think the absolute best of Allah. When I go to start something, when I go to try something, to attempt anything, I attempt it with and I follow it with. This is who I believe Allah is. He has enveloped me in his mercy from the moment of my conception. Everything that I have ever been, ever, or ever will be and every good that I have ever achieved, it is only by Allah and Allah alone. Subhanahu wa ta'ala. He has never let me down before. He has never betrayed me. He has never turned away from me. He subhan Allah has never forgotten me before. And so I call on that same Allah in this moment and I say my heart is open and full of hope in Allah. That is the first lesson of the Quran. It's not I believe in myself. It's not you have to love yourself first before you love anyone else. It's not look deep inside and pull out your own strength. None of that. That is for the birds. That is what those who are lost on this earth who do not know where they came from, who they are, where they are going, and why they exist. That is how they think. We the Muslim, we don't believe in ourselves. We believe in Allah. Subhanahu wa ta'ala. We look to Allah. Every good that we have or ever will have, it is from Allah. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us any good, pleasure, ease, comfort, any good that any of you have, it is only from Allah. He is the one who is the author of every smile that has ever crossed your face. He subhanahu wa ta'ala is the author of that. And so Allah gives us something much better and greater to believe in than ourselves. He gives us himself to believe in. And if we could just teach our children this, if we could teach them that every time you go to do something, every time you go to attempt something, I want you to think back at every good that has ever come to you and remember that that came from Allah. And that even when things went in a way that was contrary to what you wanted, you wanted things to be a certain way, but they went a different way and it ended up being better. And it is what has arrived you at this junction. That same Allah who doesn't just give you what you want, but gives you what you need. I want you to imagine with me a parent who gives his child everything that he wants. Everything my child anything that he desires I give him and let let him do. Would we consider that a good parent? Dad, I want to go play in traffic. Go ahead. I don't want to break his heart. He's expressing himself. He's finding himself. This is how he goes and expresses himself and learns about his own existence. He is learning to author his own book. So, who am I to say no to that? Who am I to deny that? Want to set fire to my study? Want to go ahead and leave the doors unlocked? You want to go with that stranger to his van? You want to go play in traffic? You want me to throw you over the fence to go play with the lion at the zoo? This is not a parent. This is an insane person. And we would agree that this person not only is unfit as a caretaker but is positively deranged. Yet we expect this from Allah. We with our little three lb of gray matter that we have between our ears. We think that we figured out the cosmos and everything that I want I should get because I know the best. Even though each and every one of us disagrees with ourselves last year, if you were to go back to last year and have a conversation, you would look down on that person. You would disagree with that person. You would scold that person. Let alone if you were to go back 10 years, 20 years, and speak with your former self, you might not even be able to stomach looking at yourself. Yet in spite of that we are convinced that at this moment we know what is best for us. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us about the human being. He says the human being has been created and composed of haste itself. The human being was physically created from mud, from dirt. We know this, right? But the human being is so hasty that if someone were to say that the human being was created by hate from haste itself, he would not be far off. The human being is so shortsighted, so plagued with inconsistencies, so plagued with conflicting emotions. How can you trust yourself? We don't. Allah taught us to place ourselves in his hands. Subhanahu wa ta'ala. He taught us to ask Allah to give us what we need and not what necessarily what we want. We don't always get what we want from Allah. And that is a very very good thing. Just a caretaker cannot give to his child everything that he desires or that would mark the end of that child. And so Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala watches over us. He takes care of us. Allah tells us Allah teaches us that the human being is so shortsighted, so ignorant, so pathetic in his current state of knowing and wanting that the human being makes and prays with the same fervor and fury. for what is destructive for him that he does when he asks for that which is good for him. The human being prays desperately, I want this particular thing. I want this particular woman. I want this particular job or car or house or whatever it is. I want this. Please, please, I want this. But this person doesn't know that if Allah were to give him this thing, it would mark his demise. It would be the beginning of his end. And so the human being prays in his ignorance for that which is bad for him with the same fury and fervor that he does for that which is good for him. And the human being is so ever hasty. Allah tells us how can you trust a creature that? The prophet sallall.aii wasallam didn't. He used to say every morning and every night, "Oh Allah, I trust in you. Take care of me. Be the rectifier of my affairs and I ask of you. I beg of you, Allah, to not place me in charge and to leave me to my own devices for even the blink of an eye. And then we learn from those around us that you have to love yourself and believe yourself. And it sounds very poetic. Sounds very nice. It's a very nice oneliner because we live in the era of oneliners. Pathetic statements that are very hollow inside. What does that mean? I need to love myself before I can love. What does that mean? No, we find our love in Allah. We find our hope in Allah. We find everything. We find ourselves in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. A person is only defined when he defines himself and his worship of Allah. Who are you truly? You are who you are with Allah when it is just you and Allah. That is who you are. And so the prophet sallallah.aihi was every morning and every night for 23 years he asked Allah every sunrise and every sunset. Oh Allah, be the disposer, the custodian of my affairs and do not leave me to my own devices for the blink of an eye. And that is what makes Islam so great. That is why that light of first coming to the prophet Muhammad Sam and the dark of that night in the dark of that cave. When that light pierced through that darkness and he came and held our prophet and he said That was the greatest gift humanity had ever received because we have the greatest in the time of the time before Islam when they would want to make a a big decision they would go there to the Ka and there was a custodian there around the capital. They pay him a few dollars and they would ask a question and then reach into a bag and pull out a lot. Three sticks in a bag. One said do it, the next said don't do it and the third was empty or try again. And so when they want to make a big decision, they go, they pay their few dollars and they close their eyes and reach into that bag and wait to see what the sticks tell them to do with their lives. Or they would roll dice. Or they would look at a pigeon or a a bird sitting there and they throw a rock at it and watch. If it goes right, that means I'm on the right track. If it flies left, oh my goodness, I have to go home. If they see a little lizard, they would throw a stone at it and watch which way the lizard crawled and that would be an omen of good or bad to come. That is where humanity was. They were asking magic eightballs figuratively what it is they should do with their lives because they believe that those sticks were the conduits of the greater universe. The universe is going to tell them and direct them. How pathetic. They even did this with respect to the lineage of their own children. When a woman did not know who the father of her bastard child was, she would go to the cabba, pay the custodian with the suitors there, the five or 10 prospective fathers, and they would draw lots and whoever it fell on, hey, you're the dad. This is how they lived. And then Islam came and tells us.

[Silence]

And then Islam came and and Jab comments and says the prophet Sam taught us the salah of just he would teach us a verse of the Quran. And he told us that if any of you is torn between a decision between two options, pray make pray and say the following. Oh Allah, I ask you by your knowledge. This is what we were given. We don't ask sticks and magic eightballs and flip coins. We ask Allahbin. So our first lesson was what a what an incredible lesson. And our second lesson that Allah teaches us is alhamdulillah. Allah doesn't give us what we want. He gives us what we need. And sometimes we want what we need. But most of the time we don't. The disease always fights against the cure and the medicine. And Allah, he doesn't want to break us. He wants to better us. And in order to make someone better, you have to take him to the cutting edge of friction. In order for him to shed his old heart, to shed his scales, to get out of that and to grow and to be better. And so today's psychology is hinged on two philosophies. the philosophy of the allegedly both of them were Jewish psychologists in Germany that we have Freud and Carl Young. Freud teaches us that humanity is driven purely by sexual urge purely. This man was so sick that he believed that even a a child with his mother or father that this is based in urges whether you have or not. And that every dream you have, every statement you make, even the way you walk or speak, every decision you make is nothing but biological urges. And then we have the second Carl Young who believes that we're all part of one great consciousness misguidance upon misguidance about but we have the Quran and that one lesson will change your life. We all know these things I'm saying. This is not new. If you will have the bravery, the courage, the courage to truly live between bismillah and alhamdulillah, your life will change. Everything will be different. Your attitude will be different. You will not be able to help but smile. because you live between this and alhamdulillah. I ask for the best and I take whatever Allah gives to me and I thank him because I don't know what is good for me. He knows and I trust him because he is for Alhamdulillah.

[Silence]

[Arabic recitation]

[Arabic recitation]

[Arabic recitation]

[Arabic recitation]

[Arabic recitation]

[Arabic recitation]

[Silence]

Straighten your rows. Please do not join the row. do not join a row until you are sure that the row ahead of you is completely full. If you remember to bring your phone, then remember to turn it off and make sure that it is silent.

[Arabic recitation]

[Arabic recitation]

[Arabic recitation]

[Arabic recitation]

[Arabic recitation]

[Arabic recitation]

[Arabic recitation]

[Arabic recitation]

Brothers and sisters, just wanted to remind you a couple of things here. First, the summer camp is still continuing. We have five more weeks and the enrollment is open. So if you have a child under the age of 14, they can come and join inshallah. we also have Rahma Academy looking for teachers and please contact Rahmed Java and at least get the information see if you can find some you know help us with that spreading the word. We are looking for teachers for Rahma Academy. Also our brother brother Dr. Ast Sard his father is sick in the hospital. Please make dua for his speedy recovery. May Allah call us heal all the sick in the community and in our families inshallah. Please donate generously all the way out.