Ask “Why?” Not, “What?”

https://youtu.be/UHamiG5ea7k Auto-generated transcript: Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wa salatu wa salamu ala ashrafil abdiyaj wal mursaleen. Alhamdulillahi Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Tasliman kaseeran kaseera. Abna al-Badu. My brothers and sisters, Subhanallah, I never get tired of these beautiful views of Al-Masjid al-Nabi wa al-Sharif. Once again, I'm sitting very close to the Roda Mubarak. Just behind it, a few steps away. I am thinking of the Hadith of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. The first Hadith in Bukhari, narrated by one of the Qatab-ul-Anhu, who said that Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he heard Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam say, in our Aamalu Biniyat, that the reward of the deeds, or the deeds are based on their intention, the intention with which they are done. The reason I'm mentioning this Hadith is because, normally when we look at decision-making, when we look at, when we look at, especially in times of stress, in times of, you know, any kind of difficulties, and we are thinking of what to do, how to do it, what decisions to make, what might be beneficial, what might not be beneficial, so on. We think in terms of trying to project, or trying to, in a way, foresee, like for example, you might say, if I do this, such and such will happen, if I do something else, something else will happen. So, we are looking at, we are doing some sort of scenario planning, and we are trying to imagine scenarios, and we are saying to ourselves, if I do this, then this scenario will happen, and if I do that, then that scenario will happen. This scenario might unfold, if I do something else, a different scenario might unfold, and so on. Which is all really, if you look at it, an exercise in fantasy, because we don't know, and we can never know the reality. We can never know what will actually happen. So, what we are trying to say is, we are trying to kind of foresee that, to the extent possible. So, you might say, well, what is the alternative? What must we do, and why or how does this hadith relate to this issue of decision, of decision making concerning our lives? What's the connection? My submission to you is, the connection is that, instead of thinking what might happen, ask yourself, why am I doing something? So, when you are considering a decision, and you are saying that, this is what the future seems to hold, therefore, what must I do? Instead of that, think of the decision, and say, don't say, should I do this or that? Think of the decision and say, why would I do this thing? Look at the reason you are taking a decision or deciding not to take a decision. Look at the reason for it, why? I'll tell you why I'm saying that, with an example. I used to live in America in 1997 to 99, and I went to America for the reason why anybody goes to America, which is, to build a career in your life. And as part of that process, I had a partner, a business partner, with whom I was planning to set up a training company. We needed $1 million to start. We started fundraising, and we raised $250,000. We raised about 25% of what we need. We raised that in a pretty short time, just for a month, for less than a month. My partner was absolutely thrilled. And he said to me, he said, we have arrived. So I said, how's that? He said, well, we have 25% of what we need, and the bank will give us the rest. So I went silent for a while. He said, why are you silent? I said, because, I said, we need to have a talk. He said, what talk? So we sat in his house, and this was about maybe 9 o'clock or something in the night. And we talked till the following morning, the whole night. I said to him that, there are two things that we cannot do. One is, we have to do something. And the other is, we cannot do. Thirdly, I can't do. I cannot participate with you if you do them. So the first thing we cannot do is to borrow money on interest. Irrespective of the reason, irrespective of the amount of interest. We are not borrowing money on interest. Number one. I said, this is an absolutely, as far as I'm concerned, it's an absolutely written in stone rule. We cannot borrow money on interest. And I said, the second thing we cannot do is to use alcohol as in any of our promotional events. So no wine and cheese parties, and no product launches with drinks and stuff. And of course, I also said to him, no use of women. Either as, you know, in pictures or actual women in any of the promotional activities. So I said, these are the two or three things that we absolutely cannot do under any circumstances. He looked at me as if I was crazy. He said, do you realize where we are living? I said, yeah. Why? He said, what difference does it make? He said, because in this country, this country America, this country America is America because of interest. He said, this is the biggest benefit we have that we don't need to raise all the money. And you want to wipe that out in one shot. He said, the second thing is that alcohol is a tax deductible expense in business. So it won't even cost us money. We actually, you know, get a rebate, tax refund on this. And you want to say, you are saying, we can't do this. He said, people won't come. Right? People will come, clients and so on, they expect to have at a promotional, at a launch, they expect to have free drinks. You are saying no drinks. To make a long story short, we sat and we talked for the whole night. Meanwhile, we had, we had a meeting. We had a meeting with the company. We had a professional valuator, and the person valued the company at, the share at one dollar per share, which was a big thing at the time. A dollar share was a big thing. Now my stake in the company was one million shares, which means one million dollars. My partner's share was the same. We had another million as a share. Basket of shares for other partners and so on, if we wanted them. So my net worth at that time, at least on paper, was one million dollars. In my pocket, I had nothing. Right? It was net worth only on paper. But it was net worth, I mean, in the sense of, you know, it had value. So my friend said to me, and he is a very good friend of mine, a very decent human being. He said to me, do me a favor. He said, I respect you, I respect your value. I respect the fact that you have the moral courage to stand by your values and you want to live your life according to your values. I've got no problem with any of that. He said, by one request. He said, give me three years. Three years. He was a finance expert. He said, give me three years. In three years, I will make you, I will take your share, with his share, my share. From one dollar per share to one hundred dollars per share. Which means that your net worth will be one hundred million dollars. In three years, the company, you will be worth a hundred million. And that time sell your share and go. Take your hundred million dollars and go where you want. So I said to him, that's a fantastic proposition. I accept from unconditioning. He was very happy. He said, then what, what's the condition? I said, I will be alive for three years. Man, I tell you, I'm standing in front of Manjushree's love of his share, so I can't exactly repeat for you all this, all the choice words he used for me. But you can imagine that. So he said, okay, so what's the alternative? He said, the alternative is that you give up your share. In the company, you walk away. He said, the only problem is that if you sell your share today, the only person who will buy it is me. And I do not have a million dollars to give you. And I'm not taking a loan or anything like that. He said, no, I mean, either you take your, keep your share, give me three years, walk away with one hundred million, or walk away with nothing today. Because he said, I cannot buy the share from you, I have no money. And you know this, I'm not, I'm not deceiving you. And that was the fact. You will just, you will just be walking away with nothing. I said, I will walk away with nothing. And I walked away. We are still friends. But I took that decision. And I took that decision for one reason only. Because I knew that I did not want to have Allah's smile as my enemy. I did not want to have Rasul as a seller in my hand. So I said, I am walking away from this because interest-based dealing is not for a Muslim. It's not a question of saying, you know, unless we deal with interest, we cannot do the business. That's not the question. The question is, if you have to deal with interest, then you are in the wrong business. You do not have the right to do business where you are buying NBT with Allah's smile on that. Simple as that. So the why of it, why did I do that? To please Allah. And SubhanAllah, Allah is witness to the doors that Allah opened for me. Doors in places I could not even imagine. Those who know me, those who know my life, they know all these, all the things that happened to me. And those who don't know that, doesn't matter. I am not doing any biographical production here. I am just saying, I am just saying, doesn't matter if you know the reasons or not. Doesn't matter if you don't know what happened to me. Just suffice to say that things happened with me and Allah gave me things that I could not even imagine. I couldn't imagine. My wildest dreams. Allah gave me so much honor. He gave me so much of everything that, SubhanAllah, I cannot even thank Allah . I say this to Allah. I say, Allah, I cannot thank you. I say to you that I cannot thank you. So, give me the words to thank you that you want to hear from me. Abhayzal sisters, that's what I am saying to you. Always, in thinking about your future and taking decisions, don't worry about trying to project that and say, if I take X decision, Y will happen. If I take Y decision, Z will happen. Instead of that, look at that decision and say, why am I deciding this? What is my near? Seriously,