Beware of modern idolatry

https://youtu.be/XL0am60Sq9Q Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the most honorable and most righteous, Muhammad and the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon him, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon everyone, and upon everyone. My brothers and sisters, the thought I want to share with you is that idolatry or worshiping of idols is something that changes from time to time in the way of the shape of the idols. Now, I don't mean the idols from being marble statues of Jupiter and Zeus became the stone statues of the Hindus worship and so forth. I'm not talking about that. I'm saying that idol worship is not restricted to icons. It's not restricted to stone. It's not restricted to pictures. It's not restricted to symbols like the cross and others. Idol worship is really something where a person sees benefit or harm in others than Allah and therefore obeys that thing where he sees the benefit and harm instead of obeying Allah . And my dhalil for this is from the Quran where Allah said to the Prophet Have you not seen those who have taken as their ila? Now, Allah did not use any other word. He did not use some other word, you know, more important. Ila is an object of worship. It's a deity. Say, La ilaha illa Allah. There is no deity. There is no one worthy of worship except Allah. Right? We are not saying La Khaliqu illa Allah or La Maliqu. No, we say La ilaha. The one who is worthy of worship. Only and only Allah. Allah used that word with respect to desires. Now, usually we tend to translate desires as, you know, just the haram stuff. Somebody wants to drink alcohol or smoke or vape or whatnot and fornication and this and that. All of those things, yes. But it's not restricted to that. So desire is anything. As I said, my understanding, may Allah protect me if I'm wrong. My understanding is that the Hawa is anything which you give precedence to because you like it over Allah . Now, one of the, to me, therefore, the biggest idol that we worship today as so-called monotheism, is the Prophet. So-called modern society. Is technology. Because for us, technology can do no wrong. Our icons are people who are technology barons. Who have technology companies, who are billionaires in the technology field. They are technology manipulators, not necessarily inventors. Because that's another aspect of this. It's a combination of technology combined with wealth. Because how many people, for example, know the names of the inventors? For example, one of the things that everything or everything runs on is the algorithm. Right? Algorithms, they bring stuff to you and they choose and whatnot. How many people know where it started? How many people even know how the name came to be? How does the name algorithm come from? Where does it come from? I'm not going to tell you. You look it up. So the point I'm saying is that we are not even excited by or we are not even look up to the actual inventors. We look at the Elon Musk's of the world and others who are people who manipulate that technology, monetize that technology and make money out of that technology. Right? I'm not against the idea of that. I mean, if somebody is doing that in a legal way, alhamdulillah, if he makes a lot of money, that's fine. Let him do that. I'm just saying that what do you respect? The reason I'm saying this is because the other day somebody said to me talking about robotic surgery for bypass, hard bypass. So this person said to me, the bypass operation is nowadays being done in such and such a place by robotic surgery. So there is a, you know, non-human thing there, AI. Powered, which is actually doing the surgery. And that is saving a lot of lives. So this robotic surgery is saving a lot of lives. So this was the statement made to me. And again, the statement made to me was one of my, was by one of my dearest friends. And I know that he, may Allah have, bless him and have mercy on him, he's one of the nicest human beings going. He's not committing shirk or something. He just said something. Now there is my belief in life is there is no such thing as said something or just said something. Everything has an origin. It comes out of somewhere. It comes out of where you live. So I will say some things which indicate my core beliefs, my attitudes, my ethics, my values. And I will not say other things because they clash with my core beliefs and so on and so forth. The same thing applies to anybody else. So these, you know, these, these are apparently accidental statements or by the way or in passing, they actually indicate some much deeper issues of what you believe in. And a lot of that belief is not conscious belief. You don't just sit there and say, I have consciously, I have considered all the options and I have chosen this to be the correct one. And so therefore I believe this in opposition to everything else. You don't go through this entire, you know, intellectual process. This just comes into it. It's like getting used to a smell. In Islam, in the Sharia, Israf or, you know, ostentatious spending is haram in everything except in perfumes. And you can buy a perfume, expensive perfume, it does not amount to Israf. And the reason for that is because the person wearing the perfume very quickly doesn't smell it anymore. So the perfume is more like a sadaqah for others. So you wear the perfume and you go, people are enjoying it. You get nothing out of it. So therefore we say, okay, you spend a bit more money on that. I mean, I'm not here promoting perfumes or telling you you should spend more money on that. But point being that something for the perfume, the reason I'm saying that is this perfume thing, it comes, something comes to you without your being aware. It happens to us in an unnoticed manner. Take the hadith of the Prophet where he gave this example of somebody sitting in a blacksmith's foundry compared to somebody sitting in an attar shop, in a perfumery. And he said that even if you don't buy the perfume, you will come out of the perfume, perfumery or perfume shop smelling nice because you are in an atmosphere which smells nice. Whereas if you are in the blacksmith's foundry and you are in the presence of fire and smoke and all of that, then you're going to come out smelling of that and you won't smell nice when you come out of that. You'll be sweaty and you know, you have this bad smell. So the point here is that the company that we keep, what messages we get. So here we are saying that, Bypass surgery, robotic bypass surgery is what saved lives or saves lives. And now the question first and foremost, I want to ask you and ask anyone who makes this statement or who may Allah have mercy, has this belief. The first question I want to ask you is, do you know who invented bypass surgery? That should be the first question, right? Because you're talking about bypass surgery. So who invented bypass surgery? Again, go look it up. If I remember this at the end of this thing, I will tell you or actually I'll put it in the description. But here you are impressed, hugely impressed by this robotic bypass surgery. And you do not even know the name of the person who invented bypass surgery in the first place. The robot is just doing something which surgeons did all these years. Now you've got a robot doing that. And you've got a machine which is programmed. So maybe it doesn't make mistakes or whatnot. But that's it. So you say this, this thing cures. So I said to my friend, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala cures, not the robotic surgery. So he then said the normal thing again. I'm not criticizing him at all. This is what everyone does. So he said, That goes without saying. So I said to him, if you want to do this, you have to do it. So I said to him, if that goes without saying, why do I need to say La ilaha illa Allah? Because it should go without saying that there's no one worthy of worship except Allah. But if I want to enter Islam and I say that I believe this in my heart, but I will not say it with my tongue. I have the opportunity. I can say it. I will not say it because it's understood. Why must I say it? What will you say? Because, Iqraar bi'l-lisan, to say it with your tongue, is a condition of entering Islam. Why is that important? Another example, our condition of our hearts. For example, I'm walking in this absolutely fabulous place, which you are seeing here. Ashley is the wire. And I'm here again with my dear friend and my teacher, Mauraan Omar. And may Allah bless him and have our company. We have this company, InshaAllah, you know, as long as we have, live here and then in Jannah, InshaAllah. Now, then, we are Ali's spiritual technique. Well, today, you know actually we have the skill and power to standing a standing position I have here. But my spiritual corrective thing I will not say. Al- Nahi Syaikhin, in the 가 cumin اعدЧто اهموب قم اروح اشتى قليلا اگه يهى لطالما فم متبع Button So, Because Allah knows what's in the heart. Doesn't He know? What's the answer? The answer is another question. Why then did Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala say, command with a wa'eed, with a promise of a punishment at the end of that ayah in Surah Ibrahim. وَإِذْ تَعَذَّرَ رَبُّكُمْ لَإِن شَكَرْتُمْ لَعَزِيدَنَّكُمْ وَإِن كَفَرْتُمْ مِنَّهِ أَضَابِلَ شَدِيدًا Why did Allah say that? And then again, grammatically, if you look at it, two, three times Allah is emphasizing. لَإِن شَكَرْتُمْ لَعَزِيدَنَّكُمْ وَلَإِن كَفَرْتُمْ Imagine all of this emphasizing. If the person thanks me, I will increase my blessing. And if he is ungrateful, then let him be aware of my punishment. Why should that? Why should you say it? Why must I say, Alhamdulillah, Ya Rabb, I am so grateful to you. Alhamdulillah. كل شكر لك يا رب. All the sugar is for you. And so on and so on. Why? Why must I say that? Allah knows. It's in my heart.