Questions for DOJ – 4.1

Auto-generated transcript:My brothers and sisters, we come to the last question on the Day of Judgment. May Allah protect us from ourselves. In some ways, this is the most difficult one, especially in today's world. And this question is in two parts. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la will ask us, what did you do with the wealth I gave you? And by wealth, don't imagine that this means a million dollars or more. Wealth is anything material that Allah gave us. Whether it was a million dollars or whether it was one dollar. The question will be, what did you do with the wealth I gave you? Where did you earn it from? How did you acquire this wealth? And where did you spend it? You might say, well, if Allah is saying, wealth I gave you, why am I being asked, where did I acquire it from? Because this is the thing in which we have been given ikhtiyar. We have been given the choice. The quantum of wealth Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la wrote for us. That is predestined. That is determined. That's not going to change. What Allah has written, Allah has written. That doesn't change because of this or that. But Allah gave us the freedom and the test for us to choose it, to choose to take it from any number of sources, which come to us. Sources which are legitimate and sources also which are illegitimate. And we have been given the choice. May Allah have mercy on us. This is a test. Sometimes the illegitimate choice seems to be much better than the legitimate choice. It's easier. It seems to give us more dividends. And then you will have, of course, the Shaitan and his agents in human form who are called financial advisors. financial advisors and such other nice names, bankers, who will tell you, take this halal wealth of yours and invest it in this scheme. And the scheme is haram. And of course they don't say haram in halal. See here's the scheme, which will give you 50 times the reward of that and reward of that. And look at this person, look at that person. He started as a rickshaw puller and today he owns 20 buildings and this is how he became rich. And may Allah have mercy on us, we fall into this trap. So how did you earn your wealth and how did you spend it? As I mentioned to you, the first and foremost thing to understand is that in all of these themes which I mentioned, which I remind myself and you, the four questions of the Day of Judgement. What did you do with your time? What did you do with your youth? What did you do with your knowledge? And what did you do with your wealth? In all of these four questions, Allah is not, please understand this, Allah is not asking us how much. Allah is not asking us how long did you live? No. Why did you not live for a hundred years? No. Because my lifespan is predetermined. Allah swt wrote for me whatever He wrote for me. 20, 30, 40, 50, whatever. I can't change it. I can't make it longer and I can't make it shorter. So that's one of the questions. Question is, whatever lifespan you had been given, what did you do with it? So it shows us that we don't have the capacity to choose. We don't have the ability to choose. We don't have the capacity to choose the duration of our life, how long we will live, but we have the capacity to choose how we will live. Will we live that life in obedience to Allah or will we live that life in disobedience to Allah? This is the choice we have. Today people try to fool you and say, you know, if you do this, you will have more lifetime and if you do this, your life will be extended. It's nothing extended. Allah swt, Allah wrote, Allah wrote. If you lead a healthy life, if you exercise, you eat right, stay away from substance abuse and so on, you live a life of goodness, so there's no stress in your mind and heart, then you will have the same lifespan, but you will have it beautiful. You will have the quality of your life will go up. And you will have a beautiful life. Of tranquility, of, you know, happiness, good friends and everything else because you will attract good people to yourself and you will live beautifully and you will live back, leave behind good memories. And the contrary, reverse is equally true. Instead of that, you do the opposite, then the opposite. What happens? So it's very important to keep this in mind and say, how did I live my life? And this is the, this is the, this is the, this is the, this is the, this is the, this is the most important thing. That's what we're going to be questioned about. Not how long. Similarly, we will not be questioned about our youth in the sense of why were you not young? No. Why did you die too early? Right? No. Allah gave you youth. How did you spend it? What did you do with it? Similarly, knowledge, Allah will not say, why did you not memorize the entire Quran? Why did you not memorize the books of Hadith and so on? Why did you not memorize the Quran? Why did you not memorize the Quran? Why did you not become a, you know, a scientist or a great doctor or whatever, right? Allah will not say, why did you write 25 books? Allah will say, the knowledge that was given to you, whatever it was, why did you do that? Did you learn it well? Did you practice it well? Did you pass it on? So also with wealth, Allah is not going to ask us how much wealth? Because that is predetermined. So the first and foremost thing that I want you to drive into your minds and hearts is that your wealth, the amount of wealth that has been written for you cannot be changed. I can't change it. You can't change it. Nobody can change it. What Allah has given is given. This will not change. So no matter what scheme, no matter what investment, no matter what opportunity, so-called, no matter what opportunity, so-called, no matter what opportunity, no matter what opportunity, no matter what opportunity, no matter what opportunity, so-called. No matter anything. What has been written, has been written. It will not change. So get this into your system. Get it very clearly into your system and say that what Allah has written for me is written. This will not change. Now, what will change is the result of this. This wealth I have, whether it's going to be a source of stress and a source of hardship, and a source of failure, and a source of poverty, and a source of loss, and a source of risk, and a source of pain, or, you know, things like that. a source of danger and a source of pain and suffering for me in this dunya, in this world, as well as the hereafter, this is in my hands. So if I'm acquiring this wealth in illegal ways, if I'm acquiring this wealth through stress, if I'm acquiring this wealth by deceiving people, by any of these things, then this wealth is going to be a source of great pain and suffering for me. Because obviously if you're around deceiving people and, you know, doing all that sort of stuff, deceiving people, hurting people and so on, people around you are not going to be happy with you. So that will create stress, right? The fact that you do all this and you sleep peacefully at night just shows that your heart has been completely compromised and dead and corrupted. If that's happening, but if it's not, if your heart still has some life in it, you will not sleep peacefully. You will have troubled dreams. You will have problems sleeping because your conscience is pricking you and stabbing you and saying, stop doing this. So how did you earn your wealth? What ways you earned? And as I told you, the big danger, the biggest trap is of shaitan trying to tell you that if you disobey Allah, you will earn more. If you sell haram, you will earn more. If you sell cigarettes and lotteries and lottery tickets and alcohol and all that Allah has prohibited, if you sell in your shops, you will make more money. This is pure shaitan telling you this. If you gamble, you will make money. You don't make money by gambling. If people made money by gambling, there would be no gambling because the gambling companies would shut down. The MGMs of the world would shut down. The Las Vegas of the world would shut down. The roulette tables would shut down if people won the money. They don't shut down. They prosper. Because people lose money. Once in a while, you hear about somebody, oh, so-and-so, scratched lottery ticket, you won $4 million. You won $1 million. That is the bait. That is the worm on the edge. That is the end of the hook. Right? You swallow the hook. 99 fish out of 100 end up in the pot. They end up in the skillet. They end up becoming somebody's dinner. That one fish gets the worm and manages to get away. That is gambling. That is gambling. Now, if you are so dumb that you don't understand this, that this person winning the lottery ticket is the way they keep you hooked. They keep the vast multitude hooked to buying tickets, which is their revenue. Every dollar you spend buying a lottery ticket is money in the pocket of the lottery company. So they sell 50 million tickets for $1 each. They make 50 million bucks. That's money in their pocket. And then, once in so many years, one person gets $1 million. Oh, fantastic. He won the lottery. He didn't win anything, brother. The lottery wins. The lottery always wins. You always lose. Understand this. And the proof of that, ask yourself, who's more wealthy? You or MGM? You or the people who own the lotteries? Who's more wealthy? How are they more wealthy? If you are winning, and if you are winning, you are the winner. If you are earning, and if you are making money, how is the other guy wealthy? The other guy is wealthy because he's the one making money. I mean, we can't be so stupid. Please understand this. Right? That's why Allah made it haram. In Islam, alhamdulillah, everything which is haram is intrinsically bad by itself. There's nothing good about cigarettes. There's nothing good about alcohol. There's nothing good about drugs. There's nothing good about anything. There's nothing good about alcohol. There's nothing good about fornicating, about being unfaithful to your spouse.