Spend to get

Fajr Reminders - Mahmood Habib Masjid and Islamic Center

Auto-generated transcript:My brothers and sisters, I remind myself anew that if you want to measure success and failure in life, how do you measure it? Any ordinary person. I want to measure, say take my career, if I have a successful career or my career going down the drain, how do I measure that? Marriage, is it successful or not successful? Children, I'm raising children, successful or not successful? How? Compared with? Others? That's one way. Pure reviews, pure comparisons. Effectively, whether you do it comparatively, you do it with pure reviews, you do it some other way, you are basically measuring your assets and liabilities, right? What did I gain? What did I lose? So what did I spend to get what? What is profit? Profit is where you spend less to get more. You cannot measure profit only by looking at what you have. You have to see at what cost did I get it. So if I got something which has high value at a lower cost, then I made a profit. But if I got the same thing at its regular cost, then it's not a profit. I got the market value. If I paid more for it, then I have actually the same thing, but I made a loss. I remind myself when you... that when we stand before Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, it is the same standard, the same criterion, the same measurement, measuring stick we should use. What did you spend and what do you get? What did you spend, what do you get? In this world, in our life, we have the opportunity to do two things. One is we have the opportunity to spend things which have everlasting value. Or we have the opportunity to spend something which has temporary value. So if you spend something which has temporary value and get something which has everlasting value, then you are on to a good thing. That is the best way of living life. I'm giving something which I would have lost anyway and I got something which is mine forever. But if I do the opposite, I'm giving up something which I could have had forever to get something which I would lose anyway. Makes no sense, right? If I give up something which I could have kept forever, an earning asset which would have been mine forever, I give it away and I got something which at the most is temporary, I will lose it anyway. That's a dumb deal. But the opposite, if I am spending something which is temporary, in any case I would have lost it. And in exchange for that I get something which is going to be mine forever, that's a fantastic deal. Just to give you an example, we talk about charity. We are coming to Ramadan, so we are going to get some fundraising here. We talk about charity. So give in the path of Allah, sacrifice in the path of Allah. I tell people, forget this word sacrifice. It's a lie. There is no sacrifice in Islam. What are you doing? You are taking some part of your wealth which Allah gave you. Let's face it, how many of us stand here and give the equivalent of the value of your car which you are driving? I am not saying nobody does it, but how many? So you give something and in addition, by giving that what are you getting? We are getting an everlasting reward with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Allah said this is with Allah and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will return it to you in keeping with His majesty embrace. The minimum of that is man ja'abil hasanati falahu ashur amasalia. Someone who brings one hasana, Allah will give him ten likewise. And then Allah said He will multiply that by 700 and begai risa. So something, now you say okay, if I don't give that, sure it's your wealth you can keep it. It's not haram not to give, but even if you keep it, how long will you have it? You don't have to die to lose it. You lose it probably but before that in many ways. Whereas if you take this and give it in the path of Allah, effectively what am I doing? I am transferring my wealth. Whenever I think about charity I think of it as wealth transfer. I am taking it from this account and putting it into another account. That's it, wealth transfer.