When Worlds Wither- Guidance in the Latter Days

When Worlds Wither Away: Guidance in the Latter Days

Opening Remarks and Disclaimer

As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. I want to have a caveat, in other words, a little preface to this, that what I'm about to show you, on one level is depressing, but I don't want you to get depressed because by being depressed you only make yourselves another victim in the long list of victims to Iblis, because Iblis wants to depress us, he wants to fill us with grief and despair. So I want that caveat, but I also want to say this, I have been studying the religion for I think a relatively long time, and I've come to my own conclusions about certain things, but I recognize that a lot of these things are ijtihadat, people have differences of opinion, and so I really want people to understand that what I'm saying, you can take it with you if you see benefit in it, or you can leave it.

I'm not going to argue with anybody, I don't believe in argumentation, Imam Malik said argumentation has no place in this religion, ulama can debate amongst themselves, it's haram for common people to argue about the religion, and it's considered makruh for the ulama to have these type of polemical debates, but people can write things if they want, I would much rather read a refutation that's written than get into an argument with somebody, so like I said, you can take this for what it's worth. I think all of us recognize that the planet is definitely having problems, and so what I'd like to do is talk about what happens when worlds wither away, what happens when we see things in the natural kingdom disappearing, qualities in human beings that are also disappearing, and talk about guidance in these latter days.

The Three Purposes of Human Existence

What is the purpose of human existence? One of our great scholars, well known for his tafsir, well known for his dictionary on the meanings of the Quranic words, one of the great moral ethicists of the Islamic tradition, he wrote a famous book, it was one of Imam Ghazali's favorite books, in fact Imam Ghazali read it and they said that he never traveled without it.

In that book, he says that there are three reasons for the creation of this species, the human species, and what's beautiful about this distinction is that it allows for purposeful existence for not just Muslims, but for peoples of other beliefs, or even people without belief.

First Purpose: Cultivating the Earth (Imara)

The first one he said is for Imara. Allah said:

He brought you forth from the earth, and then, that he placed you to cultivate the earth. Here Yusuf Ali says settled you therein, but it really means to cultivate the earth. They called the colonization of the Muslim world

isti'mar, unfortunately it was a bad ta'rib, it shouldn't have used that word, it really should have been called istikhrab, but they called it isti'mar. So isti'mar is a very positive word in the Quranic terminology, and we should retake that word.

Second Purpose: Worship (Ibadah)

The second reason is ibadah. Now the first can be for ibadah also by niyyah, so if you're cultivating the earth with the niyyah of ibadah, with the intention of worship, then it becomes worship, but for those people who are cultivating the earth, we eat rice that was cultivated by Buddhists, rice that was cultivated by mushrikeen, so they still have a purpose in the imarat al-ard, in cultivating the earth, and we benefit from that.

The second is:

We only created the jinn, the unseen beings of the unseen realm, and the human beings, to worship us. Ibn Abbas said, to know us, and to know Allah is to love Allah, so it can also mean to love us, to adore us. Ibadah is, people who know Arabic know that ibadah is one of the levels of mahabba, of love, it's a type of love.

Third Purpose: Stewardship (Khilafa)

And the last reason is the khilafa:

He makes you khulafa, he made us khulafa, and then the khalif is the one who stands in place of somebody else, he's left behind khalafahu, he's left behind to stand in his place, so it's a steward, that he may see what you do. Allah knows. When Allah said to the angels:

I'm putting into the earth a khalif. Allah said to Dawood:

Oh Dawood, we have made you a khalif in the earth, this is the second type of khilafa. There are two types of khilafa, the first one is to rule yourself, and the other is to rule others, but the condition of ruling others is that you rule yourself. And so here Dawood is being told, we have put you in the earth to rule others, he was made a ruler over Bani Israel, so judge amongst them with the truth, and then it says, and do not follow your caprice. In other words, you have to rule yourself in order to rule others, because if you don't, the fa there is sababiyah, it will lead you astray from the path of Allah. So because if you do not, if you follow your caprice, your whims, your appetites, then it will lead you astray from the path of Allah.

Signs on the Horizon: The Vital Signs of Our Planet

So what is man as khalif, and how are we doing? Allah says in the Quran:

Allah says he will show us signs in ourselves and on the horizon, he will let us know, he will give us these signs, that this is the truth. And so let's look at the signs on the horizon. I want to look at the vital signs of our planet, just as a physician would look at it.

The Verse of Corruption and Pollution

Allah says in Surah al-Rum and it's significant that it's in this chapter, which is the chapter of the Europeans:

The lam there is for causation again, in order to let them taste. So mischief, corruption, pollution, all of these negative attributes are bound up in that word fasad. Fasad ashay, it means it went bad. Mischief has appeared on the land and sea because of the meed, the reward that the hands of men have earned, that Allah may give them a taste of some of their deeds in order that they may turn back. So the reason that Allah makes our negative actions have negative repercussions is in order for us to return back to Allah.

Classical Commentaries on Fasad

Our commentators say ظَهَرَ الْفَسَادُ it means an-naqs fil khairat fil barri wal bahri, it means the diminishment of the blessings of the earth, you lose the blessings of the earth, and it means also al-qahat which is droughts and famines and all the harms that come with agriculture, the fruits of the land, they stop giving forth and it also means that the benefits of the ocean will diminish from the fish and other animals, the haywanat in the ocean like the whales, the whales are mammals, and this is because of what we've earned from our sinfulness.

Imam al-Qurtubi says the ulama differed about what fasad means. Ibn Abbas said that it means the diminishment of blessing because of what servants do that they might turn back to Allah. Abu Ja'far al-Nahas, one of the great mufassirun famous for al-nasikh and al-mansukh in the Quran, he died in the 4th century 338, he said the best that's been said about this verse and from Ibn Abbas and from him also that the fasad in the ocean, the corruption in the ocean is that the fish diminish because of the sins of the children of Adam.

One of the signs of the end of time and Imam al-Ghumari, some people might differ about this but Imam al-Ghumari one of the great ulama of the 20th century from Morocco said that this means, this is in this world, before the akhira, the human being will say what's wrong with the earth, what's going on with the earth, and then on the yawm al-qiyamah the earth will give its news, it will tell people what they were doing on the earth, it will testify against us.

Understanding Fasad: Pollution and Its Meanings

So what is the fasad, what's the mischief on the land? First of all mischief in the Arabic language if we look at it, if we translate it into English it means rottenness, spoiledness, corruption, decay, decomposition, putrefaction, putridity, depravity, wickedness, viciousness, iniquity, immorality, weakness, pervertedness, wrongness, incorrectness, all of these are meanings embodied in that word.

If you look at the word pollution in the English language and this is taken from a dictionary, undesirable state of the natural environment being contaminated with harmful substances as consequences of human activities, بِمَا كَسَبَتْ أَيْدِي النَّاسِ this is the result. So even in our language, pollution which is a dominant problem on the planet today is recognized as a result of what human beings earn.

Manifestations of Fasad on Land

Fires Spreading Across the World

It's also, Ibn Nahas also said one of the meanings of it in many of the mufassirun mentioned this, the commentators say that it means that fires will manifest on the land and people don't realize this but there are fires all over the world spreading and greater in intensity, they're becoming greater in intensity and they're threatening the great forests of Europe. Nobody talks about this but you can research this and you will find Russia has a major crisis, Spain has a major crisis, many fires. We're on the west coast of the United States, we have many, many great fires that they can't put out, they're so difficult to put out. The climate change is also driving up temperatures because as the temperatures rise, there's more incidents of fire, they're projected to burn more land as temperatures continue to rise. This is what is projected increase in annual burn areas, an increase of 650% in some of these areas.

Air Pollution Crisis

Another aspect of this fasad in the barr is the air itself. In India they say, estimate every year half a million people die from air pollution, half a million people. There's no, where's the war on air pollution? You had 15,000 people died from terrorism and they moved heaven and earth to have this war on terrorism and yet people, look at all these people suffering and dying from air pollution. You can see all over the world now, we're polluting the earth, polluting this air. These are small, pictures of small, people can't even see, in many places now they have to wear masks, people are getting asthma, getting sick. Mexico City, Tokyo, Beijing, during the Olympics, people if you remember what happened during the Olympics, it was so incredible, the pollution.

Soil Degradation and Desertification

Another aspect of this is soil degradation. Look at the red here, very degraded soil. All over the world we're seeing the acidity is increasing in the soil, we're losing top soil, many places are going to become uninhabitable, we're seeing desertification. These are all realities that are happening. There's degraded soil all over the world. Desertification is literally where a place that once had foliage becomes desert and you can see the red here is

extreme, it's already happened, the other places is where it's happening in the yellow and then the green, we still have forests but there was a time when all of North Africa, you see where that white is, all of that is desert but above, Ibn Khaldun said that before Bani Hilal got into Africa, a squirrel could go from Sinjab, a squirrel could go from Egypt all the way to Morocco without touching the ground, there were so many and he said that Bani Hilal came, they were like locusts that devoured the resources.

The Animal Kingdom and Human Responsibility

Animals as Communities

Another aspect of the fasad, Imam At-Tabari and others say al-anam are the creatures that sleep, so this is all these sentient beings, it's not just human beings, some say it's al-ins and al-jinn but some say include the animal kingdom. Allah says:

Allah tells us that there's no creature on the earth that walks the earth, there's no bird that flies with its two wings except there are communities like unto you. Allah tells us that the animal kingdom have communities like unto us and then he tells us that he left nothing out of this book, we didn't leave anything out. Even the animals are acknowledged in the Quran.

The Story of the Elephants

We have animals that mate for life, we know that animals make huge pilgrimages and vast migrations to places. Recently some of you may have seen a man who was a caretaker of the elephants in South Africa and when he died, the elephants made a march 12 miles, two days before he died, it took them two days to get there and they literally made vigilance for two days in front of his house, they didn't eat and this was a man who was taking care, he also saved the animals of the Iraqi zoo. He was a human being that was fulfilling the khilafa of caretaking for animals and so he was honored by the animals themselves and he could actually, he said once he went out and one of the elephants that didn't know him started rushing at him to attack him and the matriarch of the animals, because they're ruled by women, the matriarch of the elephants literally rushed in and blocked that bull that was running at him and stopped it.

Animals Have Emotions

Animals have emotions. In my country they put dogs on Prozac, antidepressants, because they're depressed in the houses of depressing people. Dogs are not naturally depressed but there's so many houses that are sick that the dogs and the cats themselves get sick because they're sentient beings, they're emotional beings, they feel and experience like we do.

Endangered Species: Disappearing Qualities

We have 25 critically endangered species of the world that are from the most beautiful and great animals.

Mischief in the Sea

Now look at the oceans, and there's many other things that I could look at, but I have limited time. Look at the oceans, the mischief in the sea. Look at this, and trust me, going on right now on those gulf states, people are suffering, not just the animals, the animals are suffering in the ocean, but humans are suffering because of all the toxic chemicals that they put into the ocean to dissolve that. There's much evidence for this, many many poor people, they don't care about poor people, British Petroleum, and I'll name them, they can come and sue me, I don't have anything, they can take it all. This is what we're doing to the oceans. Look at this. What did that animal do to deserve us? We're supposed to be caretakers. This is fasad, pollution, corruption.

Ocean Acidification and Climate Change

Our emissions of carbon dioxide are causing our climate to change, and too much CO2 in the atmosphere will also alter the very chemistry of our oceans. When carbon dioxide dissolves into seawater, it forms an acid. Just a small rise in the acidity of seawater, combined with climate change, may leave coral reefs, the most biodiverse habitats in the ocean, struggling to survive.

But that's just touching the surface. By the end of the century, acidification could leave some types of plankton unable to form their shells. And plankton is at the foundation of nearly all marine ecosystems. If key species of these tiny organisms are lost, everything else that depends on them for food could also start to disappear. Carbon dioxide pollution threatens to change life in our oceans out of all recognition, within the span of a single human lifetime.

Sea Star Wasting Syndrome

Environmental officials in California say there's been another highly troubling report about what's going on in the Pacific. The scientists call it the sea star wasting syndrome. That's the technical name. But something is killing the starfish, and they don't know why. They've been dying in record numbers on the west coast, including parts of Washington state, all along the coast down to California.

In the waters off Monterey Bay, an urgent exploration is underway. This is the hunt for a killer. It's happened so rapidly that some species are just missing. Marine biologist Pete Raimondi is searching for clues to an epidemic named starfish wasting disease, infecting waters from Alaska to Southern California, causing millions of starfish like this one to fall apart and melt away.

Our group is looking to try to map the timing of the onset of the disease and locations of the disease up and down the coast so it will help us point to causes. The die-off has decimated the starfish population in this coast. Two species that used to thrive here have now vanished.

Sea stars, commonly known as starfish, are natural predators, feeding on mussels and clams that can overpopulate and tip this fragile ecosystem out of balance. Are you worried this could be the canary in the coal mine? Absolutely. The canary in the coal mine, in other words a bad sign, and that marine biologist said absolutely. This is a serious problem. This has happened before but never like this. This is unprecedented numbers of starfish dying.

We don't know, I mean I don't know, but we know that there was a lot of contamination from the meltdown that happened in Japan. We don't know. They said they're not ruling it out but they said it was unlikely that it was irradiation.

Collapse of Fish Populations

But what's happening in the ocean to our fish because as we saw our commentators said that when corruption, pollution spreads from human activities on the land and the sea, it causes a loss of the blessings of the land and the sea. And one of the things that we're seeing since 1950, they estimate in Nature magazine, one study said 90% of the large fish are gone. 90%, people, 90%. We have literally decimated the oceans from overfishing. They estimate that in just 20 years tuna fish will be completely extinct at current fishing rates.

There are no longer huge fish. They're not finding these giant marlins. For those of you who know about Jiro, dreams of sushi, Jiro, a master sushi chef in Japan said that he can't find the good fish that they used to have in the marketplaces anymore because of overconsumption. And also all this cat food, fish being fished for cat food.

I asked my friend from Afghanistan what do cats eat in Afghanistan? He said leftovers. That's what cats used to eat everywhere, leftovers so you didn't waste food. But now you have a finicky cat and you've been convinced by marketers that you have to buy special food for them. And this is all just a way of making more money.

Look at what's happened to the cod. These are the diminishing numbers that we're seeing. This is best case scenario. But the future, by 2048 they're estimating that most of the fish will be dead according to the current rates. And big fish stock fall 90% since 1950. This was in the National Geographic 10 years ago. Nobody's talking about this.

The Rise of the Jellyfish

Jellyfish, I'm reading a book right now called Stung by the world's foremost leading expert on jellyfish. She said it's already too late. The jellyfish are taking over the ocean. Now I want to tell you something about jellyfish. Jellyfish are mindless. They have no brain and they are spineless. They have no spine and all they do is consume.

And if you want to understand the oceans cosmologically have always represented human consciousness. That's the exteriorization of human consciousness. What's taking over our minds is jellyfish. We're becoming mindless and spineless consumers. So now when you go to these, when you go to these spots where they go for fun and games in countries like Indonesia where you have massive poverty and all these tourists from Europe go. Some of the pedophiles from Germany and other places go to Thailand and these places.

These are places where now they're getting stung by jellyfish because nature is biting back. Nature is biting back just like that Australian man who used to go around poking dangerous animals and he poked one too many and it stung him right in the heart. This is what's happening to human beings. We're messing with the animal kingdom. And the animal kingdom is not going to be silent about it because they have as much right by Allah to be here as we do. And we were told to be caretakers.

Root Causes of the Crisis

But let's look at the root of the crises. Why is there biosphere destruction?

The Economy of Usury

The first and foremost cause of all of this is the economy of usury that creates this cancerous growth. This idea of completely uncontrolled growth. And this is where the banksters are much to do with all of this. And they have to be seen for the criminals that they are. And all you have to read is confessions of an economic hitman to know the type of things that they do in these third world countries to create permanent debt.

Now they have, they're borrowing from the Federal Reserve at 1% and they're loaning it out to students at 7% student loans to get an education in the United States. The student debt in the United States now is $1.2 trillion. It's criminal that students go to school now and they come out with debts of $100,000, $200,000 if they go to high, very expensive schools.

These are criminal activities done. There's now greater student debt in my country than there is credit card debt. And this is because they want people to be permanent servicers of debt. This is a new type of slavery, indentured servitude, mortgage, mortgage, the death grip until you die.

But Allah says:

Guard yourselves against Allah. Guard yourselves against Allah. If you're believers, guard yourselves. Avoid usury. And if you don't know that there's going to be a war, Allah will bring it down. He'll bring the system down. It will collapse. It's been on the verge of collapse several times and it will collapse.

The Consumer Society

Another major reason is the consumer society itself. I shop, therefore I am. This is one of the things that man boasts about in the Quran:

I have consumed great quantities of wealth. Consumer, it first emerged in the English language in the 1530s as one who squanders and wastes. Consumer is also, in Old English, it's a name of the devil.

War Economy

Another major reason is a war economy. Look at the United States. Look how much they spend on weapons. The next closest country is China. And we can see now this emerging problem between China and the United States. And I said this over 10 years ago that the Muslims are just a paper tiger right now until China gets reared up. And then just to keep this arms race going, to keep Raytheon and General Electric and all these corporations that bring good things to death, right, just for them to make all of their money. This is human greed.

This is the result of building these bombs. This is what happens to human beings when we allow these mad people to rule our economies, to govern our nations. These are insane people. There's no reason for us to fight the Iranians. My country has no, I have nothing against any of those Iranian people on the street in Tehran, nothing whatsoever. And if I met them, we'd sit down and have tea and speak and talk.

I have nothing against the Iraqi people. I have nothing against the Egyptian people. I have nothing against the Russian people. If you don't step on my toes, I don't step on your toes. But we have, we have rulers in power that are making billions of dollars, billions of dollars. And the people, the puppets that are put into power to represent them, not to represent us, to represent them.

These puppets that create wars because they have war economies, and then they come in with all of their contracts and they rebuild these countries. And we fall for it again and again and again. Human beings, not just Muslims, human beings should wake up to what's happening to us, to what's happening to our planet.

Syria, over 1 million houses destroyed. Do you know how hard it is to build a house? Do you know how much time it takes to earn the money to build a house? 1 million houses destroyed, 5 million refugees. Where did they get the armaments? Who's supplying them? Who wins in these games? Certainly not the human beings that are at the brunt of all of this violence.

Look at the government budgets in relation to education throughout the world. This is insanity. These weapons of mass destruction have nothing to do with us. They should, our money should not be going to these things. Our tax dollars should not be going to these things. This is sinister.

Oil Consumption Crisis

Another major reason is oil consumption. And this cannot continue on. It can't. It will not continue on. People have to recognize that this will come to an end.

This is one of the great miracles of our Prophet. Our Prophet predicted in a hadith, he said that the earth will vomit up. This is a miracle of the Prophet. And he said that the earth will vomit what was in its liver. And according to the Arabic philologist, is the treasures of the earth. But this is, once it's been digested, it vomits it up. This is exactly what hydrocarbons are. They were once on the earth. They got swallowed by the earth. They're digested. They're stored in the liver of the earth like glycogen. It's energy. Just like you have carbohydrates, you have hydrocarbons. The only difference is an oxygen molecule. It spits up. It literally vomits up.

And there it is, vomiting it up. And then the Prophet said, if you look at this, if you look up there, that's an ustawan in Arabic. Ustawana is a cylinder. And he said they'll be like cylinders of gold and silver. As if they were gold and silver. This is a clear miracle of the Prophet where he predicted the barrels of oil. Because the baramil is ustawana in Arabic. This is a clear prophecy from our Prophet.

But also, I want to tell you that the earth is getting, we're giving the earth diabetes. Because oil is like sugar. It's a refined energy. We're using it to fuel our societies in the same way we're using sugar to fuel our bodies. And the earth is getting acidic rain. The oceans are becoming acidic. The soil is becoming acidic. This is what's happening because of this overconsumption of oil which is completely insane.

They're over one billion vehicles in operation. The car has to come to an end. People don't want to give up the car. But the car has to come to an end.

The Prophet said, in a hadith authenticated by Nasir al-Din al-Albani, about vehicles people drive. The Prophet said:

The one that drives alone, the one that rides alone is a shaytan. Most people in these cars are riding alone. We also know that the way that shaytan sits is between sun and shade. This is the قِعْدَةُ الشَّيْطَانِ. It's half in the sun, half in the shade. Anybody driving a car is half in the sun, half in the shade. And this is what is literally causing all of this global warming.

Signs Within Ourselves

Now let's go to the self. The jellyfish are taking over the oceans. The jellyfish. What's taking us over here?

Social Autism

Now I don't want, because I know some people in here might have children with autism. And it's certainly a great difficulty in your households. And there's no blame. This is one of the diseases of our time. And I'm not saying anything about individuals that have autism. I want to make that clear. I actually believe that part of the reason why autism has manifested is because these are actually deeply sensitive human beings that are overwhelmed by this bombardment because this is a disease of modern cultures. They're overwhelmed by this overstimulation.

But I want to look at what I would call autism is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by severe deficits in social interaction and communication, by an extremely limited range of activities and interests, and often by the presence of repetitive stereotype behavior. We are seeing social autism.

These young people now are growing up in private worlds. They spend more time on their digital games. And in this private world, they're losing the ability to interact socially. Our psychiatrists and psychologists are seeing these deficits in communication, their inability to read faces, their inability to really have deep conversation and communication. People are allowing their children to grow up as a social experiment. And I'm going to talk about this more because this is part one of two parts. The second part is tomorrow. So you can stay tuned if you want or tune out.

Obesity: A Modern Epidemic

I want to talk about obesity. Allah said:

Eat and drink but waste not to excess. Don't be musrifoon. Surely Allah loves not those who waste.

Sayyiduna Umar once saw a man in ihram who had a large stomach and he lifted the ihram and he said مَا هَذَا؟ And then he said, لَوْ كَانَ فِي غَيْرِكَ كَانَ خَيْرًا If it was on somebody else. In other words, that excess caloric intake that you're taking, you should give it to somebody else because there's people that need it.

We have a huge crisis but one of these things, a lot of this is not eating people but it's actually things that are being put into the environment. There are many estrogen mimickers. Estrogen causes increase in weight. Out of 24 animal kingdoms that were studied, different animal groupings recently, they found 23 had signs of obesity and they said the possibility of that being merely a coincidence and not related to environmental causation was 8 million to 1. So even the animals are beginning to get obese.

The Prophet ﷺ in a hadith said that one of the signs of the end of time:

يَظْهَرُ فِيهِمُ السَّمَنُ

That obesity would become prevalent amongst people towards the end of time.

Look at the average body mass index and if you don't know what that is, it's the amount of fat that you have on your body and look at these countries and look how some of the Muslim countries, Inshallah, I mean this is a tragedy and I don't want to make ta'yir or ta'yib of any country. There's a few countries that are listed here and no offense to those people. I'm not trying. لَا أُرِيدُ أَنْ أَفْضَحَكُمْ. This is all open source. ،يَا جَمَاعَةَ الْخَلِيجِ سَامِحُونِي سَامِحُونِي

I'm asking you. I have many good friends. I love the people of the Gulf. I really do. And they've been very good to me. I studied there. I studied in the United Arab Emirates. I have great love for the United Arab Emirates.

And so I really, and Kuwait, I have many beautiful memories in my times in Kuwait. So I'm not trying to make ta'yir or ta'yib. I'm not saying this as a joke.

But unfortunately, the world's fattest countries, this is one of the few areas where we're actually beat America. America's number two. And we have a Muslim country that's number one. Number six is another Muslim country. And number eight is another Muslim country. This is the other Gulf War syndrome. And this is, as a result, they've proven from the fast food from the United States of America because the food is not food.

They shouldn't call it fast food. And we know الْعَجَلَةُ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ. They should call it demonic calories. That's what they should call it, demonic calories. Don't eat fast food. Eat slow food and eat it slowly. Enjoy your food. Don't eat fast food. But this is what's happening.

The number one country for staples. We know that the Prophet, for you doctors out there, I'm waiting for somebody to do this. I'm going to give you a free idea. You can make an infomercial, make a lot of money. The Prophet ﷺ, they used to put stones, flat stones on their stomach and tie them. Just get some kind of a girdle with a metal weight and do a double-blind study. And they don't have to get staples. They just put it on their stomach and they won't feel hungry. That's what our Prophet did. It's a sunnah, so it must work. And so somebody should do that instead of having some kind of operation.

And here is the real culprit. And I'm sorry for whoever has the McDonald's wakalah in the Muslim countries or anywhere else. I am against McDonald's. I'm against Burger King. I'm against all of these. Really, I'm against them. And they put it in Arabic. You know, like, what's McDonald's have to do with Arabic? Please, stop.

Now look at this. I'm afraid of the appetites that will lead you astray from your stomachs and from your private parts. Because there's a relationship between overeating and too much sexuality. And this is a problem. Look at this. This is unbelievable. It's unbelievable.

Now you can see this is a joke, right? Don't overeat in Ramadan because Muslims overeat in Ramadan. Even though Ramadan you're supposed to experience hunger so you can relate to poor people, to people that go hungry. This is actually a cartoon, but it's not. It's based on reality, people. Look at this guy. He's passed out. He can't even pray Maghrib. He's just passed out. Unbelievable. And this is the reality of it. This is the reality, people. Look at it. Take a hard look.

The Disparity of Hunger and Excess

This is the reality of our planet. We've got people starving to death and people dying. One of the poets, he said, I'm amazed at a community whose Lord has told them to help one another. And that they're all brothers. And yet some of them are dying from hunger while others are dying from overeating. We're digging our graves with our teeth.

Unfortunately, these are from a Muslim country. I won't say which one. Those little kids. On both sides, you're looking at Muslims. Think about this, people. How can we live on a planet that has this type of disparity? How can we do it? How do we sleep at night?

Our Prophet ﷺ said:

(Source Name)

He's not a believer who goes to sleep satiated and yet his neighbors are hungry. And now we live on a global community. We know about this.

Diabetes: The Growing Crisis

Diabetes. This is one of the major problems now on the planet. Look at the prevalence of 2020-2025. This is one out of every three Americans will have diabetes in 2050. Look at this. The highest countries in the world are in Muslim countries. Literally the highest countries of diabetes. And we're talking mostly type 2.

80% of food in the United States in the grocery stores is spiked with sugar. By 2050, one out of three. And this is from carbohydrates. This is the sugar cycle. People consume it. They get excess blood glucose. There's a surge in insulin. The pancreas releases insulin. But damage happens over time. And then the cells resist the insulin. And then you get the glucose remains high. More insulin is produced. Blood sugar goes too low. The cravings follow and then they consume more sugar. This is what's happening. And then it goes into acidosis just like the planet. You get acidic buildup with uncontrolled acidosis.

Other Modern Crises

Human Trafficking and Child Abuse

Here's another problem. Human trafficking. There are more slaves today. And there are many other problems. They estimate the Scotland Yard based on the records that they have of pedophile material on the internet. They reckon that there are 80 million children have been sexually abused. 80 million. Massive trauma to little children. Innocent children. Human trafficking. 80% of it is for sex industry. This is disgusting. This should make us vomit. But this is what's happening on our planet.

Pornography Epidemic

Who is searching for sex? If you actually did it by the numbers related to the... This is done where they actually

look at the numbers who have access to the internet based on the population sizes. We have Muslim countries that are outnumbering in their searches. Even the United States was actually number one for downloads.

In a recent article on Huffington Post, Pornhub, the number one visited pornography site, claimed that they had 14 billion downloads. 14 billion downloads of pornographic material in the last year. One and a half million videos watched worldwide. This is one website every hour. They estimated that 68 billion pornographic videos were watched.

What is happening on our planet? This is happening in Muslim countries. You're in denial if you deny this. There are people here who are probably, they have this tribulation.

Our Prophet ﷺ said:

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If one of you hears about the Dajjal, let him avoid the Dajjal. And then he said:

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One of you will believe he's a believer and then he'll go and he'll begin to follow him because of what he brings from all the appetites and desires.

We have people addicted to these things:

Haven't you seen the one who took his desires as a God? If you're obeying these desires, you are making these desires your God. And Allah is a jealous God. إِنَّهُ غَيُورٌ يَغَارُ عَلَى دِينِهِ وَعَلَى طَاعَتِهِ

I warn you, O people of Allah, O Arab leaders, O Muslim leaders, I warn you, this is a warning from Allah. I warn you, repent to Allah. Oppose your desires. Fight your enemies from the desires, from the evil desires, the world and the desires. Fight yourselves. Repent to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala أُحَذِّرُكُمْ تَحْذِيرًا، وَاللَّهِ أُحَذِّرُكُمْ تَحْذِيرًا.

Overconsumption and Planned Obsolescence

Overconsumption:

Those who are extravagant. They are the brethren of the demons and shaytan is an ingrate to his Lord.

This is one of the problems. I'm running out of time so I won't do this but you can see this the story of stuff how consumer goods are done. How did they get us to jump on board this program so enthusiastically? Well two of their most effective strategies are planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence.

Planned obsolescence is another word for designed for the dump. It means they actually make stuff to be useless as quickly as possible so we'll chuck it and buy a new one. It's obvious with things like plastic bags and coffee cups but now it's even big stuff. Mops, DVDs, cameras, barbecues, even everything. Even computers.

Have you noticed that when you buy a computer now the technology is changing so fast that in just a couple of years it's actually an impediment to communication? I was curious about this so I opened up a big desktop computer to see what was inside and I found out that the piece that changes each year is just a tiny little piece in the corner. But you can't just change that one piece because each new version is a different shape so you've got to chuck the whole thing and buy a new one.

So I was reading industrial design journals from the 1950s when planned obsolescence was really catching on. These designers are so open about it. They actually discuss how fast can they make stuff break that still leaves the consumer having enough faith in the product to go out and buy another one. It was so intentional.

But stuff cannot break fast enough to keep this arrow afloat so there's also perceived obsolescence. Now perceived obsolescence convinces us to throw away stuff that is still perfectly useful. How do they do that? Well they change the way the stuff looks. So if you bought your stuff a couple of years ago everyone can tell that you haven't contributed to this arrow recently. And since the way we demonstrate our value is contributing to this arrow it can be embarrassing.

Like I've had the same fat white computer monitor on my desk for five years. My co-worker just got a new computer. She has a flat, shiny, sleek monitor. It matches her computer, matches her phone, even her pen stand. She looks like she's driving in Spaceship Central and I look like I've got a washing machine on my desk.

Fashion is another prime example of this. Have you ever wondered why women's shoe heels go from fat one year to skinny the next to fat to skinny? It's not because there's some debate about which heel structure is the most healthy for women's feet. It's because wearing fat heels in a skinny heel year shows everybody that you haven't contributed to that arrow as recently. So you're not as valuable as that person in skinny heels next to you or more likely in some ad. It's to keep us buying new shoes.

Advertisements and media in general plays a big role in this. Each of us in the US is targeted with over 3,000 advertisements a day. We see more advertisements in one year than people 50 years ago saw in a lifetime. And if you think about it, what's the point of an ad except to make us unhappy with what we have? So 3,000 times a day we're told our hair is wrong, our skin is wrong, our clothes are wrong, our furniture is wrong, our car is wrong. We are wrong. But it can all be made right if we just go shopping. Media also helps by hiding all of this and all of this. So the only part of the materials economy we see is the shopping. The extraction, production, and disposal all happens outside of our field of vision.

The Prophet ﷺ Aisha asked him, how will the people be towards the end of time? He said like locusts, locusts. The daba is a wingless locust. It doesn't have wings so it can't fly. He said they'll be like locusts, the strong eating the weak, and they'll be like that until the hour comes.

Results of Overconsumption: The Garbage Crisis

Results of overconsumption. This cannot last. This cannot last. We put out every week all over. America has half a billion metric tons of garbage every year. This is creating methane. It decomposes *fasad*. It decomposes. It's actually having more harm in terms of the gases. It's having more harm. This is what's happening to us. All of this garbage. The planet is just becoming filled with garbage everywhere. The animals are suffering because of this. Look at this.

There are two places in the middle of the ocean that it's bigger than Texas. It's bigger than Texas.

Signs of the Hour: Natural Disasters

And then we have chasf and maskh. Chasf means the ground swallows you up. In Arabic, in English we don't have a word. The Arabs have a word for it. We call them sinkholes now. Allah says:

Do you feel secure that he who is in the heaven will not cause you to be swallowed up by the earth?

We have the first images from Florida of that cavernous sinkhole that swallowed a home and a young man in his bedroom. This is our first look at the massive sinkhole that swallowed up 37 year old Jeff Bush while sleeping in his bed. Look closer. Authorities tell ABC News the sinkhole, about 30 ft wide and 100 ft deep, could well extend underneath the two neighboring homes, both less than 40 ft away.

That poor man, his name was Jeff Bush. If I didn't think the angels, I know the angels don't make mistakes, but it was in Florida, I would have thought he was looking for Jeb Bush.

Maskh. The Prophet ﷺ said the end of time won't come until you will see maskh, which is for humans to become distorted, to transmutate, to become disfigured and ugly. This is maskh, people. These are real human beings that have altered their, this is maskh.

The Promise of Allah: Light in the Darkness

I want to just leave you with this thought. Allah said:

When Allah said, I'm putting a *khalif* in the earth, the angels asked the question, will you put in it one who will make mischief and shed blood while we celebrate your names and glorify your holy name? And there's no doubt that they knew what they were talking about, because there are many people that are in this earth, shedding blood and sowing corruption on many different levels. And these people, these people, these people will be taken to account. Allah is *shadid al-iqab*. He's *al-muntaqim*.

But Allah said, (إِنِّي أَعْلَمُ مَا لَا تَعْلَمُونَ - innee a'lamu maa laa ta'lamoon). He said to the angels, I know what you don't know.

These are teachers that I studied with. These are the ones that Allah was talking about, and those who follow the rightly guided people. I studied with all of these men except for two. And these are people, they don't want to be exalted in the earth and they don't want corruption. This is why Allah said that there would be people that worship Allah, that there would be people that would bow down to Allah. There would be people that fought themselves. They made jihad against their *nafs*.

This is why Allah said:

Allah made this house a *mathaba*, a permanent place of security for people, a place of security, that we take it as the *maqam* of Ibrahim, as a place to pray.

And our Prophet ﷺ said: We don't know which of the *ummah* is best, the beginning or the end.

Closing Words of the Prophet

I want to end with this. The Prophet ﷺ, Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-Aas said that the Prophet ﷺ called us together and we gathered and he said:

Our Prophet ﷺ said that no prophet from before accepted it was his duty to warn his community, to show them all the good and to warn them from all the evil. And let me tell you about your community, meaning the Muslims. He said the first part of your community was the best part. In other words, it was the time of well being.

But your last part will have great tribulation. There will be many things that you see and you reject them in your hearts. And the *fitna*, these civil strife, civil wars will come and each one will make the one previous will make the one previous seem like it was nothing. The *fitna* will come and the believer will say this will destroy me and then it goes away and the next one comes. He said, No, this one, this one.

And he said, So whoever of you wants to be removed from the fire, let him not allow death to come to him except that he believes in Allah and the last day.

The Guardians of Truth

Imam Ali in Abu Nu'aym, in his Hilyat al-Awliya, Imam Ali says:

Imam Ali said the earth will never be devoid of people who establish the proofs of Allah either openly and manifest or out of fear and hidden in order for Allah's proofs never to disappear. And then they asked how many and who are they? Where are they?

He said, These are the ones who are few in number but great in stature with Allah. Through him, Allah will defend his proofs until they're able to tell them to the people who are like them, who will listen to them and they will cause it to grow in their hearts.

Final Dua and Apology

May Allah make us people of Allah. May he make us people who recognize the time we're living in and not be amongst the people that are part of the problem but make us among the people that are part of the solution.

Please forgive me. Anybody, I did not intend to shame anybody in this auditorium. Wallahi, Allah knows what's in my heart. I did not intend to shame anyone here or any country or any people. I just, this is a message that I felt compelled to convey. Thank you.