Why Does Evil Exist Hardships & Struggle on the Path to Allah - Corrected Khutba
By Yasmin Mogahed | 2026-01-10T03:28:59.559081+00:00 | Topic: Trials
Reclaim Your Heart
Ustadha Yasmin Mogahed
Opening
As-salamu alaykum. Whenever I come up to a podium, I always feel very short. I think we're okay.
Understanding the Nature of Dunya
When talking about the subject of dunya, I think it's important for us to understand the nature of dunya. Because before you can be successful in any journey, you have to know what is your goal, and you have to understand how you're going to get there. In order to be successful in this journey of crossing dunya, we have to know what is dunya.
The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم he tells us in many different prophetic teachings, in many different ahadith, about how to view this life. In one of them he says:
(Sahih Al-Bukhari 6416)
"Be in this life like a stranger, as if you are a stranger or a traveler, a wayfarer."
I want us to think about this advice for a moment.
The Traveler's Mindset
It seems very simple and short. But as is the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم when he tells us something, he tells us in a few words something that is so profound. When you think about being a traveler, now right now I'm a traveler.
I'm visiting your beautiful country and then I'm leaving shortly thereafter. What is the mindset of a traveler? Ask yourself, the last time you were traveling, what was your mindset? Think about the hotel room that you were staying in. My question to you is, when you go and you stay at a hotel, when you're traveling, how many of you go into the hotel, look around and say, okay, now I want to start decorating this room.
Now I'm going to go to the store and I'm going to spend all this money so that I can decorate my room. And then we go to the bedspread and we say, oh my, this bedspread, it is the wrong color. And we go
and we throw it out and we go and we go and get a new bedspread.
No one does this. Why? Why don't we act this way when we're staying at a hotel room? The reason is very simple. The reason is, we know that we're only staying there for a short time and then we're leaving.
How many of you become really attached to your hotel bed? Like, just don't want to let it go. There's a chair in the room and you just become in love with the chair and you don't want to let it go. Nobody does that.
Again, it is just a temporary place and then you're leaving. You don't invest a lot of money in furnishing your hotel room, correct? You don't become obsessed or attached to the furniture in your hotel room. The reason is that you know that you're leaving.
Similarly, if your hotel bed isn't the most comfortable, you know, it's just not the best bed in the world, which typically they aren't. It's not the most comfortable. Your pillow, it's not that comfortable.
How many of you make a big deal out of that? It's okay. Why is it okay? Why is it okay to be a little bit uncomfortable in a hotel room? Because you know that you're staying there for a short time and then you're leaving. There is a natural sense of detachment when you are a traveler.
Because you're like, it's okay, I can handle it for a few days. It's not that big of a deal. I'm leaving.
Now, how does this apply to this life? The Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم is advising us to have that mindset in this life. That I'm only in this place for a short time and then I'm leaving. Just like you don't get attached to your hotel bed and your hotel chair and you don't start spending lots of money furnishing it, we should have that same mindset in this life.
It does not mean that we can't have nice things. It does not mean that we can't furnish those rooms that we have or that we have things which are comfort. However, there is a big difference between having things that you own and letting those things own you.
The Problem of Loving the Gift More Than the Giver
So when we have things of dunya, Allah covers us with gifts. We all are drowning in gifts of Allah. He gives us money. He gives us health.
He gives us status. He gives us beauty. He gives us youth.
He gives us our families, our children, our spouses. But the problem is that when Allah gives us a gift, we should appreciate those gifts and we should show gratitude for those gifts. But here's where the problem comes along.
When we start to love the gift more than we love the giver. When we start to love the gift more than we love the giver. When we start to become dependent on the gift and we forget about the giver.
How do we do that? For example, Allah gives us money. We know that Allah gives us money and all of the provision that we have because it's one of His attributes. Ar-Razzaq.
Ar-Razzaq is the provider. But here's the problem. When He gives us money, we start to love the money more than we love the giver of the money.
We start to depend on the money more than the giver of the money. How does this show in our life?
Well, so long as we have the money, we feel safe. So long as my bank account is fat and heavy and full, I feel safe.
I feel like I'm okay. But the moment that I lose money, now all of a sudden I don't feel safe anymore. What was I depending on? Am I depending on my bank account? Do I think that the money comes from my job? Do I think that the money comes from my boss? Or do I know that the money comes from the provider? Even when the money decreases in my bank account, is Allah still there? Is the provider still there? Did he go away? So we have to be careful where we put our dependence.
And we have to be careful where we put our ultimate love. How do we start to love the gift more than the giver? I'll give you some very tangible practical ways we do that. Allah gives gifts because Allah is Al- Wahhab.
Allah loves to give gifts. But sometimes we become so attached to the gift, we forget about Allah. In the case of money, we become so consumed with getting more and more, and guarding it, and not losing any of it, that we may even be put in situations where we have to make a choice.
We have to choose between the love of our money and the love of Allah. We are faced with these choices all the time. For example, sometimes in order to have, or we think in order to help our business grow, we need to sell alcohol. Or in order to help our business grow, we need to take huge interest-bearing loans.
Let's look at that. Allah is the giver, and Allah is the provider, and we are displeasing Him in order to get more provision. It doesn't make any sense.
We are saying that, no, no, no, I'm going to sell alcohol, and it's going to give me more money. Well, what do I love most? Do I love the gift, or do I love the giver? Because Allah does not approve of selling alcohol. But if I love my money more, then I will choose my money when I'm faced with that choice.
If what I love most is to have a really big house and to have a certain kind of car, but to get that I have to pay interest, what am I going to choose? I choose what I love most. And unfortunately, we have put aside the giver because we're so in love with the gift. We're so in love with our money.
We're so in love with our big houses. We're so in love with our fancy clothes and that status. This is a situation which so many of us fall into because we have Allah gives us the gift, and we love the gift more than the giver.
Examples with People in Our Lives
Another example of this is the people that Allah puts in our life. We said that our spouse is a gift. Our children are gifts.
But what a lot of us end up doing is we start to love our spouse and our children as we should only love Allah. But nobody says that, right? No one's going to say, yeah, raise their hand and say, actually, over here, I love my spouse more than Allah. Or I love my children more than Allah.
We don't say that with our tongues. But how do we show that with our actions? Again, when we are faced with a choice. A lot of times you hear people saying things like, you know, don't wear hijab because then you won't get married.
Or take off your hijab so that you can get married. Or maybe take off your hijab because your husband wants you to. Here we are thinking that this person that we're going to get married to, where does this person come from? Your spouse is a provision from Allah.
Your spouse is from Allah. So how does it make sense that you're going to anger the provider in order to get more provision? It doesn't make any sense. If you're trying to get a promotion, you don't get a promotion by disobeying the boss.
Correct? We know this. But somehow we've forgotten that Allah is the source of all the things that we want. Allah is the source of that great spouse that we're taking off our hijab to get.
Allah is the source of the provision that we're selling alcohol to increase. These are the things we do because we lose focus. And we start to focus on the gift and not the giver.
Indicators of What's in Our Hearts
The other subtle ways that you can see this is if you ask yourself just a few questions. Because the heart is something we can't see physically, the spiritual heart. So it's very hard to know what's in my heart.
It's not something we can really do a blood test and find out what do I love most. But there are indicators. One of the indicators, simple indicator, is what do you think about most.
Simple. What do you think about all day long? What's always occupying your mind? There is a direct relationship between the heart, between your love, and your mind, your thoughts. So your thoughts are going to be a reflection of what you love most.
What consumes you here, consumes you here. So you can ask yourself, and everyone is aware, what do you think about most? What are you spending your entire day worrying about? What is it related to? What do you think about while you're praying?
Because, you know, most of the time it's not Allah. We're praying to Him, but our heart is thinking about everything else.
Our heart is thinking about our children, or our husband, or whatever's in the oven, or where we have to go, what we're going to wear, what's on TV, what that person said about me, what that person did to me. That's what we're thinking about. Ask yourself, what is it that makes you most angry? What is it that makes you most sad? And look at your fear, because fear is an indicator of ultimate love.
So, the thing that you're most afraid of, the thing that you're most afraid of losing, you know we have things in our life that we are terrified of losing, and actually just the thought of losing it can cause a physical reaction, like our heart will start pounding, we might start sweating, we might even get into a panic, at the thought of losing that thing. You need to look at that, every individual needs to look at their own heart, and look at what is it really that I love most. And most of the time we will find that when we answer these questions, what am I thinking about all day, what's the first thing on my mind when I wake up in the morning, what keeps me up at night so I can't sleep, what keeps me from being able to eat, what's the last thing I think about before I sleep, what am I most afraid of, what makes me most angry, and you'll find that the answer to those questions has nothing to do with Allah.
Typically, the answer to those questions are the gifts of Allah. So do you see what's happening here? What's supposed to be on our mind most? It's our creator. What's supposed to be the first thing we think about when we wake up in the morning?
the first thing you're supposed to say when you get up.
But it's not what's on our mind. What's supposed to be the thing that we're most afraid of losing? It isn't supposed to be our money, or our spouse, or our children, it's supposed to be Allah. So what have we done? We've taken these things, which were gifts, and we've put them in a place that only Allah should be.
The Consequences of Misplaced Love
What's the result of doing that? Allah tells us in the Quran again and again, we hear about Jahannam, we know and we think about Jahannam as being something far away, right? Jahannam, hellfire. We think of it as being something far away. It's in the hereafter.
Yeah, that torture and that torment is far away. What you don't realize is that the torment and the torture of taking something other than Allah and loving it as you should only love Allah will torment you and torture you in this life before the next life. That same thing that answers all these questions, what do I think about most, what am I most afraid of losing, what makes me angry, what's the first thing on my mind, what do I think of in my salah, that same thing, whether it is your family, your kids, your husband,
The Heart Like a Gas Tank
And so when you fill something with a substance that it wasn't intended to be filled with, it breaks. When you go to the gas station and you need to fill up your gas tank, and you decide that today, you know, you're not going to put gasoline in the gas tank, today you're going to put orange juice. Well, not a very smart decision because what happens? What happens is, your car is not going to work, and in fact you will break that car.
When you fill the gas tank with orange juice, you're filling it with something that it was not designed to be filled with. Our hearts are the same. Our hearts are like a cup.
And you can fill that cup with whatever you choose, but if you choose to fill it with this life, if you choose to fill it with dunya, if you choose to fill it with money, if you choose to fill it with status, if you choose to fill it with what people think, then that cup will break. That heart will never feel at rest. That heart will not feel peace until it is filled with what it was designed to be filled with, and that is Allah, and the remembrance of Allah, not the remembrance of the creation.
We should not be obsessing our minds and our hearts with anything other than our Creator. Now this brings us to the question of, well, what about all these roles that we have to play? We can't go and live in the mountains, and we can't just be in the masjid all day and all night. So how do we reconcile? See, Islam is the religion of fitra, the religion of our nature.
Islam is a religion of the middle way. It does not tell us ever to take extremes. So when we talk about filling the heart with Allah and nothing else, it does not mean that you don't get married and have children and have jobs and get involved and enjoy yourself.
No, no, no, that's not what it means. It means that when you do have those things, they are in your hand and not in your heart.
In Your Hand vs. In Your Heart
And there is a very, very deep difference between what you hold in your hand and what you hold in your heart.
Because what you hold in your hand is something that you love and something that you enjoy, whether it is money or it is your husband or your wife or your children, but it does not become the center of your existence. It will not be what you think about all day. It will not be the first thing on your mind, the last thing on your mind, what makes you cry, what makes you happy, what makes you sad.
No, no, that is for what's in your heart. So you understand here that what we have and we hold in our hand is something that we love, but something that we can ultimately live without. It means that when it is taken away from us, we don't crumble and die.
We don't become so devastated that we can't find a purpose to continue to live. Lots of people have money, but they don't always hold it in the same place. Some people, you know, we know there were companions who were rich, but they held their money in their hand and not in their heart.
What does that mean? What does that look like? It means that if it is taken away, it isn't the end of that person's life. It doesn't devastate. There is a beautiful example of this.
The Example of Abu Hanifa
Abu Hanifa, one of the great scholars, he also had property, business, he had wealth. And while he was teaching one time, some people came to him and told him, your ships have sunk, so a portion of his
wealth was presumably gone, lost. So what he did is he paused, he was teaching, he paused, and then he said, Alhamdulillah, and then he continued teaching.
A little while later they came back to him and said, actually we made a mistake. It wasn't your ships that sunk. So again he paused, he said Alhamdulillah, and then he continued teaching.
So later on when he was asked what that was about, he said that when first you told me that I lost my ships, I paused and I examined my heart and I found it unmoved. And so I said Alhamdulillah that my heart was unmoved by that. And then the second time when you told me that I had not lost my ships, again I paused and I examined my heart and I found it unmoved.
So I said Alhamdulillah that my heart was unmoved. You understand here, he has the money, but if that money comes or that money goes, that's not what controls him inside. He is not controlled inside except by Allah.
Similarly, we interact with people, right? No one is going to tell you that you should go hide out and never see people. We get married, this is the sunnah of the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ). We have children, we have families, we have parents, we must interact. But what happens when the people are happy with you and they're praising you? How does that affect your heart? And then the next day they don't like you anymore.
They're not pleased with you anymore. Now they're criticizing you. Now they don't love you anymore.
I'm sorry, I don't love you anymore. I think I'm going to leave now. What happens to you? If that person was in your heart and that person controlled you inside, then when they don't like you anymore or they're criticizing you, it breaks you inside.
But if those people, yes you love them, but your heart is for Allah. Your heart is not moved by the movement of the creation. Your heart is only moved by Allah. Then what that means is, yes, people come and they go from your life.
People are going to be happy with you sometimes. Sometimes they're not going to be. Sometimes they're going to love you and sometimes they're going to hate you.
But you don't allow your internal state to go up and down with the creation. Because your internal state should be stable with Allah. Should be linked to your relationship with Him. And externally you interact with the creation.
It isn't something that controls you inside. This is the goal, right? How do you get there? It seems very hard, right? Something far off. We can't really think about how do we do that.
The Child and the Toy Ferrari
How do we love our families, for example, without allowing them to compete with the place that Allah should be inside? I think the easiest answer to that question is by thinking of this example. You know when a little kid first sees a really special toy? Maybe that child is watching TV and sees a commercial. And on the commercial there is this toy Ferrari.
And the child falls in love with this toy. So that child becomes obsessed. Every day asking his parents, please can I have that Ferrari? Please can I have that toy? Finally he gets it.
Now that child holds on real tight to that toy, right? Try taking that toy out of the child's hand. It's not going to be easy, right? Because he is obsessed and in love and attached to that toy. But what happens when that child grows up and sees a real Ferrari?
What happens to that child's attachment to the lesser model? Now when you try to take that toy out of his hand, is it hard anymore? No, because his eyes are on the real thing, the real Ferrari.
What does that have to do with us? The reason we become so attached to this life is because we don't see anything better. We don't really see the better life. So we don't have anything better to compare it to.
All we think about is Dunia. All we talk about is Dunia. All we compete for is Dunia.
It's only about how much do I have? How much do they have? What are they wearing? What am I wearing? What are they saying? What am I saying? Where am I invited? Who didn't invite me? Whatever it is. Who has more status? Who has less status? That's all we see. We are just surrounded by it.
And so all we see is the toy car. That's all we see. That's why it's so hard to let go.
That's why if you try to take even a little bit from me, I would never let it go. We aren't willing to sacrifice even a little bit of our Dunia for Allah. We aren't.
We can't even sacrifice, okay, you know, I'm not gonna get this interest bearing loan. I'm not going to sell alcohol. I'm not going to dress in a way that is displeasing to Allah because it's the fashion.
We can't even sacrifice seriously. When we look at the sacrifices that people before us made and we compare it to the sacrifices that we're not willing to make, we don't even want to give up this much for Allah. You tell me to wear hijab? No, but I don't want to give up the fashion.
You tell me to dress modestly? But that's in fashion. We can't even sacrifice fashion. Let alone our lives or otherwise.
So we are willing to let go even a little bit because we're like that child who only sees the toy car. It's all I have and so I don't want to let it go. You know this thing that the youth say, YOLO, you only live once.
If you think that you only live once, you're not going to let it go. If you think this is all I got, there is no other opportunity, this is it, then you will hold tight and you will never let it go even a little bit. But if you
see something better, if instead of being so consumed with this life and you instead see that there is a better life, that there is the real version of the car, the real version of this life is akhirah, is the hereafter.
But we don't see it. Even when we read it in the Qur'an, it's like, you know, we just read it with our tongues. We just have this like theoretical concepts.
Oh yeah, I know Jannah exists. I know there's a hereafter. But is it really real to you? Is it really something you actually think about and pray about and ask for and hope for and look forward to? Realistically, no.
We're looking forward to the party we're going to next week. That's what we look forward to. It's just dunya.
That's all we see. We haven't been able to see farther. That's why it's so hard to let go.
But believe me, when you are given a choice between something better and something lesser, it's a non-choice. It's obvious. We're gonna choose what is better.
Allah's Question About This Life
And Allah tells us in the Qur'an:
"But you prefer the worldly life, while the Hereafter is better and more enduring."
Do you prefer the life of this world when the hereafter is greater and more lasting? What is it that makes us so sad about this life? There's two things that make us really sad about this life, that disappoint us. First, is that it isn't perfect. We want things to be perfect.
It's in our nature. And we become very disappointed when things are not perfect. We want our children to be perfect.
We want our husband to be perfect. We want our wife to be perfect. We want our job to be perfect.
We want our figure to be perfect. We want everything to be perfect, right? And we get disappointed when it isn't. خَيْرٌ Allah is saying that the hereafter, that Jannah is greater because it's actually perfect.
It's none of this, yeah, okay, one thing goes right in your life but something else is falling apart. It's none of that. There is no sadness and there is no fear in Jannah.
There is sadness and fear in this life, right? There is definitely sadness and fear in this life, but the hereafter doesn't have any of that. And second thing that makes us sad is that nothing lasts. No matter
how beautiful you are, no matter how thin and how nice your skin is, 20 years later, you don't look the same.
And you can throw all the money in the world into plastic surgery, but it isn't going to make you live forever. Is it right? And it doesn't matter if you're an atheist or an agnostic or a Muslim, you can't deny that. And it's very difficult for people to accept that.
That's why we have so many products out there. You know, all the creams and all the Botox and the plastic surgery. What's that about? We're trying to make a Jannah in this life.
We're trying to make this life last forever, but it's impossible. And that hurts us in a very deep place to think that everything is passing away. It hurts us, but that's because we only see this life.
We don't see that there is a life where nothing passes away. That you don't get old. You don't get tired.
You don't cry. You don't bleed. You don't get scared.
You don't have to worry about anxiety and all these things that plague us. So why are we so caught up in this life?
Allah is asking us this question. Why do we prefer this life? He's saying, you prefer this life means a question and it's a ridiculous thing that we do.
We are preferring the toy Ferrari to the real Ferrari. That's what we're doing. But the reason we do that is because we're like that child hasn't seen the real car yet.
Our hearts really haven't seen after. We haven't really experienced and focused on the hereafter enough. And when you do that through your remembrance of Allah, through your relationship with his book, with the Quran, when you start to do that you will find naturally that this life doesn't become as important anymore.
It becomes like the hotel room. It becomes like the hotel room because you know you're leaving and everything is in perspective.
The reason you don't get attached to your hotel bed is because you have perspective.
You know, I'm only here for three days and I'm leaving. But if you thought that you were staying in that hotel room forever, you would act very different. Right? How do we act with our houses versus the hotel room? Because in our mind this house is permanent.
Right? So we want to decorate it and we want to get very attached to it, etc. Our mindset is that we're staying here. But if we gained perspective, proper perspective, and we saw this life as temporary, and we
saw this life like the hotel room, and we saw this life like the toy car, then it would be much easier to not be so obsessed with it.
And now all of a sudden our concerns will change. Oh, you know what this person said about you? It's not the end of the world. You know what this person is doing? Who invited you? Who didn't? Who called you? Whether or not how you appear in front of people, your image, it doesn't become as important anymore because you see something more important.
You see something better. You see the real car. Similarly, when all we see is the creation, all we see is the creation, then the creation becomes the most important thing to us.
And the reason is we haven't really seen the creator. And of course I'm not talking about seeing Allah with our physical eyes because that's for akhira, inshallah. But we can see Allah with our hearts.
Seeing Allah with our hearts means that we focus on Him and our heart is full of the remembrance of Allah as if we can see Him. Isn't that what the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said? He said:
(Sahih Muslim 8)
"That you worship Allah as if you can see Him, and if you can't know that He sees you."
That's ihsan. That's the highest level. And if you can't know that He sees you, if we could see the real car, if we could see Allah, we wouldn't be so caught up in the creation. You know what that means? It means the more that I focus on and worry about what does Allah think of me? Or how do I appear to Allah? Or is Allah pleased with me? The less I'm going to be worried about what do the people think of me? What are the people saying about me? And are the people pleased with me? It's just natural because you're looking at something better.
You're more concerned with something better.
Reflection on Surah Al-Hadeed
I'm going to end actually with a reflection about one of the ayat that was recited mashaAllah so beautifully from Surah Al-Hadeed in which Allah is telling us He's describing this life to us:
He's describing this life to us. And He begins by saying اعْلَمُوا meaning know. It's a command to know.
Don't just think. Don't just suspect. Know.
It's a fact. That the life of this world is (لَعِبٌ - la'ib). First description He gives is that the life of this world is play.
And it's interesting because when you study the life cycle or the life line of a human being and you think about when a human being first entered this life what is their world revolving around? What's the most important thing to a child? Play. Play. Playing with toys.
That's it. You want to get a child a gift? You don't get them a fancy purse. You don't get them fancy clothes.
You get them a toy. Play. So the dunya, the entire world revolves around play when you first come to this life.
لَعِبٌ Then the ayah goes on to say (لَهْوٌ - lahw) is entertainment. (لَهْوٌ - lahw) is this you know basically keeping yourself amusement. You know when a child grows up a little bit middle school or so what's it all about? Entertainment.
Their favorite thing to say at that age is I'm bored. It's like they need constant entertainment. Constant stimulation.
Like entertain me. I'm bored. Unfortunately we sometimes don't grow out of that.
But at that point at that point that's all it's about. Video games. Movies.
You know it's like they constantly just want amusement and entertainment. So dunya is about entertainment and amusement.
And then we get up and we grow a little bit.
We enter into high school. High school now is that time when it's not about playing with toys anymore. It's not so much about video games anymore although some people also never grow out of that.
It's more about how you look. How you look becomes of utmost importance. Right? Your image.
This is when you are like taking two hours to get ready in the morning. Right? Allah says (وَزِينَةٌ - zeena) is adornment. Adornment.
At this point in life everything, your entire life revolves around adornment. Around how you look. How you appear, your image.
And then you grow up a little bit. And you graduate or now you're starting to look for colleges and programs and now you're trying to prove yourself. (وَتَفَاخُرُ بَيْنَكُمْ - wa tafakhur baynakum) is that showing off.
That boasting. Now it's not so much about playing with toys or video games or what you're wearing. But now it's about well what college did you get into? Oh well I got into this college.
What program are you? Or what job did you get? So now everybody's trying to prove themselves. And everyone's trying to compete. And everyone's trying to show off.
(وَتَفَاخُرُ بَيْنَكُمْ - wa tafakhur baynakum). Boasting.
And then you get older and you settle down. And now it's not necessarily about playing video games. What's your adornment? Although some people also don't grow out of that. But now it's about competition. (وَتَكَاثُرُ فِي الْأَمْوَالِ وَالْأَوْلَادِ - wa takathur fil-amwali wal-awlad). Now it's about collecting money.
And children. (وَتَكَاثُرُ فِي الْأَمْوَالِ وَالْأَوْلَادِ - wa takathur fil-amwali wal-awlad). Is that you know that mutual competition in now. Oh did you see her house? Or did you see her car? And my car? Well what's her kid? How much did your cousin pay for their wedding? And how much are we gonna pay? How much did their wedding cost? Oh but now they paid they spent a hundred thousand we have to spend a hundred twenty thousand.
This type of thing. It's this competition now about money and about our children. (وَتَكَاثُرٌ فِي الْأَمْوَالِ وَالْأَوْلَادِ - wa takathur fil-amwali wal-awlad). Now Allah here He spells it out for us.
These are all the things that you get caught up in. At different stages of your life. But all of that (كَمَثَلِ غَيْثِ أَعْجَبَ الْكُفَّارَ نَبَاتُهُ - kamathali ghaythin a'jabal kuffara nabatuhu). It's like a garden that makes the farmer really happy.
(كَمَثَلِ غَيْثِ أَعْجَبَ الْكُفَّارَ نَبَاتُهُ - kamathali ghaythin a'jabal kuffara nabatuhu). So that now the farmer is really pleased with what they have, their harvest. The plants. (ثُمَّ يَهِيجٌ فَتَرَاهُ مُصْفَرًا - thumma yahiju fatarahu musfarran). But then what happens.
So the farmer is really happy with their harvest and their plants. But then what happens to the plants? (ثُمَّ يَهِيجٌ فَتَرَاهُ مُصْفَرًا - thumma yahiju fatarahu musfarran). It starts to crumble. It starts to dry up.
And it becomes yellow. See this like rose? Is this even real? It's real, right? It's really beautiful, right? But what happens after two weeks? The most beautiful rose in the world after two weeks it becomes brown. And it starts to crumble.
This is a sign. And Allah tells us that the life of this world is just like that. (ثُمَّ يَهِيجٌ فَتَرَاهُ مُصْفَرًا - thumma yahiju fatarahu musfarran). You find it becoming yellow, brown (ثُمَّ يَكُونُ حُطَامًا - thumma yakunu hutaman) becomes debris-like.
You could take that rose that used to be, that used to look like this and now you can actually crumble it in your hand and it becomes nothing. And it would just blow away in the wind. After all of that, what's left over? (وَفِي الْآخِرَةِ عَذَابٌ شَدِيدٌ وَمَغْفِرَةٌ مِّنَ اللَّهِ وَرِضْوَانُ - wa fil-akhirati 'adhabun shadeedun wa maghfiratun minAllahi wa ridwanun). After all of it that we're so caught up in just passes away, it crumbles, it becomes brown, and it crumbles, what's left? One of two things.
The punishment of Allah or His forgiveness and His pleasure. That's it. That's all that really remains.
(وَمَغْفِرَةٌ مِّنَ اللَّهِ وَرِضْوَانُ - wa maghfiratun minAllahi wa ridwanun). So either the (عَذَابٌ - 'adhabun) the punishment of Allah and we ask Allah to protect us from that. Ameen. Or the forgiveness and the pleasure of Allah.
(وَمَا الْحَيَاةُ الدُّنْيَا إِلَّا مَتَاعُ الْغُرُورِ - wa mal-hayatud-dunya illa mata'ul-ghurur). And what is the life of this world except (مَتَاعُ الْغُرُورِ - mata'ul-ghurur)? It's just chattel of deception. SubhanAllah. Very, very profound.
We need to reflect on these things. Allah has just in this ayah summarized everything we run after. Everything we run after our entire life.
But all of it is all passing away. Just like the farmer who likes the plants for a while and then it passes away. What really remains is whether Allah is pleased with you or displeased with you.
Closing
I say this and seek Allah's forgiveness for me and for you, indeed He is the Forgiving, the Merciful.
Glory be to You, O Allah, and praise be to You. We bear witness that there is no god but You. We seek Your forgiveness and turn to You in repentance.
And peace be upon you and Allah's mercy and blessings.