3. ANTI-CONSUMERISM & ANTI MATERIALISM
If we do believe this world is the only one. This is the only existence we will ever live. It ends in the grave. Cradle to decomposition is the legacy of mankind. If I were to swallow this, then life is short, pour me another shot. The hedonists would say live now, this is the time. But sadly, how can you live for the moment when its gone just like that. The minute you say “now”, it becomes “then”. So how can we live for now?
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf told the story of how he once heard loud rock and roll music coming from a farm and asked the farmer why he plays the music so loud. He said the pigs eat more with music so they get fatter and they can sell them. There is no time, you have to rush, buy, buy buy. The very advertising is an attack on your mind as well as your pockets.
The weekend comes and immediately people have free time, a whole free 2 days, the malls are crowded. There was a study on the effect of music in Malls, when you get into a shop it slows the time down and makes people forget how long they are in the store, grazing like cattle.
If ever we lived in a virtual prison, the time is now. We work for a meagre salary and then rush the first chance we get to hand the teller the cash as if our sweat is valued at nothing. I have been there before enter a shop and I won't even need the item but I buy. Someone who studied advertising will tell you that that was not mere chance. We are being conditioned on so many levels.
If there is no spirituality in the heart and no knowledge that there is other wealth other than physical wealth, we are permanent slaves. It means that our mission is basically to accumulate as much as possible before we perish. We will do anything to reach this mission even if it goes against any morals previously had.
It has served to detach us from who we truly are. We are not cattle, fed at their troughs, we have a deeper consciousness. A deeper reality that is constantly being torn away from us from our birth. We have attached value to the objects and not the inner beings. I will deal with this aspect in a future post Inshallah about the chakras.
Because there is fasaad, corruption of everything, we have little to remind us of our humanity. The images we are constantly being fed condition us that humans are brutish by nature and follow their whims, just like an animal. And that’s why Darwinism is so believable to the gullible.
The buy buy buy, spend spend spend, do do do as you see see see on tv tv tv obsession that has wreaked havoc in the west is fast spreading all over. The quicker the rest of the world follows in the global secularisation, the global melting pot, the eradication of traditions, values and cultures for the amalgamation into this fickle one, the quicker we befall the same illnesses from eating the same foods, manufactured illnesses that we never had before, pop out of some monkeys or from some acid rain somewhere. The obsession with assimilation and materialism that go hand in hand together has no place in Islam.
We forget our purpose and I shall remind you and myself:
"I have only created man and jinn but to worship me",
[Surah Adh-Dhariya].
Consider, the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way round. Even within ourselves, our hearts beat in rhythm: all of which are following a law and rule, without any chaos.
Consider, the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way round. Even within ourselves, our hearts beat in rhythm: all of which are following a law and rule, without any chaos.
This obsession with materialism is a form of oppression. If this is the only thing to do with our lives (accumulate) then surely that is a limit of enormous sorts. It is an oppression of our innate natures. There needs to be guidelines, rules to follow, without which the society as we see crumbles, men don’t even know what being a man is, women, the same. It is oppression because nothing else matters apart from acquiring worldly possession and esteem. The Kalimah: La illaha ila Llah liberates man from the oppression and tyranny of other men and the worship of other Gods, which includes obsession with materialism.
Again, Allah states in the Qur'an: "Whoever rejects false deities and believes in Allah, has grasped a firm branch that will never break".
This is yet another reason for the war on Islam because with the Truth can you be released. Most of the ahl-Kitab have already followed in the wave of materialism because their faiths have been invaded to such an extent the divine is practically gone from them. They have naught to believe in.
Though provoking story from the Arrivals series
A man sat alone
Drenched deep in sadness
And all the animals drew near to him and said:
“We do not like to see you so sad…Ask us for whatever you wish and you shall have it.”
The man said: “I want to have good sight”
The vulture replied: “You shall have mine”
The man said: “I want to be strong”
The jaguar said: “You shall be strong like me”
Then the man said: “I long to know the secrets of the earth”
The serpent replied: “I shall show them to you”
And so it went with all the animals.
And when the man had all the gifts that they could give…
…he left.
Then the owl said to the other animals:
“Now the man knows much and is able to do many things”
The deer said: “The man has all that he needs, now his sadness will stop”
But the owl replied: “No”
“I saw a hole in the man, deep like a hunger he will never feel…It is what makes him sad and what makes him want…he will go on taking and taking…until one day the world will say: “I am no more and I have nothing left to give”
"What is the life of this world but amusement and play? But verily the Home in the Hereafter, that is life indeed, it they but knew." (Surah Al-Ankabut -The Spider: (29:64)
We have been programmed to think that religion is old fashioned and out dated (when really it is the cure) and to invest in the present and that the here after is an illusion. This is exactly the opposite of what Christ taught. This is the Anti-Christ (Dajjal) doctrine. We only live once so indulge, life is short so consume all you can! Deep rooted materialism
Dunya- illusionary element of the world, reaching out for grapes you can’t grasp, always evades you.
Shaytana- to make distant
Akhira- eternal
Shaytan makes us feel like akhira is so far away and the dunya is here and even when people fail to have the dunya, they resort to suicide.
We chase this paper and and the family is the onepaying the price, we work longer hours for less pay, and the family disintergrates. The night is made to behave like the day… http://shelooks.blogspot.com/2009/03/manhood-womanhood-pride-in-our-natures.html
Rasul sallalahu alayhi wasalam said that If the son of Adam had a mountain of gold, he would want a second one.
We are our souls put in a physical body, the body is the tool. Yet this world neglects the soul and focuses on the tool. Feeding it, beautifying it, using it to commit zina when in the end, it will be a witness against us.
People are preoccupied with ‘entertainment’ when the ship is sinking, we are not really being informed when we watch news, we are being sold for profit. When Paris Hilton is on CNN, you ask yourself if you really will know the truth if you rely on them to give it to you. When the truth is hidden from view, the picture looks perfect and the wars are being fought behind the scenes while the majority are in a trance-like state, “doing all to live for the moment”.
The moment of Qiyamah will soon be here, and that is the moment we should be living for.
It is not the case dear reader that we aspire for poverty, the last prophet Muhammad (salAllahu alayhi wasalam) advised
Consequently, we can see that the obsession with materialism is incompatible with Islam. Our life and our possessions are for Allah alone:
"Be of good cheer. Set your hopes on what will bring upon happiness. It is not poverty that I fear for you, but I fear that you will become engrossed with world as those before you did and that you will pursue it as those before you pursued it and that it will destroy you as it destroyed them".
This middle path requires us to utilise our resources and talents, of which Allah has so mercifully bestowed upon us, but not to fall prey to obsession with materialism:
"Leave me alone (to deal with him) whom I have created alone and to whom I have granted resources vast…and to whose life I gave so wide a scope and yet, greediliy desires that I give more" [74: 11-15].
Our only choice is to accept the sovereignty of Allah, and proclaim that he is the most supreme. Do we prohibit all that negates His authority, make sure that we totally submit to Him and no other false God, no other false force and no other false obsession? If we really do aspire for the latter option, the option to submit to Allah, then know dear reader that there is hope.
This is subject is greatly linked to the forthcoming post inshallah that will focus on our chakras, humans are souls encased in their physical bodies. The physical is not the important part even though today the soul is usually malnourished while the outer is ornamented.
Our only choice is to accept the sovereignty of Allah, and proclaim that he is the most supreme. Do we prohibit all that negates His authority, make sure that we totally submit to Him and no other false God, no other false force and no other false obsession? If we really do aspire for the latter option, the option to submit to Allah, then know dear reader that there is hope.
This is subject is greatly linked to the forthcoming post inshallah that will focus on our chakras, humans are souls encased in their physical bodies. The physical is not the important part even though today the soul is usually malnourished while the outer is ornamented.
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