You Need to Read (Islamic Lectures Collection)

Choose how you want to meet Allah

You must realise, who are the true people you want to follow? All the choice is of this: who to follow? You follow fashion, trends, media and celebrities. This is why you don't have any freedom. You are forced to follow them. They do it subtly, you must follow Imam Brad Pitt, the shirt he wears, all of you must wear it. The women were all wearing long shirts, suddenly one wore a short shirt, then all of them ended up wearing short shirts. The woman can't go to a dinner in a long shirt because the fashion is of short shirts. If we tell you how to dress, you mind it.

Some cricketer doesn't speak English properly, you don't spare him. This freedom you think you're going after is actually enslaved consumerism. You don't have a choice, otherwise you won't fit in this society. A lot of people do this. My own father tells me this, I have to have an iPhone, the sort of people I work with, I need to have this. He doesn't use it much but I also agreed that he should have it.

There is commodification of hajj and umrah. Consumerism in that as well.

Freedom only lies in the deen. Only the deen of Islam liberates you. Whatever you wear, whatever you dress, it doesn't matter to you, you don't care. This is the tradition of the Sahaba and the Prophet s.a.w, all they cared about was Allah. The Sahaba only lived for Allah and His Nabi s.a.w. They did not look left or right. The Nabi s.a.w of Allah was called a madman, a soothsayer. We have to understand this thing, building a relationship with Allah, we will learn what it means to be free.

Everything in this dunya is about Allah. There is a beauty in this. This is why Allah said in the Quran that the people of iman are intensely extreme and extremely intense in their love for Allah. We need to understand that this world is not the asal (reality).

We must spend our time in zikr (remembrance of Allah) and in khidmat (service) of deen.

[Weekly Spiritual Gathering, talk by Shaykh Arsalan Ahmed, 29.10.2015]