Between Cisco and Sujud: Earning Your Livelihood, Taking Benefit from the Corporate Lifestyle PII

A Lecture by Suhaib Webb | Transcribed by Fuseina Mohamad

When I taught the AlMaghrib course I flew back from Houston after the first class. Masha’Allah, first or second time in my life I think I flew first class. First class is no joke, awuthu bilahi min al dunya wa ma fee ha (I seek refuge in Allah from this world and that which is in it). So I was sitting in first class with my V8 and there was a guy next to me named Frank. I was actually preparing for a class that I teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I thought, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to turn on the laptop and make the font like 100 so Ben can see what I’m writing.” And you have those interactions every day. I was like “Man, I’m lucky! Finally I get a chance to try out what I learnt at al-Azhar.” This is what Siraj Wahhaj calls “da`wah moments.”

So I turned on the laptop and started typing, “The Qur’an, Allah created us, etc.” That didn’t work. Then I needed to get up, and actually he got up before me and the stewardess was kind of rough, kind of harsh. I said to him, “You know it seems maybe she’s kind of rough.”

He said, “You know her husband lost his job.” So then I realized he’s a decent guy; he asked her and found out that she was a decent person.

Then he asked me, “What’s your name?”

I said, “My name is William.” I say William or Muhammed. Why? Because if I say Suhaib they ask, “What’s Suhaib?” Actually one of my names is Muhammed, that’s a long story, but I’m not lying to him. So I said, “My name is William.”

He said, “Really? What are you reading right there?”

I had an Arabic book with me. Don’t be shy of who you are. People are interested.

The other day I was working out at 24 Hour Fitness and I left a copy of ‘Umdatul Ahkaam because when you are on those elliptic machines you can read. So I was trying to memorize some hadith from ‘Umdatul Ahkaam although it’s not very easy. So I left the book there and came back after about an hour and a half and I said, “Did you guys find a book?”

The guy said, “Man, this is an amazing book. What is this? What is this writing? So beautiful.”

I said, “This is Arabic, I’m a Muslim. You know we have a local community.”

Just that instance of being able to talk to them can make a difference. Arabic has a barakah (blessing) to it.

So when Frank saw that writing, that khat (script) he said, “What is that book you’re reading? That’s not Freakonomics. What is that book you’re reading?”

I said, “Well this is an Arabic book that I’m translating for a class I teach.”

“Are you a Moslem?”

I said, “I’m a Muslim.”

He said, “You know I’ll be honest with you. I have a very bad opinion of you people.”

I said, “You know what? I appreciate your integrity.” He said it in a nice way.

He said, “I will be honest with you. I’m just being honest, man. I have a really bad image of you people.”

What he’s saying is despite all the work we do in the community, we’re very incubated and we’re not reaching people.

So then we started to talk and we got into some discussions, and he is actually pretty orthodox. By the end of the conversation he said, “This is the first enlightened conversation I have had with a Muslim in my life.”

And because of that one conversation now he e-mails me and he will say, “Look, what these people said about Islam is not true.” Just one simple interaction. I didn’t quote anything from al-Azhar, I didn’t tell him, “Well, Sheikh Ali Guma says such and such.” I didn’t say that; I just told him simple things: what’s Islam, who are Muslims, etc.

And you know he was asking, “You’re not terrorists right? You’re not really. Because we’re on a plane.”

I said to him, “No, we’re not terrorists.”

He’s like, “I knew you weren’t.” But he just had to hear it.  Who did he have to hear it from? Who did he have to see it from? From one of us.

So every day you pack your lunch and you go to work. That’s a very good opportunity. That’s not something you should be ashamed of, because number one the Prophet (s) said, “The best property is the property of the righteous person.”

The other thing is, as we mentioned, the Companions of the Prophet who were the most helpful to him were affluent. They used their money for the sake of Allah. That doesn’t mean that it’s not a fitna (trial). It’s a trial, but fitna is used to clean silver and gold ore to get pure gold. So that’s a trial for us all. Wealth is a trial.

So there are just a few important points to make.

Number one: As people involved in Cisco and Sun and the MCA (Muslim Community Association), the most important thing is balance. Balance in your life. Allah said, “[Do] not transgress within the balance” (55:8). Especially for young professionals coming out of college; I remember when I came out of college. There is the propensity to get sucked in and lose priorities. The first and foremost priority is to be the servant of Allah. And that job and that money and that profession are used for Allah. If that intention is there you will find Allah will bless it, wallahi. Allah will put a blessing in those things.

I remember when I worked for AT&T there was a brother who worked there with me. Wallahi they loved us Muslims over there. We’re the best workers. We don’t come in with hangovers on Monday. Maybe we watched some cricket over the weekend but other than that we weren’t complaining, “Oh no, it’s Monday.” We were like, “Oh alhamdullilah it’s Monday. I’ve prayed Fajr in the masjid, got my dhikr down and I’m ready to get busy.”

So you see the Muslims are not staggering around like zombies; we’re ready to go. They told us, “We’ll give you a room to pray in.” Brothers were scared to pray, brothers wouldn’t pray. And I said “Why are you scared to pray, man? The land belongs to Allah!”

So we went, we talked to the woman in Human Resources and she said, “I know Muslims. Muslims are my best employees. They’re always on time, don’t take long lunch breaks, don’t talk to girls. They’re focused. Don’t talk to boys. They’re focused people. I respect that. They’re streamlined. You get from them all the time. They give it to you.”

I said subhan’Allah look at how these people look at us, yet we are too nervous even to say our names, instead saying “My name is Mo or Ebe, or Abdul.”

They like us. I remember there was a woman once who told me, “Please wear a thobe. I used to live in Saudi Arabia. Wear one of those white things, those are cool.” Subhan’Allah.

So they gave us a room to pray. By that time we had gained such an affection of the people, by the grace of Allah alone, that we would go and find brothers and say, “Let’s go and pray, man. It’s time to pray Asr.”

So with most of the brothers we had a jama`a (congregation) of about fifteen people. And non-Muslims would walk by and be like, “They’re praying. These people are praying. That’s interesting how they pray together.” They would stop, like you pass by the great Andes rhino in a museum, and they were just surprised. They would all ask us, “Why do you pray like that? You pray like it says in the Bible. Why do you wash? That’s in the Bible too.” And so we start a conversation with people and they start to know us and they start to respect us.

There was this one brother I went to and said, “Brother, come on, let’s go pray.”

You know what he told me? He said, “Allah doesn’t sign my paycheck, dude.”

I said, “Wow.” Deviant alarms started going off. So I said, “You know, brother, okay fine. I’m not going to ask you to say anything else because I’m worried about your state. You keep talking there’s no telling what’s going to happen to you.”

So I just left him. The next day he was fired. I wanted to go to him and say, “It looks like He didn’t sign it this month, brother!”

Nobody got fired from there, but he got fired.

So number two, the second important thing that you’ve got to realize, and I’ve got to realize, in corporate America is the issue of your identity. You have a noble identity—you’re a Muslim! Allah blessed you to be Muslim, that’s a sharaf (honor). It’s an honor to be a Muslim. It’s an honor, a great honor. Sometimes we don’t feel it because of the condition of Muslims. We’re going through some hard times, but remember that Allah called the Prophet (s) and said, “Wala sawfa yu’tika rabuka fatarda – Your Lord will give you what will please you” (93:5). Why didn’t He say wala sawfa yu’tika Allahu? He said rabuk because the Rabb, the Lord, is the One who nourishes you and takes care of you and makes sure everything is comfortable. At the same time it’s as if He’s saying to the Prophet (s), as Imam ibn Ashur explained, the horizons in front of you, O Muhammed, they might be difficult, but I am your Lord, don’t worry, because I am with you.

So when we get to high school, or junior high, or university, and we go home at night, sometimes we need to remember what Allah said to the ummah (Muslim community). Allah said to the Ummah of the Prophet (s), “Indeed this nation of yours is one nation, wa ana rabukum (and I am your Lord).” So Allah is telling us as an Ummah, “Ana rabukum, la takhafu wa la tahzanu ana rabukum – I am your Lord, do not be afraid, and do not grieve. I am your Lord.”

So the second issue is the issue of identity. I’ll be honest, when I was a non-Muslim I knew Muslims. I knew a guy in a high school named Salim Salim. Crazy dude, man. You would have never known it but he was a Muslim. And I remember I did not respect him. I didn’t respect him because he didn’t respect his religion. And I was a non-Muslim! I’m not going to tell you his full name—names have been changed to protect the innocent. But I remember as a non-Muslim I felt that he was a sell-out. I said, “Man, this dude’s a sell-out.” Even though I was doing more dirt than the Caterpillar company, I thought to myself, “This guy is a sell-out because he doesn’t practice Islam.” And we knew about Islam. What Islam tells them not to do, he does it. So I had no respect for him, but when I met a Muslim for the first time who held on to his principles and told me straight up, “I’m a Muslim,” I respected that person.

American people are like that. They respect you if you’re straightforward. No flip-floppers, no John Kerry. Straight to the point.

I remember I met a brother named Ali who became Muslim in Wichita, Kansas of all places. He had a stereo that broke the sound barrier. The brother would pull up to the masjid and the windows would start shaking. Step by step he became Muslim. Alhamdulilah he’s all right.

So I asked Ali, “Brother Ali, how did you become Muslim?”

He said, “Muslims are cool.”

I said, “Cool?” I thought maybe he was like me, you know I read the Qur’an, I read Ahmed Deedat, and got into intellectual debates about Paul and the concept of the trinity.

He was like, “No. Muslims are cool, man. Muslims are cool.”

I said, “Could you elaborate on that coolness?” Let’s get into our core coolness here and try to understand why Muslims are cool. Listen to this, sisters.

He said, “From middle school to high school in Wichita, Kansas there were these girls that used to wear this thing on their head. I couldn’t believe that they could do that.”

I said, “Why?”

He said, “Because of the pressure in my school for them to lose their virginity and dress like prostitutes. I watched those women from seventh grade to my senior year in high school and I came to a conclusion.”

I said, “What?”

He said, “Those girls are onto the truth.”

I said, “How?”

He said, “They didn’t waver, brother. Everyone wavered but them. To wear that in the nineties? The age of J. Lo? To wear that, something had to be stronger than the human spirit. Something had to cause them to transcend popular culture and cling to principles. The only thing that can do that is al-Haqq (the truth). That’s why Muslims are cool.”

I said, “I agree, brother. Muslims are cool.”

He became Muslim and he said, “I never talked to those girls. Those girls don’t even know me.”

By watching a living example of someone in the age of post-modernity, where there is supposedly no “fixed truth”, cling to the truth, and to look how he watched them from middle school to high school;  he said, “From middle school to high school I realized that these women were holding onto a higher power. Something that they were clinging to gave them the ability to transcend the jahiliya (ignorance) that was around them and I realized it had to be the truth. So I stopped to ask questions and I found out that they were Muslims.”

You can do that in corporate America. How? By going out and preaching and telling people we are Muslims, etc? No. The most important thing people need now is people of good character. Upright people, righteous people, decent people. People who are not snakes. All over the world people need that, not just here.

There was a brother who worked in a startup in LA. Hardcore with a big long beard, turban or kufi, everything. I’m not telling you to do that, I’m just giving you examples of some people who subhan’Allah are proud of their identity. His coworker was a knockout. As these young people say, she was hot. I don’t like to use that kind of word but just so our youngsters can understand. For those of us who are older, she was quite lovely. So the brother he was pious, so he was like, “Subhan’Allah! I’d prefer if they would give me the old grandma.” But, alhamdullilah it was the qadr (will) of Allah.

So that brother, who was one of the students of Dr. Hussein Abdul Sattar, he made a sincere effort to be a good Muslim, for his own sake. And according to that brother, everyone in the place was hitting on that woman. Everyone! And she was married, but they had no class. The brother talked to her, he respected her, he was good to her, but he never tried to talk to her outside of normal bounds. Then he got a job in Chicago, may Allah reward this brother. This is a true story. He went to Chicago.

After a few weeks he gets a phone call from his old job telling him, “What did you do to the Latina lady?”

He said, “Wait a minute. Authu billahi min al shaitan al rajeem (I seek refuge in Allah from Satan the accursed). I did nothing to the Latina lady.”

“No, no. You did something.”

He said, “Why?”

They said, “She feel into depression. She’s crying at work. She said she misses you, man.”

Now, this brother, no offense he’s not Brad Pitt. The brother, he looked all right.

So he calls her, because they said, “Please call her.”

You know what she tells him? “I’m madly in love with you.”

He said “Why?”

She said, “You are the first person in my life to treat me like a woman. You’re the first person that didn’t treat me like a piece of meat in a butcher shop. That’s why I love you.”

Now I’m not telling you to go to corporate America tomorrow and find a pretty girl and be pious. It doesn’t work like that. But look how Allah blessed that brother to spread the light of Islam to a woman who everyone was trying to do bad things to. The Muslim character comes out.

That’s why in the Quran Allah says, “Washshamsi waduhaha. Walqamari itha talaha. By the sun and its brightness. And [by]the moon when it follows it” (91:1-2).  As though Islam is like the shams (sun). The light is so strong that even in the darkness of night it illuminates things like the moon. So even in the cesspool of darkness the nur (light) of Muhammad (s) and the nur of Islam shines on people’s hearts.

Number one is identity. Don’t lose yourself. Don’t lose yourself in this world. Be who you are, don’t live a fake life. Be who you are and struggle. It’s not easy.

Number two: make sure that you find other Muslims in the workplace. You’ve got to have that relationship with brothers and sisters that will hold you together. I remember the brothers at Cisco, and Intel also, they invited me to two programs they did on Islam. Man, these were the best programs I ever saw on Islam. Amazing. The Intel program was so incredible that Intel recorded it and put it on their website. They said, “We’ve never had a program like this, this is unbelievable.”

Why were they so impressed? Because Muslims are doing it. Muslims are doing a good job, Muslims work hard, Muslims are decent people, and they’re on time.

The brothers had formed something like an MSA. Because what happens? What I call PMSA syndrome: post-MSA syndrome. We get out of college, we have all that zeal, we come to the communities and the chachas(elders) throw us out. Young brothers and sisters come out of college and they’re used to having that freedom to work as they did on campus. When they get older they lose that freedom and start to get depressed and down. They give up. It goes from Islamic awareness week to Islamic awareness minute, if we’re lucky. So you have to find other Muslims and create organizations on campus, Muslim organizations that will support you and also give a good image to other people.

The third and very important point is to not cut the umbilical cord to the masjid. You’ve got to come to the masjid, man. Once a week, twice a week, three times a week outside of Jumu`ah. Four times a week, once a day if you can do it, man.

You might say, “But I’ve got kids.”

Bring your kids to the masjid! I’m not going to tell you to throw your kids out. I want to see your kids in the masjid. No problem, we’re a community, bidoon istithnayaat (without exceptions). Just control your kids when it’s time to pray, brother.

And I want to warn you about the trick of letting your kids pray behind you. That’s a trick. There was a sheikh once in one of our communities who used to put his sons between the men and the women. So he thought, “Masha Allah, I’m following the sunnah my kids are going to be all right.”

In Salat al-Taraweeh as soon as the Sheikh would go Allahu Akbar [to start the prayer] his kids would go downstairs and play ping-pong and listen until they knew it was the last raka’ then they would run up and make rukoo and pray the last raka’. Every two raka’. They loved ping-pong.

But one day the Sheikh broke his wudu (ablution). He went back there and… We had to tell him, “Sheikh, we have child abuse laws in America. You’re not back home, Sheikh.”

Take your kids to the masjid. Take your wife to the masjid! Spend the evening together. Go pray Isha together, alhamdullilah. Go as a family. Go to the masjid because you have to have that connection, brothers. You’ve got to have that connection with Allah, because what’s going to carry you through corporate America is not your talents. That’s a side issue. Allah has blessed all of you, many of you have gone to Cornell University or MIT masha’Allah, but if you don’t have that relationship with Allah it doesn’t mean anything. It’s not going to take you anywhere. It won’t take you anywhere. So the third point is to have a strong relationship with your community.

Between Cisco and Sujud: Earning Your Livelihood, Taking Benefit from the Corporate Lifestyle

A Lecture by Suhaib Webb | Transcribed by Fuseina Mohamad

Allah mentions the ruling on seeking a livelihood at the end of Surah Al Jumu`ah, “And when the prayer has been concluded, disperse within the land and seek from the bounty of Allah, and remember Allah often that you may succeed.” (Qur’an, 62:10) After you have finished the prayer, go search out the fadl (blessings) of Allah. Here this means work, as in a livelihood. The ulema (scholars) said that seeking a livelihood could have the following rulings:

1. Waajib (obligatory) for somebody who  has to, fulfill the basic needs of life
2. Recommended for someone who is not sure about his livelihood: does he have enough to make ends meet? It may be that seeking another job is recommended.
3. Makrooh (discouraged); if the person doubts that what he or she is doing is halal (permissible) or haraam (forbidden)
4. Haram (forbidden); if somebody seeks a livelihood from the forbidden things which Allah and His Messenger salla Allahu `alayhi wa sallam (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) prohibited or it is earned in a way that harms others.

But the general ruling on seeking a livelihood is ibaha (permissibility) or waajib. For someone who has to seek a livelihood to fulfill the basic needs of life, this is an obligation on the person.

The Proof for this is the statement of Allah,

“And it is He who created every thing upon the earth for you.”

Umar (radi Allahu `anhu – may Allah be pleased with him) one day came into the masjid of the Prophet (s) and found two young people, young men. They were sitting in the masjid of the Prophet (s). He asked them, “What do you do?”

They said, “We are from those people who worship Allah.”

Umar (r) said to them, “No, where do you work?”

They said to him, “We don’t work. We’re just righteous people who just make dhikr (remembrance) of Allah. We’re alhamdullilah (all praise is due to Allah) those people whom Allah chose to be close to Him.”

Then Umar said to them, “Wait one minute.” If Umar says to you “wait one minute” that means duck and cover. He came back with a stick and he began to hit them and he said, “Go work somewhere. Go find a job.”

So sometimes we find in our Islamic discourse, especially after the age of the righteous generations, when there was a mixture of foreign philosophies with some Islamic theology, that there is the understanding that being a successful person or being someone who works hard to be successful is something that we should be ashamed of. It is not something that we should be proud of – something that we recognize as a blessing from Allah. But Allah says rizq (provisions) al fadl (blessings). In Surah Al Jumu`ah He calls provisions fadl min Allah: “Seek from the blessings of Allah” (62:10), meaning wealth and provisions are from His blessings.

The Prophet (s) said in a sound hadith to Hakeem ibn Hizaam ibn Khuwaylid, “Hakeem, the upper hand is better than the lower hand.” We look at the Companions of the Prophet (s). What made them unique people is that they were successful. Many of them were successful in this life and successful with Allah. So, for example, if you take the ten who were promised paradise by the Prophet (s) and implant them in today’s society they would be on Forbes’ list of the 50 richest people. They were successful people, and because they were successful people they were able to help the Prophet (s) more than anyone else.

The best example is Abu Bakr (r) because his property and his money gave him transcendence, so he was able to free the slaves, he was able to give charity, and he was able to donate to the battles of the Prophet (s). In fact, the day after he became khalifa (caliph), Umar (r) saw him walking to work.

Umar said, “O Abu Bakr, where are you going?”

He said, “I have to work.”

Umar said, “You are the khalifa of the Muslims. How are you going to work? You’re going to be busy.”

Abu Bakr said, “I have to have a livelihood.” And this is how the salary of the khalifa was initiated because Abu Bakr still wanted to work.

Abdul Rahman ibn Awf (s), one of the ten promised paradise by the Prophet (s), when he migrated to Medina, as related by Imam Al Bukhari in his collection, came and gave salaams to the Prophet (s) after he arrived in Medina. The Prophet (s) said to him, “Where are you going?”

Abdul Rahman (r) said, “I’m going to the markets.” Why? To get busy, to develop some type of sustainable income for himself. The Prophet (s) did not rebuke him. The Prophet (s) did not refute or rebuke him for going to the markets because he knew that Abdul Rahman ibn Awf wanted to get married to an Ansari woman and needed to settle his affairs so we gather from this that that working and making an income is permissible.

Even those people who made hijrah (migrated) to Medina, we see in the Quran and also in the hadith of the Prophet (s) that there was some effort to help of them financially with their hijrah when they arrived in Medina, such that the Ansari who was helping Abdul Rahman ibn Awf said to him, “I will give you one of my houses.” They didn’t go without any type of economic promise or hope of economic benefits, although they struggled.

One of the reasons that we look at the companions of the Prophet (s), is because they represent the balanced model that we need today. There is the story of the Imam who played soccer and was fired from his position of Imam. So he asked his community why. They said because holy men cannot play soccer.

What kind of understanding do these people have about Islam? Subhan’Allah (glory be to Allah), it’s a very strange understanding of Islam. So his job is to eat biryani and mansaf, and die before he’s thirty-six because he doesn’t exercise? Then we say rahimahu Allah, kana rajulan salihan wa lakinahu kana yakul biryani kathira (may Allah have mercy on him, he was a good man). When he dies we say, “Oh he was a pious man but he ate a lot, masha’Allah.”

Maybe we think that the Prophet (s) encouraged poverty when he said “Allahuma ahyini miskeenan, O Allah resurrect me poor.” This du`a’ (supplication) is sometimes used by people to say that the Prophet (s) discouraged people from seeking a livelihood. But as the  Sh. Tahar Rayan taught us, what the Prophet (s) means here is “Resurrect me muftaqiran ilayk (reliant on You).” Resurrect me so that when I am resurrected the only reliance I have is on You. We have the term miskeen which is literally somebody who does not have any property and so on and so forth. But also we have the term miskeen for the one who relies on Allah, trusts in Allah alone, and this is the one the Prophet (s) meant.

What other proofs for this to do we have? The statement of the Prophet (s) when he said the best property is the property of the righteous person. And we have his companion Abu Talha Zaid ibn Sahal when he gave his garden for the sake of Allah. Allah said you will not attain bir (righteousness) until you give from what you love (3:92). Abu Talha said, “I love this garden,” so he gave it fi sabil Allah (for the sake of Allah).

Anas ibn Malik, the narrator of this hadith in al-Muwatta, says this was from the most beloved of Abu Talha’s property. So Imam al Baji al Maaliki, the great scholar, in al Muntaqa he says that it is acceptable for someone to love his property, though there are conditions for that love.  He described one of the greatest companions of the Prophet (s) Abu Talha saying that the most beloved thing to him from his property was the garden, and this wasn’t to debase himself but this was to state the reality of that person.

Aisha bint Abu Bakr (radi Allahu `anha – may Allah be pleased with her) used to love to wear under her jilbaba red saffron colored dress. She used to like this color because it was a beautiful color. Sometimes we think that the companions of the Prophet were walking around in rags because they wanted to. No, the poverty of the Prophet (s) and the poverty of his companions was due to circumstance, not choice.

Imam Abdul Rahman ibn Al Jawzi al Hanbali had a very strong, very sharp tongue. He said, “Those extreme people if they knew that the Prophet loved to wear the Yemeni dress (which is a very comfortable type of dress) and he loved nice perfume and he loved sweetmeat, if they knew this they would apostate and leave Islam.” He said because they made Islam so difficult they would not be able to fathom how the Prophet lived his life very simply.

As ibn Qayim mentions in Zad al Ma’ad—a four volume masterpiece about the Prophet—he said the Prophet (s) was very simple. Whatever somebody gave him, he would wear it as long as it was not something forbidden by Allah.

Among the great students of the companions of the Prophet (s) some of them were poor because of circumstance and some of them were rich. A good example is the grandfather and the father of Imam Maalik. They were people who had good wealth. Imam Maalik used to wear the clothes of a king when he related hadith. He would send his servants to the people and they would ask them, “Do you want to learnhadith or Islamic law?” They would say to him or her, “We want to learn Islamic law.” Then Imam Maalik would come out immediately. But if they said, “We want to learn from the hadith of the Prophet,” Imam Maalik would go makeghusl, put on ‘ud (incense), put on the best clothes he had, then come and teach hadith.

People actually used to chastise him. Some ascetic people wrote him letters and they said to him, “Why are you dressed like that? Why do you look nice? You should be more pious, you should be like this…”

And his response is interesting. He said, “What you are doing is khayr (good) and what I am doing is khayr(good). Khalas (finished), leave me alone.”

Many of us know Imam Abu Hanifa as a teacher and a faqih (expert in Islamic jurisprudence) who used to relate hadith on behalf of the Prophet. But if you wanted to buy silk in the city of Abu Hanifa the best place to buy silk was his shop that he ran with his brother. So even though he was an Imam he still had his business; he still made money to be sufficient.

Imam Ahmed ibn Hanbal once was asked, “If somebody has a hundred thousand dinar can he be from the people of zuhud, can he be a pious person?”

Imam Ahmed, who was the strictest of the four as far as being a person of zuhud (asceticism), said yes as long as the person doesn’t put love for that money in his heart. And this is a strict person.

Imam Ahmed also noted that the qualties of a mufit are five; one of them is that he should earn enough to keep himself self sufficient.

al-Shaf’i used to say, “If I’m busy with the basal (onions), I cannot think about the masail (issues at hand).”

Imam Abu Hamad al Ghazaali, who died 505 after hijri, many times people see him as the archetype of the ascetic personality. But once he lamented, “Ya salaam! (O peace!) There are some people, they made everything haraam and everything difficult on the people until the only thing that you can find halal to eat, if you follow the opinion of these people, is the grass on the ground.” And then he chastised them. He said, “What is wrong with these people? Why did they make the religion this way?”

So the question is what is zuhud? What does it mean to be a person who is a zaahid? And how can we gain this understanding of az-zaahid? Is it a condition related to the physical or to the internal?

As with most of the scholars, ibn Qayim mentioned, in Madarij al Salikin and others, zuhud doesn’t necessarily have to do with how much you have, but zuhud deals with how you handle what you have. Being in corporate America and working in corporate America has nothing to do with your piety. It has nothing to do with your piety. The Prophet (s) said that taqwa (piety) is here, pointing to his heart.

Some people came to me and they said, “Oh you are much more pious than us.”

I said, “Why?”

“Because you sit in the office all day and you read books, and you don’t go out, and you don’t mix with this and that. Masha’Allah.”

I said, “That’s not piety, man, that’s luck. That’s qadr (Allah’s decree).”

But the scholars used to say something interesting about Umar ibn Abdul Aziz. They said that they respect Umar ibn Abdul Aziz more because he had the propensity to do wrong and he did not do it. He had the chance to do wrong and he did not do it. That’s why Umar ibn Abdul Aziz is respected more than others. Those zuhadaa, those people who used to sit in their offices away from the people, they said, “By Allah we respect Umar more then we respect ourselves.” Why? Because he had temptations in front of him and he controlled himself and left the evil things for the sake of Allah.

Another point is where did the Prophet’s companions settle after the time of Umar (r)? Umar kept them in Medina, but after the time of Umar (r), the majority of the companions of the Prophet went where? To the caves? To the mountains? They went to the major urban centers of the world: Kufa (Iraq), Basra (Iraq), Sham (Syria), Masr (Egypt). They went all over the world to the major cities, except for a few of them, and they engaged the people. That’s how Islam spread. And when they went to those places were Muslims the majority or the minority? Nobody ever thinks about this. Islam was still a minority, but they functioned within the society, brought benefit to the society, and by them, the Companions of the Prophet, Islam spread. By dealing with the people. By engaging the people.

And that’s why when Umar was asked who is the best person: the one who flees from the people or the one who mixes with the people, he said the one who mixes with the people. He said the one who mixes with the people are those Allah has tested.

So my point is, sometimes I notice that people feel an inferiority complex because they are in a professional field. Wallahi (by Allah) you should not feel this way. Your example, all of you, is like those Yemenis who went to Malaysia. How did they spread Islam in Malaysia? It was through business. Through dealing with the people, engaging with the people. We are not going to spread Islam through an Imam who sits in an office. Islam is not going to be presented to the people in America if a reporter comes to one of our religious leaders in the community and interviews him on TV and he says, “Islam means peace. Muslims are good people. We don’t do anything wrong, we’re a constitutional religion,” and so on and so forth, and they have no one to talk to or to see. So, by Allah, to some degree I envy you, because you’re able to interact with the people.