دنیا کی طلب مومن کی شان نہیں

Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) reported: One day I came to the Messenger of Allah ص and found him lying on a mat of date-palm leaves. There was nothing between his blessed body and the mat, so the mat had left marks on his blessed side (on the skin). The pillow beneath his blessed head was of leather stuffed with date-palm fibre. Seeing him in this state I said, “O Messenger of Allah, why do you not pray to Allah to grant your Ummah wealth and ease? See how much wealth and ease has been given to the people of Persia and Rome, though they do not worship Allah.” The Messenger of Allah ص said: “O son of Khattab, what are you saying? Are you still where you began — has your way of thinking not advanced in all this time, that you might reach the truth? Remember, these (the people of Persia and Rome and all the disbelievers) are those who have been given all bounties and good things only in their worldly life, while in the everlasting life — the Hereafter — they will have nothing but poverty, humiliation and loss.”

In the Noble Qur’an and the blessed hadiths the world is disparaged and censured again and again, and it is shown how paltry and worthless this world is in the sight of Allah and in comparison with the Hereafter. Today people’s attachment to and absorption in the world has exceeded all bounds, and the matter of purely worldly and material progress has been given such importance as it has perhaps never held before. So now the disparagement of the world does not readily sink into the hearts of even many Muslims; indeed, it has reached the point that some who are regarded as leaders and reformers of the Muslims — and who, in religious terms, are counted among the elite rather than the masses — glibly dismiss any mention of the world’s impermanence and worthlessness as the preaching of “monasticism and false Sufism.”

Since the Qur’an is Allah’s final book of guidance for the people of the earth, it clarifies with still greater force and emphasis, under various headings, the worthlessness and impermanence of the world and the importance of the Hereafter. In one place Allah says:

“(O Prophet,) tell these people that the enjoyment of this world is little, and the Hereafter is better for the God-fearing.” (an-Nisa: 77)

Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) made his request for a prayer for wealth and ease for the Ummah because, when he saw the Messenger of Allah ص living so austerely in chosen poverty and keeping himself in such a state, he thought that if the whole Ummah too remained in such poverty and faced the hardships of economic life, then those of the Ummah who were not firm in creed and temperament would not be able to bear so hard a life and would fall into unbearable difficulties; so he judged it fitting for such people that they be granted wealth and ease.

At Umar al-Faruq’s request the Messenger of Allah ص set his mind at rest by replying that this world, which in comparison with the Hereafter is in truth nothing — and in which those disbelievers will have no share in the Hereafter but will live an eternally loss-making life — are you not content that these people of Persia and Rome and the other disbelievers should have the world, while we have the Hereafter, which endures forever with all its bounties?

Come, let us all together obey Allah and His Messenger ص and, heeding his word, do without delay whatever good we are to do in this brief worldly life, for none knows when the call of death may come.

Life says: heedless one, I am the chapter of annihilation;
I am the plectrum that strikes the lute of sorrow.
I keep [you] far from well-being, near to calamity;
I am the shadow of a scattered cloud, a troubled dream.