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Heaven's Celebrities are Often Unknown on Earth | Daily Reminders
Fame is not a ladder to the Creator. It can actually be the greatest testimony against a person in the Hereafter. Sh. Omar Suleiman reflects on what makes us great and what defines greatness.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuhu. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen. Wa ala adwanina ala al-alameen wa ala al-aqibatu ila al-muttaqeen. Allahumma salli wa sallim wa baraka wa abdika wa rasulika Muhammadin. Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Taseena katheera. So if you read what I'd written just a while ago, I wrote about beautiful uncle, Uncle AJ, as we called him, Abdul Jabbar, who passed away in New Orleans. May Allah have mercy on him and due to the COVID-19, so we ask Allah that there be shahada for him. A man who deeply loved the masjid, who, you know, who saw his jannah the day of his death. He actually saw his paradise and was telling his family, you know, complete wellness that, you know, I want to go to my jannah. I've seen it now. It's beautiful. So make sure that you're preparing my burial for tomorrow. And, you know, I was just thinking about this that how many Uncle Abdul Jabbar's are there? Now, I've not met many in my life. But the idea that, you know, you write about him online and a whole bunch of people suddenly are pressing share and saying may Allah have mercy on him and ameen and all these different things. And I was just thinking about this idea for a moment because I think it's very important that we take a step back and we reflect in this world that tells you to be all that you can be and tells you to aspire for greatness, which is a good message, but greatness is so often conflated with fame. You take hadiths like the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam talking about Allah informing Jibreel alayhis salam, Gabriel and the angels to love a person and they love that person and we equate that unfortunately sometimes to the number of followers that a person has online or the number of likes that a person has online.
And I can tell you very personally that I can't tell you how many times there has been someone in front of me that asked me to pray for them that I was certain was way better than anything I ever have amounted to be myself. And I'm not saying that from a place of humility. I'm saying that from a place of recognition that there are people that have come up to me and said make dua for me and I'm thinking to myself, you make dua for me, your dua is probably a lot better than my dua, but the idea is no, he's well-known and so because he's well-known, his dua must be closer to Allah and you need to remember that fame is not a ladder to the Creator. In fact, fame can be the greatest testimony against the person on the Day of Judgment. Legacy is not just this whole thing about your metrics online or who knows you and who knows about you. Some of the greatest people to ever walk the face of this Earth entered and left this Earth with very little fanfare. Some of the greatest people to ever walk the face of this Earth, some of the most beloved people to Allah that ever walked the face of this Earth had a handful of people at their funeral, had no tributes done for them, had no memorials, had no eulogies, had nothing written about them after their death. They came to this world and they left this world in good favor, in good standing with their Creator and they went to their Jannah, they went to what Allah has prepared them of the preview of Jannah in their graves with very little fanfare. And I want to speak to this concept for a moment. When the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam, when the Prophet peace be upon him went through the heavens with Gabriel alayhi salam and he met the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam, he smelled the scent, a very beautiful scent, and he asked what is that beautiful scent that I'm smelling, O Gabriel, and it wasn't the scent of Jesus peace be upon him.
It wasn't the scent of Moses peace be upon him. It wasn't the scent of Ibrahim alayhi salam peace be upon him. It was the scent of the hairdresser of the daughter of Pharaoh, the hairdresser of the daughter of the Pharaoh, subhanAllah, who no one would have known about, the hairdresser of the daughter of the Pharaoh, who while she was combing the hair of the daughter of Firaun, she dropped the comb and she said Bismillah in the name of God, in the name of Allah, the one God. And the daughter of the Pharaoh said, you mean my father God? And she said, no, I mean God, the Lord of your father and the Lord of you and the Lord of me and the Lord of the world. And she was crucified and executed, punished horribly for believing in Allah, for testifying to that oneness of Allah. And she entered into this world and she left this world relatively unknown. But how amazing that it was her scent, her perfume, that the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam smelled in the heavens on that night, right? How honored and noble she was. There are many ahadith and many narrations that speak to this reality of people that came into this world and that left this world quietly. The most blessed people being those that enter into a gathering and leave the gathering without ever saying anything. They're quiet, they don't abstain and they don't involve themselves in any gossip or backbiting. They don't harm anybody. They tread this earth lightly. And as they tread this earth ever so lightly, their presence is ever so subtle in every gathering that they're in. And there's a hadith where the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam actually spoke to this reality. He was sitting with his companions and he wanted to make this point. And two men walked by. The first man walked by and the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam said, What do you say about this man? They said, Oh messenger of Allah, he's a noble man.
If he was to request anyone's hand in marriage, then certainly they would marry him. And if he was to intercede on behalf of anyone, then certainly his intercession would be accepted. And if he speaks, he should be listened to. And then another man walked by and the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam said, What do you say about this man? And they said, Oh messenger of Allah, this is a man that is poor. If he proposes marriage, no one will accept his proposal. If he intercedes on behalf of anyone, his intercession is meaningless. And if he speaks, he doesn't deserve to be listened to. And the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam said, لهاذا خير من ملء الأرض مثل هذا But this man is better than an earth full of the other man. This man who is unknown, who is poor, who doesn't have much weight in this world, who doesn't have much status in this world, is better than an earth full. Think about the entire earth's population. The world's population and this man does not equal the status of this man in the sight of God. This man is special. And there are people that walk the face of this earth that are very special. They don't have Facebook followings. They don't have Instagram accounts. They're quiet people. They're humble people. They tread lightly. Their good work is largely unseen and behind the scenes. They do things seeking the pleasure of their Lord. They speak only when they really have to. And the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam said, إِنَّ اللَّهُ يُحِبُّ الْعَبْدُ التَّقِيِّ الْخَفِيِّ الْغَنِيِّ That verily Allah loves a person, his servant, who is taqee, who is fearful or God-conscious, meaning they abstain from sin. غني, they are self-sufficient. So they abstain from asking others. They're happy with what they have. They don't have much, but they're happy with what they have. خفي, and they abstain from prominence.
They abstain from places of celebrity, places of prestige, places of the spotlight. They just like to stay in the background. Okay? And so these three things speak to abstinence. Okay? Taqwa, they abstain from sin. غنى, they abstain from asking others. And خفي means they abstain from being the center of attention. And the center of attention doesn't necessarily mean being online and doing whatever it is that you possibly can do to attract attention to yourself. Center of attention can be a person sitting in a living room in someone's home and saying, you know, I'm gonna be the one that's gonna kind of abstain in this gathering. And we shame that sometimes, right? We look down upon that. And there's so many hadith that come to mind, and I don't want to prolong or belabor the point. But you know, the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam saw one person that was admonishing his brother and saying to him, you know, you're too shy, and he was going off on him for being too shy. And the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said, do not ever belittle a person for being too shy. It's okay to be shy. It's okay. It's okay for that person to maintain that silence and that modesty. Now, how do we balance these ahadith with the ahadith that talk about, for example, there is no envy except in the case of a person who Allah has given knowledge and they spread it, or a person who's been given wealth and they spend it. How do we balance those ahadith that seemingly praise not prominence, but a person who uses their prominence for good with these ahadith that seem to praise obscurity? The answer to that is twofold. Number one, the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam never praises prominence for the sake of prominence. Fame is not a virtue. Fame is not a virtue in Islam. Being well-known is not a virtue in Islam. Okay? The good that you do with being well-known is what the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam praised. So if you have a platform, if you have prominence, if you are the center of attention in whatever capacity that you are, if you are someone who's very public and extroverted, it's not that part that's going to be praised. It's going to be what you do with it.
Likewise, when a person is quiet and to themselves, it's not the obscurity itself that's praiseworthy. It's the purpose and the focus that that person has. What drives them to be that way, right? It's just that they want to come into this world and leave this world like a wayfarer, a traveler, a stranger, to someone who walks by, who's making a pit stop, not trying to be celebrated. I just want to come in, do what I need to do to get home, and home is Jannah. That's it. I just want to get to Jannah. So that's the first thing. It's not the prominence that the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam ever praised. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam praised people who use positions of wealth or positions of power for good. It's the good that's being praised. And the fact that that person, you know, may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make us sincere, whether we're in a place of prominence or obscurity, the fact that that person did not let a spiritual disease develop out of that prominence. Okay, so prominence bears its own diseases. And by the way, obscurity can bear its diseases too. How? A person could be obscure and not be the center of attention, and they develop hasad, they develop envy, and they'll be punished for that, right? That envy is a spiritual disease. And a person could develop a complex of arrogance and pride in a place of prominence, and they'll be held accountable for that, right? It's what you do with these things. And there are so many people that come into this world and leave this world, like our uncle Abdul-Jabbar rahimahullah ta'ala, who would not have been known to the vast majority of you, except to those that knew him personally, that just come in and leave this world so quiet. And we ask Allah that Jannah is their final abode, and that our final abode is Jannah as well. Allahumma ameen. So again, the message is, you know, when Allah gives you a place, whether that place is a place of prominence or a place of privacy, whether you are known by a million people or known by 10 people,
make sure that your purpose is to first and foremost do what you have to do to get home, which is Jannah. Number two, that with whatever you've been given, whatever is around you, that you're touching it in a way that's positive, in a way that brings that back to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as well. We focus too much, too much. There are so many people that are killing themselves to get those likes and to get those follows and to get that validation, that approval online or from public places. Find it in yourself the way that those special people find it in themselves. All of us can learn from that, whether we're known or unknown. All of us can learn from that focus and that person that's driven to just do right by what they have and to please Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and to meet Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala free from anything that would disqualify them from getting home, from getting to Jannah. So we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to have mercy on our brother, Abd al-Jabbar rahimahullah ta'ala, who loved the masjid, who loved the houses of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Those of us that know him testify that he was a man who would not harm people, who would come to the masjid, who loved the houses of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, who humbled himself, who remained silent. We ask Allah to celebrate him in the heavens. And we ask Allah for all of those uncles and aunties, simple people. And I don't say uncles and aunties in a derogatory fashion. All of those sweet people that often get pushed aside, that often are neglected, that are often not looked at in a way that honors them. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that he accept all of them, that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala be pleased with all of them. We ask Allah that for all of those people that enter this world and leave this world with very little fanfare but maintain righteousness, we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to celebrate them in the heavens. And we ask Allah to not deprive us of that reward. We ask Allah to never allow us to be amongst those that are distracted
by the allure of this world in whatever fashion that is, whether it's prominence or wealth or power. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to protect us from those things that distract us from that ultimate purpose of pleasing him. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to make us better than what people assume of us and to allow us to be amongst those that assume good of those around us as well. And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to forgive us for our shortcomings and to forgive our brothers and sisters past, present and future for their shortcomings and their sins as well. And to gather all of us in a place of prominence under his shade on the day of judgments and a place of prominence in paradise around his Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam in Jannatul Firdaus. Allahumma ameen. Jazakumullah khair. Wa salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
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