Why Does Allah Give Us Hardships? | Khutbah by Nouman Ali Khan | Brisbane, Australia

The Crisis of Fir'aun

I'm gonna give Allah, I'm gonna pray five times, I'm gonna get a promotion tonight at my job. I'm gonna go do hajj, my business is gonna triple. That's not the formula in this religion.

They need to see results right now, otherwise they say, where is your Allah? The master of Musa is more powerful than all of the best resources of Egypt put together. This is a crisis, this is a media crisis for Fir'aun. Allah says, maybe one day I'll make you in charge.

I'll give you control, I'll give you power, I'll put people under you that you can oppress if you want, or you can be good to them if you want, you can do justice or you can do injustice. I'll give you that power, let's see how you do.

And this is Musa's very scary way of telling them, maybe if you have power, you might become Fir'aun yourself.

Two Nations as Models

As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. There are two nations in the Qur'an that Allah talks about in ways that are different from other nations.

Allah talks about Bani Israel in a lot of detail, and Allah gives them more chances than any other nation. In the same way, Allah talks about the people of Fir'aun very differently than any other nation. So you find, for example, that entire nations were drowned or annihilated and eliminated from the face of the earth when they rebelled against their messengers.

And none of them survived. There was no trace of them except for ruins. And you go to those ruins to take عبرة (lessons).

But the Egyptians, the Fir'auna, the group of them that disbelieved and the leadership of them and their military, they were destroyed. But Egypt as a nation was not destroyed. Egypt as a nation survived, actually continued. It's still around today. And they are descendants of the original ancient Egyptians. They're not some new people that came there.

Bani Israel, similarly, survived many, many catastrophes throughout history. These two nations, Allah has given us a blueprint actually through them to learn about the life cycles of nations and the corruptions of nations. Because the age of the end of nations where entire nations will be wiped off of the face of the earth, that age is over.

And it's especially over after the coming of Rasulullah ﷺ. So the rest of the nations of the world have to learn lessons about the ups and downs that they will go through as a people. And the two models that Allah has given us is the model of the people of Egypt, the Qawm Fir'aun. And then the other model is Bani Israel.

And interestingly, they're both very deeply related to each other. Their stories are intertwined and connected with each other. Today, in these few minutes in this khutbah, I want to share with you some reflections from ayat that belong to Surah Al-A'raf.

The Defeat of the Magicians

And in these ayat, Allah is describing a particular moment in the history of Egypt and in the history of Bani Israel together. Musa has defeated the magicians. The magicians and the priests have become Muslim publicly.

And they announced:

"We believe in the master of all nations, the master of Musa and Harun." So they made a public declaration of their Islam. And as a result, the society is now in chaos.

They're in chaos because all this time, Fir'aun was spending an enormous amount of wealth and resources to make sure that people will be influenced by the magicians. He was telling them, the saviors of our nation are the magicians. And the threat to our nation is Musa.

That was the message. And so the entire nation was forced together. They were forced together to watch this showdown, this spectacle between Musa and these magicians.

But now that it's over, and the magicians themselves, not only did they lose, they switched sides. They became followers of Musa. So imagine you spend millions and millions and millions on this campaign to turn everyone against Musa, and the people you spent it on, they become the biggest advertisers for your enemy. On the stage that you gave them.

You paid for the stage. You paid for the event. You brought the audience.

Musa could never gather as many people to deliver his message in one place ever. He did not have the funds, the resources, or even the police to force people to come and join. But he did, you know, Fir'aun did.

So Fir'aun basically paid for the biggest Islamic convention in the history of Egypt at the showdown. The biggest da'wah event that ever happened. So now that this has happened in front of him, he's watching this happen. He has to figure out a way to undo this damage.

The Power of Narrative

This is, you know, people that are in power, they don't just have power in the military or power in money. A very important part of power is invisible. It's the power of influence. It's the power of your story, your message. It's the power of ideology and propaganda. It's the power of media. It's a very important kind of power.

So it's not enough that the government has money, that the government has soldiers and guns and tanks and all of that stuff. It's very important that they also control the narrative and how people think. They have to control the news. They have to control thought.

They have to make sure nobody questions their version of events. They have to spin. And this is a huge part of remaining in power.

If your story breaks down, if your story is no longer believable, if your version, your propaganda is failing, then the people will no longer fear your other powers. Your money will not be as effective. Your military will not be as powerful as it once seemed.

Because actually the real power, before the military and the money, the real power is actually the power over the minds of people, the hearts of people. This is why the Qur'an describes that one of the ways that Fir'aun maintained his power is:

He made his people feel light. He made his people light. That's why they followed him, Allah says. What does that mean, he made them light? He made them feel like, look, you don't have to do the thinking. I'm doing all the thinking for you.

I'm telling you what's true. I'm telling you what's wrong. You just have to follow me. And you are so weak. And you are so helpless. And you need someone strong to guide you. I'm the source of strength. So you can be light. You don't have to do any thinking for yourself.

You don't have to make any decisions. Trust me, I got this. So he positions himself in a position of power. And keeps convincing people that they are too weak to do what he does. They are not strong enough. They are not wise enough. They are not powerful enough. In fact, they are not even holy enough. He described himself as God himself, as a God.

So you don't have to do that. I'll do that for you. And this is one of the ways you can think about this. He made sure that his public is stupid. He makes sure that the public doesn't think too much. And that's also خفيف. خفيف is someone who doesn't think too much. They just follow.

The easiest way to create an extremist in any direction, is to make sure they don't think too much. It's the easiest way to do it. And so he creates an entire narrative in which, you make sure that people don't think for themselves.

But in front of all of this audience, now that the magicians have accepted Islam, and said, the Rabb of Musa is the one to be followed. This is a huge problem, because the magicians didn't even say, Musa won, follow Musa. No, no, no.

They're not even talking about Musa. They're talking about the Rabb of Musa. They're talking about the religion of Musa. The world view.

If you just say Musa won, maybe your politics haven't changed. Maybe your world view hasn't changed. Maybe the way you understand reality hasn't changed. But if you say, the Rabb of Musa has won. You know, in the ancient world, this is an important thing, a subtle thing to understand.

The Ancient Religious Worldview

In the ancient world, most religions were based on shirk, multiple gods. And some people follow this god, some people follow that god, and sometimes you have a problem with this guy, and you say, I'm gonna tell my god to come after you. And he says, oh yeah, I'll tell my god to defend me, so the two gods will go to war with each other.

And so whoever's gods wins is the higher god. So when one nation is more powerful, that just means their gods are more powerful. And when one nation is losing, their gods are weaker. This was the mentality put into the minds of the people for thousands of years.

When they see Musa win, and the magician say, we surrender to the god of Musa. What message is ascending to all of these people? The master of Musa is more powerful than all of the best resources of Egypt put together. This is a crisis. This is a media crisis for Fir'aun. This is an extreme situation. He doesn't know what to do.

So what does he do? He issues an executive order.

He must be the biggest magician of all of you. I'm gonna punish all of you. I'm gonna have all of you killed.

I won't go too far into that story, but he ordered that the magicians be executed. Now this is a huge problem. Because they weren't just magicians, they were also priests. You can think of it like pandits, or priests, or imams, or rabbis, the religious leaders of different cities.

He called all of the biggest... Because the magicians and the religious leaders were one person. And he calls all of them, they all accept Islam, he gets all of them killed. And everybody in the whole country is thinking, oh my God, they killed our priest? They killed our holy man from our town? First they called him over to the capital, then they killed... Fir'aun killed him?

And now everybody is starting to question Fir'aun even more. Because everything is falling apart. Their entire religion was based on their religious leaders. And he basically killed his own religious leaders. Because they all accepted Islam. He killed all of them.

So now what's left? What are people supposed to believe? You see the story, the world view, the propaganda that was spread across Egypt was spread through the priests. It was spread through them. You just destroyed your own influencers. You killed your own social media. Yourself. Yourself.

Now what are you supposed to do? Now you have to figure out how are you going to explain to the people that I killed my own people, my own religious leaders. How am I going to explain this to them? And so he comes up with a new plan.

He says, no, no, no, it's not. I had to kill them because they were infected basically. They got infected. And they got infected from Musa. And so the only solution is we have to end this infection.

We're going to kill all of their sons and let their women live. Because this generation of men and boys, they are too close to being infected with the same virus. So we need to end that population. We'll start over and make sure the women stay alive because we're going to need new slaves in the next generation.

وَنَسْتَحْيِي نِسَاءَهُمْ — This was the policy that they came out with. And once they came out with this policy, I want to quickly take you in these last 10 minutes to the other side. This is Fir'aun trying to say, no, no, no. I was trying to save our country. And the real problem is these immigrants. We need to solve this problem because they're infecting the rest of us. So we need to kill all of these men. This is our solution.

Musa's Speech to Bani Israel

When he does this, on the other side is Musa and his followers. The Muslims of that time. We call them Bani Israel but really they are the Muslims of that time. And many of them were living for generations as slaves under Fir'aun. They didn't just become slaves at that time. They were slaves for many, many generations.

And the elders among them are really worried because they are used to seeing their father be a slave, their grandfather be a slave. Life is bad but it's basically been the same life for a long time. All of a sudden Musa comes along and some of the younger people are starting to follow him. This is creating a new problem. This is creating a disturbance. He's gonna get all of us killed.

So some of the elders got worried that the youth are too crazy. And Musa is too extreme. They shouldn't be following Musa. Musa said, look, they're going to issue more extreme. They're gonna try to kill all of us now. What should we do?

Musa gives a speech and that's the speech I'll read to you from Surah Al-A'raf. Musa says:

He says to his people, hold on to Allah. Stay strong. Stay with grit. Persevere. Don't change your religion. Don't run away from this deen. Now that you've understood this deen, don't walk away from it.

Because there were people inside Bani Israel who were not loyal to Musa. They were loyal to Fir'aun, like Qarun. Like Qarun. So the Muslims were not pure. Some of them were aligned with Musa and some of them were aligned still with Fir'aun.

Musa is telling them, those of you that are aligned with me, with Allah, with Allah's messenger, hold on to your religion. Because actually not only are the outside forces telling you to walk away from me, even from within your families, even from within there are people telling you to walk away from your religion. Don't take it too seriously.

So he says, اسْتَعِينُوا بِاللَّهِ وَاصْبِرُوا.

So he says, the earth belongs to Allah. The land belongs to Allah. He gives it to whoever he wants from among his slaves. Look, he didn't tell them, don't worry, Allah will take the land from Fir'aun and Allah will give you the land. That's not what he said. Don't worry, if you stick with me and stick with Allah, Allah will give you lots of land. And he will kill Fir'aun. That's not what he said.

He said, Allah decides to give this land to whoever he wants from among his slaves. So, sometimes Allah decides to give the land to Fir'aun. Sometimes Allah decides to give the land to, you know, a piece of land to Qarun. Sometimes to Nimrud. When Allah decides, he can give the land to Quraysh. When Allah decides, he can give the land to Banu Nadhir, Banu Quraidah. He can give the land. Allah gives whoever he wants. But then he says:

In the end, the final outcome will only favor people who had taqwa of Allah.

Not a Transactional Religion

Another way of saying this is, Musa is telling them, land, the control over the land, it comes and it goes. Sometimes you will have it, sometimes you won't have it. Sometimes you'll have power, sometimes you won't have power. But taqwa is something you have to have, whether you have power or you don't have power. And in the end, the people who have the land will die, and the people who don't have the land will also die. And they'll all be under the ground, and the only thing that will matter then is taqwa.

وَالْعَاقِبَةُ لِلْمُتَّقِينَ — But the people that were nervous that Fir'aun is coming and things are gonna get worse, the Muslims of the time, that were worried, they responded to Musa, and I want you to listen to this response, very interesting response. They said:

They said, we were being tortured before you ever came. We've been getting beat up for a long time. وَمِن بَعْدِ مَا جِئْتَنَا — And even after you have now arrived, we're still getting beat up. How did you make life any better?

Before you came, we were slaves. We were getting humiliated and tortured. And after you came, we don't see any difference. In fact, maybe even suggesting, what good did you bring? This is their way of saying, why should we follow you when our lives did not improve because of your message? In fact, our lives became more difficult because of your message.

Because in the old world, before Islam, before Islam in that region, in the world of shirk, the job of a god is to make your life better. You pay the god with sacrifice. You pay the god with a big monument. You pay the god money. You pay the god, you dress his statue in gold. And how does he pay you? He gives you twins. He gives you a cow. He gives you new land. He gives you rain. It's a deal. It's a transaction.

So when you follow a god and you please a god, then that god takes care of you. Musa is not bringing that religion. He's not bringing a religion of transaction. I'm gonna give Allah. I'm gonna pray five times. I'm gonna get a promotion tonight at my job. I'm gonna go do hajj. My business is gonna triple. That's not the formula in this religion. That is not the formula.

We are supposed to turn towards Allah. Allah has given us a world view that Allah will test us in good times and Allah will test us in bad times. Musa just told them, sometimes Allah will give the land to whoever He wants. He didn't say, Oh, He'll only give the land to the muttaqeen. مَن يَشَاءُ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ — مَن يَشَاءُ — Whoever He wants, He gives the land to.

An open statement from Allah. It's not a transactional religion. But these people are saying, when a prophet comes, if you're really from God, if you're really from Allah, life should get better. We don't see life getting better, so why should we follow you? Why should we follow you?

This is in simple language, if you wanna walk away with this, this is a concept of transactional religion. When your religion is a transaction, it's nothing more. Actually our religion is a journey to Allah, filled with good and difficulty. Filled with ease and difficulty. It's not a transaction. The only transaction that will happen truly is a transaction in the Akhirah.

That's the transaction. Should I tell you of a deal that will save you from the final punishment, the great punishment. But they don't see it that way. They need to see results right now, otherwise they say, where is your Allah? Where is He? أُوذِينَا مِن قَبْلِ أَن تَأْتِيَنَا وَمِن بَعْدِ مَا جِئْتَنَا

The Test of Power

Now Musa said, maybe Allah will give you what you want. Maybe. He didn't say Allah guarantees, he said maybe. But look at how Musa responds. He says:

Maybe, there's a possibility Allah will kill your enemy. Allah will kill your enemy. It's possible. And then he says:

And it's also possible that Allah will leave you behind in charge of the land. This is actually what they're asking for. If you came, then our enemy should die, and we should have the land. This would be our duas are answered. We got everything we wanted. Musa doesn't just say that. And that would be, وَذَٰلِكَ هُوَ الْفَتْحُ الْعَظِيمُ — وَالْفَتْحُ الْمُبِينُ — That's not what he says.

He says, maybe Allah will kill your enemy. Maybe Allah will leave you in charge of the land. Then he says:

Then Allah will observe, how do you act? How do you behave?

Fir'aun is in a position of power, and he abuses that power. Fir'aun is in a position of power, he doesn't want to lose that power, and he treats people under his power however he wants. He acts like he's the god of that land. He has that kind of ego.

Allah says, maybe one day I'll make you in charge. I'll give you control. I'll give you power. I'll put people under you that you can oppress if you want, or you can be good to them if you want. You can do justice or you can do injustice. I'll give you that power. Let's see how you do.

And this is Musa's very scary way of telling them, maybe if you have power, you might become Fir'aun yourself. You're complaining about Fir'aun right now because you don't have power. What's going to happen when you have power and you start doing exactly the same thing? You start doing exactly the same thing.

The Lesson for Us

The wisdom in this small conversation that Allah recorded in the Qur'an is very heavy. The believer in a state of weakness is dreaming about power. The believer is dreaming about power, dreaming about relief. And once I have that power, you'll see what I'm going to do. Watch. Once I have that, you'll see.

The one who's poor, the one who's poor is humble, begging Allah. Ya Allah, open the doors of rizq. Ya Allah, open this opportunity. That same person, it's possible, Allah opens the doors of rizq. Makes him, you know, he goes from having 10 cents in his pocket to having hundreds, to thousands, to millions, to billions. He goes big.

And once that same person who was begging Allah with humility, once he gets to that point, he sees poor people on the street. He says, "Why are they in my neighborhood?" He used to be one of them. He used to be one of them. But something changed when he gets to a position of power. He gets drunk on that power and he forgets where he came from. He forgets where this whole thing started.

So Allah is describing to us that our duas need to be guided. If we want freedom, power, control, control over our destiny. Which nation doesn't want control over their own destiny? Which nation wouldn't want power? Which person wouldn't want economic independence? Everyone of us would want that. Everyone of us would want control over our state of affairs.

But if you're going to ask for that, then understand something.

Because you can get those things and lose taqwa. And if you get those things and lose taqwa, you've lost everything anyway. You've lost everything anyway. So it's actually not purely just we want relief, we want victory. We want that when we are in a state of taqwa, ready for that victory. To manage it the way that it should be managed. Otherwise, we're just asking to become the next Fir'aun. That's just what we're asking for.

The Fir'aun Within

I'll leave you with a thought. I know it's over my time. I'll leave you with a quick thought.

Fir'aun was given as a model in the Qur'an to describe the worst thing that can happen to an ego inside every human being. Allah says:

People who are protected from the extreme selfishness they have inside are successful.

Fir'aun let go of his extreme selfishness. He has unleashed it. But all of us have a possible Fir'aun inside us. It's closed up but it's there. And you can release it in doses or you can lock it up. It's up to you.

But if you open it up, even if you don't have pyramids and a sphinx and you don't control the land of Egypt and rivers aren't flowing under your feet, you might be the Fir'aun over a one bedroom apartment. You could be the Fir'aun at a cash register. You could be the Fir'aun of a grocery store. You could be the Fir'aun of an office. You could be the Fir'aun of a classroom. You could be the Fir'aun of a masjid. You could be the Fir'aun of a boardroom.

Fir'auns take many ways. And you don't have to be a man to be Fir'aun. You could be a Fir'aun over your children. You could be a Fir'aun over your husband or your wife.

This drunkenness, this power, if you have an entire country, you'll be an oppressor. If you have 10 square meters, you'll be an oppressor. The size doesn't matter. The problem inside matters. The lack of taqwa is what matters.

And that's why this profound lesson has been shared with us so that we as individuals and we as nations take this wisdom. May Allah elevate our state as individuals and elevate our state as a nation.