ATTACHMENT OF THE WORLD BY BABA ALI MUSTAPHA

ATTACHMENT OF THE WORLD

BY

BABA ALI MUSTAPHA

The world is like a beautiful unchaste woman, who attracts the people towards her by her beauty but she has got sacred diseases which destroy one who goes unto her. If you do good to the world for one hour, it does you harm for one year. If you carry on business with the worldly people, you gain no benefit but loss. He who seek the world faces many dangers and difficulties which cannot be enumerated. Whosoever went it, it flees away from him, and whosoever does not want it, it goes to him.

The World is an Enemy of God:

The cause is that the world cut the ways of divine service. For this reason, God keeps an eye on it since He created it. The world is an enemy of the friends of God. The cause is that it presents itself with its best grandeurs just like an unchaste woman dressed with various beautiful dresses. The world is also an enemy of the enemies of God. The cause is that the world entraps them in its net of love after deceiving them and open its door of love for them. They are deceived by its love and got attached to it. The result is that they are dishonored and disgraced and they go away from it. Their hearts are pierced for its separation and fortune bid them adieu forever. Then there is no limit to their remorse and they therefore seek refuge to God. They have purchased this world in exchange of the next world.

When the harms of the world are many, we should know its snares and charms and then save ourselves from its deceptions and love.

Evils of the World:

There are innumerable verses of the Quran regarding the evils of the world. The goal of the Prophet was to turn away the people from the evils and harms of the world and so there is no necessity of collecting verses from the Quran about it. I shall mention only some Hadis.

1. It has been narrated that the Prophet once passing by a dead goat and said to his companions; don’t you look to the dead animal? Its owner is now looking at it with hate. By One in Whose hand there is my life, just as this dead animal is more an object of hate to its owner, the world is likewise more an object of hatred to God. If the value of the world would have been like the wing of a mosquito. He would not have given a drought of water to an unbeliever to drink.

2. The Prophet said: the world is a prison to a believer and a paradise to an unbeliever.

3. He said; the world is cursed and all the things in it are cursed.

4. He said; He who loves the world injures his hereafter and he who loves to his hereafter injures his world. So take what will last forever by giving up what will not last.

5. He said; love of the world is the root of all sins

6. The Prophet stood by a place full of human bones and said to the people; do you like to look at the world? He then took a rotten cloth and melted bone and said: This is the world. He said that the wealth and pleasures of the world will be ruined like the rotten cloth and all the people will be melted like the bone.

7. The Prophet said: This world is sweet and fresh and God made you His representatives therein. He is looking how you act therein.

8. When the children of Israel were given enormous wealth and when they were enrosed therein, they were attached to the worldly pleasure, love of woman and precious scents and dresses.

9. Jesus Christ said: don’t take the world as your Lord. If you do so, it will make you slaves. Hoard up your wealth with such One who will not destroy it. Guards of wealth of this world cannot be relied on, but you can rely on the Guards of God. He also said: O my disciples, I have levelled the world with earth for you. Don’t take it up after me. One of the evils of the world is that the next world cannot be acquired unless this world is given up. So take care and think that the world has passed away and don’t like therein with happiness. Know that the root of all evils is attachment of the world. Many a time the present greed become the cause’s of man’s calamities.

10. Jesus Christ also said: This world lies behind you and you take seat therein. Therein the Kings and women stand as stumbling blocks against you. Don’t dispute with the kings regarding this world as they will not stand in your way if you give up connection with them and their affairs. Save yourselves from women with fasting and prayers. He also said: The world searches for the people and the people searches for the world. The world searches for one who searches for the next world till his death. Thereafter it catches his neck and climbs up him. He also said: God created nothing so obnoxious than the world. He did not look at it on the day He created it.

11. It has been reported that Hazrat Sulaiman was roaming in air and birds were giving him shade and men and Jinn were on his right and left sides. He met a hermit at Banu Israel on the way and the hermit said to Him: O Son of David, the Almighty God has given you reign and power. At this Sulaiman said: One Tasbih (Praise of God) in the book of deeds of a believer is more superior than my reign, as what has been given to the Son of David will end but Tasbih will remain.

12. The Prophet said: excessive wealth has kept you forgotten. The Son of Adam says: My wealth, my wealth. Have you got any other wealth than what you eaten and ended, what have you put on and got old, what have you given in charity remain lasting.

13. The Prophet said: He who has got not abode takes the world as his abode. He who has got no wisdom make enmity for it. He who has got no power of doing justice, covets it. He who has got no sure faith make effort for it.

14. The Prophet said: He who gets up as dawn with the world as his object of thought is not God-fearing in any matter. God give him four conducts in his mind:

i. such anxiety has got no end

ii. such engagement has no limit

iii. such poverty can never make him rich and

iv. such hope which has got no end.

15. Hazrat Abu Hurairah reported: The Prophet said to me: O Abu Huraira, shall I show you what obnoxious things are there in this world? I said O Prophet of God, show me. Then he caught my hand and took me to a valley of Medina and showed me a place full of carcasses, stools and urine, rotten clothes and bones and hides. He said: O Abu Hurairah, there were in their heads like your greed and hope like your hopes, but today those are with the rotten remains and those will be consumed by earth after some days. All those are of the world. If you can weep at the sad plight of the world, then weep. Then we began to weep.

16. Hazrat Daud bin Hallal reported that it is written in the scripture of Abraham: O World, how ignorable you are to religious men. You have presented yourself to them with your grandeurs, but hatred has been cast at you in their hearts and for that they have turned away from you. There is nothing so obnoxious to me like you. Every act of yours is mean and come to destruction. I have recorded for you on the day I created you that you will not stay with anybody forever and that he who loves you will be miser. Thanks to those pious men who seek Me with pleasure in their hearts, those in which hearts there is truth and who stand on the right path. Happy are they as they will get rewards of what their hands have acquired. When they will come to Me from the graves, light will move forward in front of them and the angels will surround them. They will get mercy as they all hoped from Me.

17. The Prophet said: There will appear such persons on the Resurrection Day whose merits will be high like the hillock of Tahama but they be ordered to go to hell. The companions asked: O Prophet of God, did they say prayers? He replied: Yes, they observed prayers and fastings and prayed also at night but whenever anything of the world come to them, they jumped upon it. The Prophet said in his sermon: A believer will live with two fears. One fear is for his fate which is past and he does not know what was recommended therein. Another fear is to gather sufficient provision for himself, from the world for his next world, from his life for his death, from his youth for his old age because the present world has been created for your good and you have been created for the next world. By One in Whose hand there is my life, there is no field for labour except paradise and Hell and there is no abode after the world.

18. Jesus Christ said: Love of both this world and the next cannot remain united in the heart of a believer just as water and fire cannot remain united. Hazrat Gebriel asked the Prophet Noah: O One having a very long life, how have you found the world? He said: It is like an abode having two doors. I have entered through one door and come out of another.

19. Jesus Christ was asked: Why do you not construct a house to live in? He said: the abode of our predecessors is sufficient. The Prophet said: beware of the world, as it is a sorcerer greater than Harut and Marut.

20. Hazrat Hassan Basri said: once the Prophet come out to his companions and said: Who is one amongst you who does not wish bright eye sight after his blindness? Beware, the more he is attached to the world and the longer is his hopes, the more God make his heart blind, and the more one gives up the world and the more he curtails his hopes, God gave him more wisdom without education and guides him more without guidance. Beware, there will come such a people after you whose kingdom will not be alright without pride and miserliness and who will not love except for passion. Beware, whoever reaches that age and remains patient over poverty even though he can acquire wealth, and remain patient over hatred even though he can earn love and remains patient over dishonor even though he can earn honour and he has got no other object for these things than the pleasure of God, will get reward of fifty truthful men.

21. It has been reported that the Prophet Jesus Christ began to search for refuge having fallen in storm, lighting and thunders, till he found a tent and come to it, but when he found a beautiful woman therein he returned from there. There after he come to a cave wherein there was a tiger. Then he placed his hand upon the ground and said: O Lord, you have given shelter to everything, but not to me. God then revealed to him. Your shelter is God’s mercy. I shall get you married on the Resurrection Day with one hundred Hur (paradise girls) whom I have created with my hands. Your marriage ceremony will continue for four thousand years, and each day of which is equal to the ages of this world. I will order a proclaimer to proclaim: Those who were religious and ascetics will join this marriage ceremony.

22. Jesus Christ said: Alas for one who is addicted to the world. How can he die after leaving the world and its fortunes? How does the world play deception with him and he puts trust in it? The world play treachery with him but he lives out of its fear. What he does not love comes to him, what he loves goes away from him. What has been promised for them must come. Alas for one whose only object of thought is this world and whose actions are sin. How can he appear tomorrow with sins?

23. It has been reported that God revealed to Moses: O Moses, what necessity have you got in the abode of the sinners (world)? It is not your abode. Drive out your thoughts from it and remain aloof on the strength of your wisdom. What a bad house it is! It is a good abode for one who does good therein. O Moses, I am searching for one who commits therein oppression secretly, so that I may take his virtue and give them to one oppressed.

24. It has been reported that the Prophet once sent Hasrat Abu Obaidah to the Province of Bahrain. He went there and returned with enormous wealth from the inhabitants and placed it before the Prophet. The Ansars come to know of it and assemble for morning prayer in the mosque. After the prayer, the Prophet said: you have perhaps heard about the riches brought by Abu Obaidah. Then he said: I don’t fear your poverty, but I fear for your enormous wealth as our previous nations got it. They got enormous wealth and engaged in quarrels with one another. As they were destroyed by this wealth, you will likewise be destroyed by it.

25. The Prophet said: I fear that you will be given the plenties of the world. He was asked: what are the plenties of the world? He said: don’t keep your mind engaged in the thoughts of the world.

26. Jesus Christ said to his disciples: In order to get peace of this world as well as of the next, it is more preferable to eat bread with only salt, to wear gunny bag and to sleep in the stables.

27. Hazrat Anas reported that: the Prophet had a she-camel named Ajwa which defeated all camels. A desert Arab came with a camel which defeated Ajwa. The Muslims were grieved to see this and the Prophet said: it is a way of God that He does not raise up a thing without lowering it.

29. Jesus Christ once said: Who is there who constructs a house in the currents of sea? It is the world. Don’t take it as your permanent abode.

29. Jesus Christ was once asked: Give me such short advice by virtue of which God will love us. He said: Hate the world and God will love you.

30. The Prophet said: if you had known what I know, you would have laughed little and wept much. Hate the world and love the next world.

31. Abu Dard’a said: Had you known what I know from the Prophet, you would have come out of every elevated place and wept for salvation of your soul, given up the riches and treasures of the world except what is essentially necessary for you.

32. Jesus Christ said: O my disciples, be satisfied with little of worldly riches but with greater divine service, as the worldly addicted men remains satisfied with little of divine service but greater worldly riches.

33. Jesus Christ said: it is a greater virtuous act to give up the world for those who search the world for religion.

34. The Prophet of Islam said: The world will be broadened for you after me but it will consume your faith in such a way as fire consumes a dry wood.

35. God sent revelation to Moses: O Moses, don’t be addicted to the world, as you will not come to Me with a greater sin than this.

36. Once Moses passed by a man who was weeping. He found the man in the same condition when he was returning. Then Moses prayed to God: O Lord, your servant is weeping for fear of you. God said: O Son of Imran if his tears flow over his head and he keeps his hand raised up till they fell down, I shall not forgive him as he loves the world.

Illustration of the World

First Illustration: The world is moving towards destruction. The world promise that it is lasting, but it breaks its promise immediately after that look to the world. It is motionless and steady, but is always moving.

Second Illustration: Jesus Christ said: The searcher for the world is like one who drinks water of the sea, the more his thirst will increase and ultimately he will meet with his end.

Third Illustration: The Prophet said: the world is like a torn cloth from its beginning to the end. The end of the cloth is hanging up with a thread which will soon be torn.

Fourth Illustration: Jesus Christ said: The world is like a bridge. Cross it but do not live in it. This is clear illustration as this world’s life is drifting towards the next world. The beginning of the bridge is the birth place and the end is grave. To construct houses on the road and to adorn them is foolishness in the extreme as it shall have to be crossed.

Fifth Illustration: The world is like an ugly old woman. The outer form of the world is one kind and its secret form is another. Its outer form is nice but its inner form is ugly and poisonous. So the world can well be compared to an old and ugly woman.

Sixth Illustration: The world is like a shade. Shade seems to be steady at its outward look, but really it is moving and constantly drifting.

Seventh Illustration: The world is like dream of night and like the different ideas in dream. The Prophet said: The world is like a dream and like happiness and punishment in dream. Eunus bin Obaid said: I found myself like a sleeping man in the world. He sees what he likes and does not like and then he wakes up from sleep in this condition. Similarly, the people are asleep and rise up at death.

Eight Illustration: The Prophet said: The worldly addicted man is like one who walks upon water. Can he walk upon water without getting his feet wet in water? This is a lesson for those who think that their soul is pure though their body is in worldly happiness. Worldly attachment become a stumbling block to getting pleasure of divine services. Jesus Christ said: I tell you with truth, the worldly addicted man does not get pleasure in divine service as a diseased man does not get any taste in delicious foods. I tell you with truth that if you do not hold under control your riding animal, its nature will change and you will have difficulty in riding on it. Similar is the condition of mind. If you cannot keep the mind under control by constant divine services and remembrance of death. It will become hard and harsh. The Prophet Said: There are difficulties and danger in the world. The good work of any of you is like a pot. Its upper is clean, its inner portion is also clean and if its portion is unclean, its inner portion is also unclean.

Ninth Illustration: This world is like a guest or rest house built for the travelers and not for permanent residence therein. The rest house is to be enjoyed only temporarily. This world is similarly a rest house for the travelers of next world who will take benefit there from for their permanent residence.

Tenth Illustration: The world is like an unchaste woman. The world at first treats well and then lead to destruction. The world dresses itself like a chaste woman and calls the people towards her. Whenever she takes the people to her house, she ruins them. Jesus Christ saw the world in his mind’s eyes like an old woman dressed nicely and asked her: how many husbands have you taken? She said: there is no limit. He asked: Have all of them died during your life or have they divorced you one after another? The woman said: I have ruined all of them. Jesus Christ said: Woe to your remaining husbands. They do not take lessons seeing the condition of your previous husbands. They do not take care even though you have ruined them one after another.

Wise Sayings:

The wise Luqman said to his son:  O darling, sell your world in exchange to your next world. You will then get benefit in both the worlds. Don’t sell your next world in exchange of this world, you will then be closer in both the world. Luqman advised his son: O darling, the world is deep sea and many people drowned therein. Make God-fear as your belt, Iman as your oar, God-reliance as your sail, so that you may get salvation, or else I don’t see the course of your salvation. Abu Sulaiman Darani said: When there is the next world in the mind of a man, the world stands before him. When there is this world in his mind, the next world does not come in as the next world is honourable but this world is an object of hatred. Malik bin Dinar said: The thoughts of the world will come out of your mind in proportion to your sorrows for the next world. Hazrat Ali said: This world and the next world are like co-wives. A co-wife will be dissatisfied in proportion to your giving satisfaction to another co-wife. The wise Luqman said to his son: O darling, you are drifting away from this world from the day on which you were born and advancing toward the next world. The abode to which you are proceeding is better than the abode from which you drifting away. A certain sage was asked: For whom is this world? He said: for those who give up this world. He was asked: for whom is the next world. He said: for those who want it.

The Saint Ihya bin Ma’az said: The wise men are three:

i. he who gives up the world before the world give him up

ii. he who keep himself prepared for his grave before he enters it and

iii. he who keeps God satisfied before he meets Him.

Hazrat Ali said: the following six things are the world;

i. food

ii. drink

iii. dress

iv. conveyance

v. women

vi. scents.

Honey is the best foods and it comes from the mouth of bee. Water is the best drink. Both the virtuous and the sinners enjoy it. Silk cloth is the best of dresses and it is the Saliva of worms.

            There is in Hadis Qudsi that God said to Moses: when you see some wealth coming to you, tell it: Punishment of sin will soon come. When you see poverty coming to you say: Welcome to you, thanks to the sign of the religious men. If you like follow Jesus Christ as he used to say: Hunger is my curry, God fear is my sign, sufi cloth is my dress, sun-ray in cold season is my provision, morning is my lamb, my feet are my conveyance, what the earth grow is my food. I pass nights having nothing and I pass my days having nothing. Who is a richer man than myself?

Hazrat Ohab bin Munabah said: When God sent Moses and Aaron to Pharoad. He said: Don’t fear him, his forelock is in my hand. He cannot move his tongue without my permission and cannot breathe. Hazrat Ali said in his sermon: O People know that you are dead and you will raise up after you are dead. Let not the world’s life deceive you. This world’s life is surrounded by dangers and difficulties, its destruction and its treachery are well-known to all. What is therein will pass away along with the world and the world will roam in the midst of its votaries.

The love of world is also the breeding ground for murder, assassination and eventual war. Typical example is what happened on Friday 3^rd January, 2020 when President Donald Trump of U.S.A on behalf of the people and government of America ordered the assassination of General Qasem Sulaiman, the Commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guard at Bagdad Airport in Iraq. By doing so, President Trump has violated yet another International Security Agreement, while United Nation under the leadership of Professor Mahammed Bande and Secretary General Antonio Guteress and other super powers like Russia, Germany, France and U.K watch helplessly.

On that Friday and next Friday it is subject of Friday sermons in many Friday mosques throughout the Muslim world, from Lebanon to Iraq, Syria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Morocco, Turkey, Chad, Algeria, Tunisia, Niger, Mali, each Imam condemning the action of American Donald Trump. Adieu General.

Lastly, the world is patiently waiting and watching, the impeachment process of President Donald Trump from Office by the American Congress. For one of the reason, was replacing not less than twenty of most senior political officers of U.S.A. government which include two secretary of state, four national security advicers, two directors of C.I.A and one director of F.B.I in his less than two years of his administration.

Baba Ali Mustapha is of Ngrannam Ward near former 7up depot, Bolori II, Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria

Reference:

IHYA ULUM-IDDIN by Imam Ghazzali, translated by Maulana TFuzuk Karim, published in Nigeria by Hasbunlah Islamic Publishers, Offa, Kwara State

In Egypt, it was published by Al Nahar Publishers, 7 Gamhari Street, Abdeen-Cairo (Egypt)