Regarding Comfort and Luxury

Shaikh Muhammad ibn Salih al-Uthaimeen said:

“The more people increase in comfort and luxury and the more they open up before the people [with the Dunya], the more evils will open up before them. It is comfort and luxury that destroys a person. Because if a person was to concern himself with comfort and luxury and providing enjoyment to his body, he will become negligent of providing enjoyment to his heart, and his greatest worry will become providing enjoyment to this body that is doomed to become worms and rotten.

 

This is the ordeal, and this is what has harmed people today. You can hardly find anyone except that they say: “What is our palace? What is our car? What is our furniture? What is our food?” Even those who study [Islamic] knowledge, some of them only study in order to gain rank or status to reach the blessings of the Dunya. As if man was not created for a significant purpose. The Dunya and its blessings are only a means, nothing more. We ask Allah to make us and you use it as a means.

 

Ibn Taimiyyah, may Allah have mercy upon him, said: “A person should use money as he uses a donkey to ride, and as he uses the toilet to relieve himself.” These are the ones who know money and its value. So do not make money your greatest worry, rather ride on money, for if you do not ride on it, it will ride on you, and your worry will become the Dunya.

 

For this, we say, that the more the Dunya opens up before the people, and they end up concerning themselves with it, they will lose as much of the Akhira as they have gained from the Dunya. The Prophet (SAW) said: “By Allah, I am not afraid of your poverty,” meaning I am not afraid of poverty for you, for the Dunya will open up before you, “but I am afraid that you will lead a life of luxury as past nations did, whereupon you will compete with each other for it, as they competed for it, and it will destroy you as it destroyed them.” [Bukhari and Muslim].

 

The Messenger (SAW) spoke the truth. This is what has destroyed the people today. What has destroyed the people today, is their competing with one another for the Dunya, and them being as if they were only created for it, and not it created for them. So they have preoccupied themselves with what was created for them over what they were created for. This is backwardness. We ask Allah for protection.”

Explanation of Riyadh-us-Saliheen [Chapter 10: Hastening to do Good Deeds, Hadeeth #92].

Madeenah, Saudi Arabia
17th of Dhul-Qa`dah 1431