Everything You Must Know About The End of Times | Signs of the Hour Ep. 1
5 Signs That Happened in the Prophet’s ﷺ Lifetime | Signs of the Hour Ep. 2
Was Dajjal Alive During The Prophet’s ﷺ Time? | Signs of the Hour Ep. 3
20 Verses of Qur’an That Protect from Dajjal | Signs of the Hour Ep. 4
When 40 Prophets Were Killed | Signs of the Hour Ep. 5
When Only One Sahabi Was Left In The World | Signs of the Hour Ep. 6
Jerusalem to Constantinople: The Promised Conquests | Signs of the Hour Ep. 7
Acts of God: Disasters Foretold by the Prophet ﷺ | Signs of the Hour Ep. 8
The Rise of the Unqualified | Signs of the Hour Ep. 9
The Night the Qur’an Disappears | Signs of the Hour Ep. 10
The Years of Intense Deception | Signs of the Hour Ep. 11
The 10 Patterns of Religious Corruption | Signs of the Hour Ep. 12
A Beautiful Masjid With Empty Rows | Signs of the Hour Ep. 13
Making Halal What Allah Made Haram | Signs of the Hour Ep. 14
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When The Love for Wealth Becomes Violent | Signs of the Hour Ep. 16
Signs of the Hour
When The Love for Wealth Becomes Violent | Signs of the Hour Ep. 16
The Prophet ﷺ said the Hour would not come until time drew close and the markets drew close to one another. Today the market fits in one hand, never closes, and delivers in two days.
A second narration says a merchant will need a stranger's permission before he can complete a sale. A third says barefoot shepherds will compete over the tallest buildings on earth.
Dr. Omar Suleiman reads all three against the present in Signs of the Hour Ep. 16: what the speed of purchasing trains in a person, the labour that arrives in no box, the one narration he says is the clearest warning about influencers, and a mountain of gold that nobody, in the end, wants.
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
00:00Why doesn't Allah answer me the way that Prime answers me? I want something, I buy it. Impulsive consumption. It's also unethical consumerism. The idea of the marketplace in your hands.
00:10Thinking about how you no longer have to physically travel to a bazaar or a souq. You no longer have to go anywhere. Trade and stock markets and financials. You don't even see the labor market. When the labor market is being hidden away from you
00:24and you're just seeing the final product come to you neatly packaged in a box all the time. That means you're not seeing the world.
00:37The Prophet ﷺ also mentioned another narration. He said ﷺ: "The hour will not stand until knowledge is taken away." So he mentioned ﷺ that the hour will not come until knowledge is taken away.
00:50Trials appear. Lying becomes frequent. And time draws near and markets draw near. This is one of the most interesting hadith in this chapter.
01:04Time draws closer and markets get closer. The sharḥ (explanation) of this hadith is so rich. What does it mean? Markets draw near. That the markets get too close.
01:19I'm going to ask you first. When you hear that hadith, what do you think of? The markets are close now. Amazon. You immediately think it's as close as your phone.
01:29Everyone's got – you've got global markets in your hands. The closeness of the marketplace. Back then, it's not what they're thinking about. And subhan'Allah, you'll find that every sharḥ of the hadith actually enriches its meaning.
01:44So for example, al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar, rahimahu Allah ta'ala, he says that the Arabs, when they used to say the tree became close, that meant that the produce became restricted.
01:58So he mentioned it's, you know, profit-shrinking. He's talking about the margins getting smaller. So it could be that there's a lot of inventory and not enough ways to purchase it. It could be that there isn't enough movement.
02:12It could be that there are too many sellers in the marketplace. So they're getting closer to each other. It could be the encroachment of the marketplace on your life, that everything becomes a souq, right? Everything becomes a marketplace.
02:27Wherever you go, there's shopping, you know, opportunity or some sort of engagement with financial trade right in front of you. It could be, some of the 'ulama mentioned, that the profit margins are shrunk.
02:41And what they meant by that are those that can produce at a higher level, like mass production, they box out and they kill those that, you know, can't keep up, right? So they shrink the margins because they're able to mass produce
02:55and they box them out of the market. It could be all of these possibilities and all of them have a spiritual benefit. If you were to take each and every single interpretation, classical and contemporary, all of them have a spiritual benefit for us.
03:08But I want to focus on the idea of the marketplace in your hands, right? Thinking about how you no longer have to physically travel to a bazaar or a souq. You no longer have to go anywhere.
03:21You have it all in your hands. And not just that, you have trade and stock markets and financials. It's all in your hand. It's always in your face.
03:31And there's an impulsiveness with buying, buying, trading, getting involved in this and getting involved in that. So what does that do for us spiritually?
03:42It actually does two things, two things that we have to remedy with ourselves. Number one is obviously impulsive consumerism, right? I want something, I buy it.
03:54And that is very spiritually detrimental, right? I desire something, I get it. So the quickness by which you can buy things, and hastiness is from the devil. Hastiness is from the devil.
04:06And so when you start to have that mindset, then, you know, why doesn't Allah answer me the way that Prime answers me? Right? Why don't I get it this way? Why don't I get it that way?
04:17Why isn't this person giving to me right now, right? You become impulsive in your relationship with Allah. You become impulsive in your relationship with people. You become impulsive in your worldly pursuits because everything is impulsive, right? You want it, you get it.
04:32There's always a way to get it. So that's the first thing. But the second thing, so it's not just impulsive consumerism, but it's also, I'm sorry, impulsive consumption. It's also unethical consumerism. And this is the one that I struggle with,
04:46and I'm not going to avoid teaching it because I'm guilty. If anything, I ask Allah to guide us to the best in how we think about this. Okay, when a person is constantly buying and they're not seeing the opposite end of that,
05:01think about the amount of exploitation that takes place. And how we just close our eyes to the sweatshops, how we close our eyes to the child labor, how we close our eyes to all of the unethical things that happen behind.
05:14I'm not even talking about BDS. So we should start at that, right? If you talk about ethical consumerism, every single Muslim organization should be on that. Every single Muslim should be doing their best at least to boycott the occupation
05:27and to not engage with products, you know, whatever it is, right? That's one side of it. But also, subhan'Allah, how far can that go? Depends on your conscience and how far you're willing to go.
05:39And that's where each one of us has to kind of soul search, right? So if you think about the ingredients, what went into the making of your phone and my phone, if you could see the child scraping the cobalt from, you know,
05:53the mines in Africa and being taken advantage of in the Congo and whatever, would you still be quick to buy? If you could see your older brothers and sisters and the slave labor that they're being put through, are you still looking for the cheapest product? So it's not just impulsiveness.
06:08It's also unethical. I'm not even looking at the other side of that. I go buy that gold. I don't care that it was just literally taken freshly out of a genocide from, you know, Sudan. I don't care, like whatever it is, like you're not thinking about where this is coming from anymore.
06:21So these are signs of the hour because isn't exploitation a sign of the hour? Well, who's paying attention to exploitation anymore when you don't even see the labor market? When the labor market is being hidden away from you and you're just seeing the final product come to you
06:34neatly packaged in a box all the time. That means you're not seeing the world. So it's not just ḥalāl that you're asking yourself about now. It's also like what's ethical? And wallahi, we should all challenge ourselves as a community
06:47and as individuals. We should be leading in this regard. We should be leading in this regard, right? When it comes to ethical consumerism. All right, there's another hadith where the Prophet ﷺ also speaks about the markets and he mentions ﷺ that from the signs of the hour
07:02is that he mentioned ﷺ in "Ashrat al-Sa'ah" (the signs of the Hour) and wealth spreads and becomes abundant. So wealth spreads and becomes plentiful. And trade spreads, and he mentioned ﷺ that literacy spreads.
07:16But then he says at the end of this hadith, and a person will want to complete a sale, and he'll say, "No, not until I seek permission from a merchant of Bani Fulan." And then a person will want to complete a sale,
07:26but he'll say, "No, first I have to go get permission from a merchant, from Bani Fulan, from that tribe." This hadith blows my mind. It really does blow my mind.
07:40This hadith blows my mind. It really does blow my mind. Because this is a foreign concept, permission giving. What is it speaking to? That there are invisible market forces that actually control the market.
07:53That people are no longer free to actually have their trade, but you got these cartels and you got these massive sharks and oligarchs that actually run the markets, right?
08:06So Bani Fulan is Bezos, right? It could be anybody, right? But really, like it could be that at the end of the day, like if there is someone that controls this market and you're getting in the way and he doesn't like you, he can box you out.
08:18And so you have to be on the good side of certain people in order to be able to function, right? So this idea of permission seeking for simple transactions is a new idea, right? It's not something that exists in the time
08:33of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and it certainly interferes with the idea of halal income and things of that sort. The Prophet, peace be upon him, also said, and I have to run through these ahadith because of time. May Allah put barakah in our time. Everyone say ameen. He said, peace be upon him,
08:48it's a hadith of Sa'd Ibn Abi Waqas. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, there will be a people who eat with their tongues just as cows eat from the earth.
09:02Now, Imam Al-Khattabi, may Allah have mercy upon him, he says with this hadith, if you think about the cattle, a cow just wraps its tongue around everything. If you ever see the way cattle eat, right?
09:15It's kind of nasty, right? The Prophet, peace be upon him, actually, in another narration, mentioned, I gave a khutbah about this, that Allah hates a person whose tongue is like that when it comes to gossip and rumors and stuff like that. Like your tongue just talks about everything.
09:29Just pick up on anything and start talking about it. Just like the tongue of a cow slapping from right and left. And subhanAllah, the Prophet, peace be upon him, also mentioned of the worst riba, right? Is your brother's honor, right? There's riba on your brother and your sister's honor.
09:44So there's an analogy there that we can go into another time. But he mentions here that people use whatever rhetoric, whatever flattery, whatever deception they can
09:57with their tongues in order to earn their money, okay? So part of that falls under obviously the false preacher. Part of that falls under the poets. Part of it falls under the entertainer. But it also falls under someone
10:11who just gets really good at selling their product in manipulative ways. And someone that is able to make money through false marketing, right? Or someone that's able to monetize outrage or someone that's able to like, I've got to get in on this so there's attention.
10:26It's an attention economy, right? And there's an economy to the attention economy too, right? There's a monetization to that as well. I got to jump in. So a person tries to jump on everything with their tongue because that's how they earn.
10:39I've got to hurry up and say something, right? And so at that point, sincerity means silence. Silence means missing out, right? On earning properly.
10:52And so you're losing in the marketplace and we ask Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, to protect us. So he's talking about a time when obviously words become income. But the problem again is not that like people earn through teaching, for example,
11:05or people earn through proper expression. It's when that becomes falseness. Again, think of Jahiliyyah society, the poets at the time and the false flattery at the time and the different ways of deception that existed at the time.
11:20And then he said, peace be upon him,
11:23that the hour will not come, the world will not leave until it becomes for Luka'a ibn Luka'a. Until it becomes for Luka'a ibn Luka'a.
11:38Someone's reading that? It's almost like a funny joke, but it's a true story, like when someone thought that Fulan was actually a person. So he kept hearing the shaykh talking about Fulan, so Fulan goes to Fulan, he's like, "Who is this Fulan guy," right? Fulan means "that person," right?
11:53So when you read this hadith, like Luka'a, who is Luka'a, right? Are we waiting for a guy named Luka'a that's going to take over the world and that's going to be someone that is admired?
12:02In another narration, he said, peace be upon him, until that person is as'ad un-nasib ad-dunya, right? Seems to be the most fortunate person in this world, and people look up to this person.
12:11Luka'a ibn Luka'a is an expression for someone who is very lowly, someone who is insignificant, someone who offers no value, except that they're able to garner attention, right?
12:26If there was any hadith that would be a warning about influencers, it's this one. Like I was reading, by the way, yesterday that universities are thinking about a degree in influencing. Allahumma sta'an, right?
12:38If there was any hadith that could speak about a person who will do anything, this ties into the previous hadith, anything to sell, right?
12:48There's no value being offered. There's no goodness coming out of it, but influence, influence, influence.
12:54And that person could be admired for the most vulgar and shameless and nasty traits and have no weight in the sight of Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, but they have weight in the sight of the people.
13:06They're looked at as a success. They have no sincerity, and they have nothing that they're offering of benefits. And if you think about their names and you think about how they got there and you think about what they do, what is it that you do, right?
13:19Why is it that this person is famous? Why is it that this person is admired? Why is it that this person is looked up to for all of the things that Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, hates? The problem is not just them. The problem is society's calibration then.
13:30Why do I look up to this person? Why do I give this person any weight in my life if Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, does not give this person any weight in his sight?
13:41So basically the lowest qualities become the highest social currency, right? And this is why – this is not to plug the first, but I'm going to plug the first anyway. This is why learning about the Sahaba is so important.
13:53This is why learning about the role models and the greats in our Islamic history, especially al-amwat, especially the dead ones because the fitan are over for them. There are no trials and tribulations. They can't fall, right?
14:05Those stars that rose and that never fell, learning from them and accompanying them and making them your superstars and making them your role models and making them the people that you have veneration for.
14:17And even in our times, right? Role models in an Islamic sense, people that do great things and you love them for the right reasons and you admire them for the right reasons, right? Because that says something about who you are.
14:29Okay, a few other narrations, God willing, then I will move on to the ahadith about time.
14:34One of the narrations that is mentioned as well is the hadith of 'Imran ibn Hussain, may Allah be pleased with him, where the Prophet ﷺ mentioned that the best of my ummah is my generation, then those that follow them, then those that follow them.
14:46And then he mentions ﷺ a people that come after you that will testify without being asked to testify.
14:54They will testify without being asked to testify. They will betray. They will not be trustworthy. They will make vows and they don't fulfill them. And he mentions ﷺ that obesity will appear amongst them.
15:06And subhanAllah, even the classical ulama, they mention that this is not talking about physical condition of obesity.
15:12This is talking about the unrestrained nafs, the unrestrained self that just consumes and consumes and consumes and consumes with absolutely no conscience, right?
15:23It's not satisfied. It's not disciplined. It's not trained. Their appetite for dunya is not being contained. And that's what the Prophet ﷺ is talking about in that regard.
15:33There's also the hadith that we mentioned about economic obsession where the Prophet ﷺ mentioned that trade would spread until a woman would be in a situation where she'd have to help her husband in trade.
15:50This is not condemning the idea of a woman earning halal, right? But what is it speaking about? That everyone now is in the market, right? It's not because you have a two-income household because that's what you need to survive.
16:02It's because that's what everyone needs to get ahead, right? We all kind of find ourselves in the rat race. And this is something that the Prophet ﷺ mentioned in multiple contexts.
16:14He mentioned ﷺ at-tafakkur, competition. The first hadith that I'll share with you, most of you know it. And it's probably one of the most obvious ahadith of our lifetimes.
16:26And one of the scariest ones because of how obvious it is that the Prophet ﷺ mentioned that of the signs of the Day of Judgment, this is a hadith about Jibril, that you'll see the barefoot Bedouin Arabs, competing with their tall buildings.
16:40Competing with their tall buildings. I mean, it's like they looked at the hadith and said, let's do it. Right? Literally competing over tall buildings. I'm going to get the tallest one.
16:53Then 10 years later, this country's got the tallest one. Then this one's got the tallest one. What's going on in the top 134 stories of that building? Absolutely nothing. But we got the tallest building. Right?
17:07What's the point? This isn't about function. This isn't about population growth and accommodating that population growth. This is just straight up boasting and assigning value to the competition of luxury and heights.
17:21So we all know this idea of trying to outdo one another. So last week we talked about people trying to outdo one another even with their masajid. Now you see people trying to outdo one another with their buildings.
17:33This hadith might hurt some of you, and I don't mean it to hurt some of you, but a lot of the series is honestly so we can all take note of ourselves. Just like I mentioned, subhan'Allah, even when it comes to ethical consumerism, I am guilty when I read that hadith especially.
17:48But in this narration, the Prophet ﷺ, he said it's also an authentic hadith from Abu Hurayrah.
18:02He said ﷺ that the Hour will not come until people build their houses and they decorate their houses like garments, like embroidery.
18:14Al-marahil are the garments from Yemen. The Prophet ﷺ loved the garments from Yemen. May Allah ﷻ bless the people of Yemen and free them from their oppression. Allahumma ameen.
18:27He loved them ﷺ. He loved the people of Yemen, but he loved their garments. The garments of Yemen were notorious for stripes. So al-marahil we're referring to as the 'ulama of hadith mentioned, the garments with stripes.
18:41So what is this hadith talking about? This hadith is talking about when houses, which are supposed to be for function,
18:49which are supposed to be for sitr, they're supposed to be for concealing the 'awrah and concealing us from heat and becoming a place of comfort and becoming a place that we fill with the worship of Allah ﷻ,
19:02become identity markers in society. If you think about how weird it is and how foreign it is to previous civilizations. In fact, when you go to older places, what do you notice about the houses? They all pretty much look the same.
19:16They might differ in size, right? But this idea of extravagance on the outside of the house, especially the decorations of the house, the way that it looks, is deeply problematic.
19:30Have we fallen into that disease? I think we have, right? Where there becomes an obsession with form once again over function. The idea of adorning your house, how do you adorn your house? You adorn it with taqwa, you adorn it with the Qur'an,
19:44you adorn it by bringing the angels into it, by bringing sakinah into your place of rest, tranquility there. But people become obsessed with the decoration of the house, the embroidery, the extravagance of the house.
19:57May Allah ﷻ protect us from falling into that. Allahumma ameen. So what does this lead to at the end? The Prophet ﷺ mentioned, and this is based on the hadith,
20:09Inna al-insan li rabbihi la kanud, wa innahu 'ala dharika la shahid, wa innahu li hubbil khair la shadid. That people are violent in regards to their love of wealth.
20:20What it leads to is people doing anything for money. There's a hadith that I'll mention now, and inshaAllah ta'ala we will revisit it when the time comes, in a historical context, which is the hadith where the Prophet ﷺ said
20:32the Hour will not be established until the Euphrates uncovers a mountain of gold over which people will fight. So the Euphrates, if you look at it by the way, it is drying up, it is receding.
20:44And the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, wa sadaqa Rasul Allah ﷺ, and he tells the truth ﷺ, says there's a mountain of gold there. There's gold there. And people will fight over that gold. Now some people have brought modern interpretations,
20:57maybe it's talking about oil, maybe it's talking about… Let's just take the spiritual lesson from it for a moment. He says, so it uncovers this treasure that people are going to fight over.
21:07He says 99 out of every 100 will be killed trying to get that gold. But every single person that goes in there, out of the 99 out of 100 says, I'm going to be the one that's going to survive.
21:21What does that tell you? That people would be willing to throw away their lives with a 99% chance of failure to win the lottery, right? To get that gold. Which shows you how violent people become in their pursuit of wealth.
21:34Of course when that violence turns against each other, the Prophet ﷺ said that there will come a time when the earth will vomit pieces of it out like columns of gold and silver.
21:47But at that point, people would realize the dunya had no worth to it whatsoever. So he ﷺ said, فَيَجِيءُ الْقَاتِلُ فَيَقُولُ فِي هَٰذَا قَتَلْتُ A murderer will come and say, I killed people over this stuff.
22:00The person who severed family ties, who cut off his family, or cut off their family for wealth, will say it was for this reason, قَطَعْتُ رَحِمِي that I cut off my family members. And a sariq, a person who stole will come and will say,
22:14فِي هَٰذَا قُطِعَتْ يَدِي for this my hand was cut. And then they would all leave all of that gold and silver. And they would take nothing from it. Like at that point, they've realized the dunya gave them nothing.
22:26And so there's a period as well of discontentment with the material world as well. That is when we talk about dunya, material wealth.
