Danger of Rampant Greed
| Khatib : | Sadullah Khan |
| Khutbah No: | 241 |
| Khutbah Date: | 06/08/07 |
هَلَّاكُ الناس في ثلاثة
الكِبُر هلاك الدين و به لُعِنَ ابليس
و الِحرص عدو النفس و به ُأخر ِجَ آدم من الجنة
و الحسد رائد السواء و منه َقتَلَ قابيل هابيل
“Annihilation of people lies in three (negative) characteristics:
arrogance, greed and envy.
Arrogance causes damage to your way of life and Iblees was cursed due to it,
Greed is the enemy of the soul and Adam (pbuh) was expelled from the Garden due to it,
Envy is the path to wickedness and Qabil (Cain) killed Habil (Abel) due to it.”
[Imam Hasan, grandson of the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh)]
A World of Poverty
Hunger, poverty, and homelessness are sources of desperation in all parts of the world. Statistics from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) indicate:
- nearly 800 million people do not get enough food on a daily basis
- half a billion people suffer from some form of malnutrition, 250 million of these are
children of preschool age .
- Over 40% of all deaths in poor countries occur among children under five years of age.
- The United Nations (UNICEF) states that 17 million children died last year from preventable diseases; one every two seconds, 40 000 a day.
We are aware that people are hungry not because of lack of availability of food in world or over population, but because they are too poor to afford the food. Global politics and controlled economics have led to poverty and dependency around the world. We are cognizant of the fact that humankind has never before had such ample technical and financial resources for coping with hunger and poverty; yet mankind has never witnessed avoidable hunger and poverty on such a large scale.
G-8 Summit
This week, the Group of 8 (G8) Summit brings together leaders of the world’s richest nations. The G8 is constituted of the most economically powerful nations in the world--the United States of America, France, Russia, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada, and representatives from the European Union. Behind closed doors, eight men will decide political, economic and social issues affecting more than 6 billion people. Behind closed doors, eight men will decide political, economic and social issues affecting more than 6 billion people. The G8 sets the agendas of global institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The G8 is a unique institution designed and controlled by eight people. There is no formal legal charter or any international organization to which they are accountable. They unilaterally determine and implement polices that affect the whole world!
What agreements they make will impact the health, the freedoms, and the lives of virtually every person, forest, agricultural field, river and ocean on the planet. Six billion peoples lives affected by the decisions of 8 people.
Wealth & Greed
In the Qur'an, wealth in itself is not considered demonic or evil. In fact it is often referred to as khayr / goodness, fadlillah / bounty and blessing of Allah [Qur'an 2:180; 62: 10] and at times as fitnah / trial [Q8:28].
Greed = excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially material wealth) than one needs or deserves; a reprehensible acquisitiveness; insatiable desire for wealth with disregard for the plight of others. Greed is the implication of placing undue premium on material possessions, forcing the individual to pursue materialism in a manner that makes material gains an axis on which the mind rotates;. Greed gives rise to the insatiable desire for material wealth, making possession the primary objective of life. It is perchance to this kind of mentality that Allah refers to when posing the question…have you seen the person who makes a god of his desires? [Qur’an 45:23]
Poverty & Greed
Many problems are caused globally due to the twin evils of POVERTY & GREED.
Poverty persists largely because we have not been addressing the problem of greed. We are more pre-occupied with snatching the available wealth for our economic interests than in creating more wealth from which others could share and benefit. Material wealth has come to be the greatest talent in our eyes and success is now measured by the dollar/euro bills. The Prophet (pbuh) advised
ليس الغنى عن كثرة الأرض و لكن الغنى غنى النفس
Wealth lies not in how much you have, but in how contented you are with what you have.
To the greedy, wealth is like salt water the more you drink the thirstier you become. Prophet Muhammad prayed …
نفس لا تشبع اللهم اني أعوذبك من
“O Allah! I seek Thy protection from a self that is never gratified.”
Concern for the Future
We share a concern about the future of our communities, our country and our world. Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali stated that the most significant battles are waged within the self. Those struggles to maintain the internal virtues that dictate how we think and how we act. As wise ones have indicated; the traits most spiritually perilous to humanity are…
- Worship without Action
- Knowledge without Character
- Science without Humanity
- Pleasure without Conscience
- Wealth without Work
- Politics without Principle
- Commerce /Economics without Morality
The World We Want
We want to see a world in which the fruits of works will belong to all. We want to see a world in which people will work, not in order to merely become rich, but in order that all should possess the necessities of life: sufficient to still their hunger, provide for a healthy existence, viable education, appropriate clothes, suitable water, and basic home. We want to see a world in which money is placed at the service of human beings, and not human beings at the service of money.