If I was going with a bunch of young men and women on a bus.
And we drove by a beautiful mansion. Just a gorgeous house,
on top of a hill. On the other side there is the ocean, just an absolutely beautiful and stunning house.
And the driveway into the house there is a gorgeous car parked outside.
And on the back of the house there is an incredible
backyard and a swimming pool and all of I mean whatever you can imagine
is there. It's like piece of Jannah on earth.
And you see the guy walking into his house.
We're driving on this bus and we see this guy walking into his house, and I asked these young men and women
Do you think that guy's successful?
Do you think he's successful?
Overwhelmingly, what is going to be the response?
Yes, that's pretty successful. The guy look at him, look at what he's accomplished, ey that's a pretty successful person.
Okay
When you take a picture of someone graduating from college. They're shaking hands with the president of the university.
They're being handed their diploma and somebody asks you: 'Do you think that's successful?' What are people going to say?
You know it's going to be muslims and non-Muslims everybody is going to say that that is a kind of what? Success.
We are going to: I'm going [to] congratulate my children one day when they graduate from college too, because that's the kind of success.
When somebody gets a job is that a kind of success?
sure
we
congratulate people when they get a job. When somebody buys a house. When somebody starts the business. When somebody gets a new car. When somebody
Gets married. When people accomplish things in life, we celebrate them because these are different kinds of small and big successes isn't that true?
So the bus keeps driving.
And we see a a man a homeless man
who's living in a cardboard box on the Street.
And he looks like he's wearing clothes from a couple of years.
And you don't want to go close to him because of the smell.
And I asked my students. Do you think that guy's successful?
what do they say?
They say he's not successful.
Now imagine if I was riding in this bus, but in this bus there were not muslim boys and girls.
But they were Christian boys and girls, or Jewish boys and girls, or atheist boys and girls.
or agnostic boys and girls, or buddhist boys and girls. And I asked them the same exact question. Do you think their answers would be the same?
Yep, their answers would be the same.
That's the problem.
The problem is the way we think about success and the way we think about failure.
For Muslims, it's supposed to be different.
All human beings can see it a certain way, that's fine.
They have the apparent view of success and failure.
But us muslims, Allah has given us clearer glasses.
And once you look at reality through these glances you see something other people cannot see.
You see something other people cannot see.
So when you put those glasses on, then you start thinking about the book of Allah . And you realize that one of the most beautiful,
captivating,
magnificent homes. That was ever built was the castle of Firaun.
Those is one of the most amazing homes ever built.
And if our bus was driving by the castle of Firaun, and he was walking into his house.
And I asked my muslim children is that successful? Is that guy successful? What would their answer be? No.
Firaun is not succesful. He is on of the worst losers in all of human history. Isn't that the case?
What was the second kind of person we met, that we ran into. There was the one guy walking into a mansion. What was the other guy?
This homeless guy okay. Ibrahim Alayhis salaam what, was kicked out of his house?
He was told to leave the house, so he's homeless.
What was he successful? He was. He was actually on of the most successful human beings that ever lived.
Now the quran is teaching me that a homeless man is successful.
And an incredibly wealthy man is what a
failure.
You know what the quran is teaching me?The quran is teaching me that success has nothing to do with wealth.
And failure has nothing to do with poverty.
Success and failure are different concepts for us than they are for everybody else.
Some of you want your children to get a good education.
I want you to think about this. The parents here. You want your children to get a good education.
Why do you want your children to get a good education?
Because you want them to be successful.
Isn't that the case? You want them to get a job, you want them to get a good career.
You want them to have a good life? You don't want them to rent an apartment you want them to buy a house?
You want them to go into a good paying profession.
You want them to become a lawyer or a doctor, you want them to become an engineer.
You know. This is what you want for your kids, you want them to have a good life. Now tell me.
Sometimes we send our children to school
and
we send them to a different country, or we send them to a different state, or a different City.
And even before our children left our home to go to these schools you already notice that they are starting to disobey you.
They're becoming disobedient to you. They're becoming less and less and less mindful of their prayer.
And your thinking in the back of your head maybe maybe if they go to college in a different city.
That things are going to get worse.
They're going to become even more rebellious, even more independent, even more careless.
But then you think to yourself, but if they don't go to college in the different city, they're not going to succeed.
They're not going to succeed. So you know what most parents do? what decision they make? Let them go.
Let them go
Then for years go by and then I get the email.
I get to email my child doesn't talk to me.
My child wants nothing to do with me. My child has run off and married a non-Muslim.
Much house tells me that he doesn't believe in islam anymore, or whatever whatever whatever that didn't happen overnight.
That that process began a long time [ago], but you know what. Even the most concerned Muslim parent,
maybe they didn't think about success and failure for themselves and for their child clearly enough
to make the right kinds of decisions. Because in their head so long as they graduate from college. They must be what?
Successful.
The price was too high. The price was not just the tuition.
That's not the only thing, you didn't just pay tuition.
You paid the price of guidance in some cases. That's the too high price to pay.
There's a lot of serious things for us to think about as families when we make our decisions.