The Sin Destroying Muslims Today (It’s Hidden Everywhere)

If I told you now a country will declare war against you, you'd be afraid. The one who created the planet, you'll get in war with him just because you want to buy a house?

Because you're poor, because you can't afford to make that cash payment, I'm going to make you pay more.

Some of the richest ones would tell you, do not borrow debt because they have stocks in banks. They choke you until you can't breathe anymore.

This brother went from making a six-figure salary, driving a nice 5 Series Beamer, and having a $600,000 house to literally living in a cardboard box. There's a hadith that if I mention it is so shocking that riba is worse than somebody committing murder.

A'udhu Billah. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. In this episode, we'll speak about riba, and it's not what you think. We're not just speaking about bank loans or student loans. We're speaking about a sin that is so destructive it literally puts you in war with Allah (SWT) and His Messenger. And it's not just taking a loan. There's more to riba. Sheikh, what's the definition of riba?

Riba is to get benefit off of financial transactions without there being any goods or any product or sales or services. Meaning just based on that money that you're either spending or deferring you're getting an additional benefit from it.

Okay, so it's not just money?

Not necessarily.

Okay, so if I buy this cup for $10, right? But you say you'll pay me next year, inshallah. Yeah, I'll still make it $10.

Yes.

Okay, so how can there be riba in there?

Because then you can say, because I'm letting you spend that, keep that $10 till next year, I'm going to now borrow this book from you so I can benefit from this book because you haven't paid me yet.

That's haram.

That's haram because now you are getting another beneficial thing by force, not just something who wants to— if you come to me and say, I want to borrow a book, borrow a book. But if you say, no, I'm going to benefit additionally because of the deferred payment, then this is riba. I'll give you another example of that. For example, I want to buy your crops. You have farmland. And you say, look, I'm ready to sell you this, but I need the money. And I tell you, you know what, I don't have the money right now, so sell me your crops and I'll pay you 6 months from now. And you say, okay, that's fine, but then I'm going to rent out your house for those 6 months and take the money from the rental. Now this is riba. And riba in its most common form today is in credit cards. It is in student loans, it is in house loans, it is in car loans, it is people buying furniture on loans.

People buy a phone on a loan now.

People buy the coffee table on loans right now. I personally know somebody, a Muslim, who bought a coffee table on interest. If you can't afford it, you don't need it.

So Sheikh, that makes sense. So generally speaking, what's the ruling behind the loan in Islam?

In Islam, we believe in Qard al-Hasana.

What does that mean?

Meaning that we give a loan as a charity to get the reward from Allah, to help somebody in need, not to take advantage of them. If somebody comes to you and they're desperate and they need money to make their ends meet, you're not trying to make more money to make them poorer. You're trying to help them up. Now, in Islam, if you want to get a loan to start a business, we can do it together. I can tell you, you know what, I'll invest in your business, and then the profit will be shared and the loss will be shared. That's fair, that's just.

Yeah, because you share the upside and the downside.

Ups and downs.

Right.

But if I say I'm going to give you money for your business, and even if you lose, you have to give me more, you have to give me interest on top of the money, then I'm setting you up for failure.

And that's riba.

That's riba.

Okay, so in Islam, A loan has to be charity.

Should be for charity. You can do business with somebody for profit, but then you share with them.

That's not a loan.

That's not a loan. Then you share with them in the profit and the loss.

How did riba come when it comes to Islam? Why is it haram?

Riba is such a destructive sin. People don't realize what it does. It enslaves and weakens the weakest of people.

Meaning if I can't afford something, instead of you helping me, you're making it harder.

You now take advantage of the fact that I don't have money to afford it, and you make me pay more than somebody who has money. You know, if you go to the car lot and you have $20,000 in your hand and you can buy the car because Allah has blessed you, now you're good. But now I'm struggling I'm a single mom or whatever, and I'm taking 3 jobs, like I'm saying for an example for a person, right? Now this woman is struggling and she needs a car to get to work, and she only has $10,000 that she has saved. Now instead of, as a Muslim would be, like, you know what, I'll give you the car, pay me in deferred payments, and it'll be the same payments because I want to help you as a human being. Instead of that, The riba system says, because you're poor, because you can't afford to make that cash payment, I'm going to make you pay more to put you in more debt. And if you can't make the payment, I'll take the car from you, I'll take your payments, and I'll ruin your credit.

And I'll make it even worse, I'll give you late payment fees. I'll make it— Exactly. You know what's crazy is that they frame it as if they're helping you. They say, Sheikh, you can't afford it, you don't have $20,000, it's okay, pay $500 a month for the next I don't know how many months, and that ends up being $25,000, $30,000.

Do you have your phone?

Yeah.

All right, take out your calculator. We're going to do a fun experiment for your—

let's do it live—

audience here. And this is going to be simple. I'm not going to go to compound interest and all of that. How much is a house in Paris, for example? Like a nice house, $200,000, $300,000? Really? That's pretty cheap, man.

I mean, oh, in Paris? Yeah, it's like a million dollars.

All right, so let's do $1 million, right? Because I'm from San Diego. In San Diego right now, houses are $1 million, right? So let's say this is a house you want to buy.

Yeah, $1 million.

$1 million. And the bank tells you, I'll give you an interest rate. So let's do times 0.07%. 7%.

7% rate.

It's a good rate. 30-year loan. How much is that?

€70,000.

€70,000 of riba, just riba. Yeah, every year for 30 years. Times that by 30.

Subhanallah. Yeah, so how you do it is $1 million. Yeah, times 0.07. Okay, and then you do the 0.07 is to the power of— to the power of 30, and that's going to be How much it ends up costing you?

Which is?

2.1 million.

So the riba you will pay is 2.1 million. And the way they trick you on that is your first payments will be interest. So your principal doesn't go down.

SubhanAllah.

Yes. Right? Now add your principal back in.

Yeah, 1 million.

Yes. So that million-dollar house ends up costing you $3.1 million. SubhanAllah. Now, what if you can't make the payments? What if, may Allah protect you, you get COVID and you get sick and you lose your job, your business collapses? What if you get in an accident and you can't make your payments? You know what they do? All the money that you've put in, gone.

Because that was towards interest.

Yes.

That wasn't towards the house.

Exactly. Even the one that you put towards your principal, gone.

Really?

They don't give it back to you. If you miss your payments, all the money— your down payment, your interest, your capital— all gone. The house, they take it and they auction it, foreclose it. Your credit, ruined. Your wife, gone, because now you can't even make a cell phone payment. This is slavery, modern-day slavery. Most Americans today are in that slave system. Most Europeans today, whether it's their car, whether it's their house, whether it's their cell phone, they are under that slave mentality. Because now, let's say you want to take a year off from work and go memorize the Quran. You can't. Because you have to make your payments. You want to take a year off and go to Africa and dig wells and help the poor and help the needy. You can't.

You know, that happens so many times. I have— may Allah make it easy for them— some of my students who, alhamdulillah, made money, became financially free. They're making, you know, $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 a month from their laptop, which allows them to make hijrah. The thing is, I messaged them like, why are you still living in the UK? Why are you still living in America? I'm helping my parents with the mortgage. That's the only thing holding you back. Yeah, okay, how much is it? I have 200,000 left. How long is that going to take you? 3 years, 5 years, 10 years stuck in the country. Not because they want to stay there, not because they have anything in particular they have to do, just because they're stuck in a payment. They'll have to still struggle with praying. They still are going to have struggles when it comes to putting the hijab on just because they have to make a payment for a house.

I know a brother personally Eyoub, and he graduated, he had a good job, he had a nice new BMW, and he bought a $600,000 house on riba. Just newly graduated, but he worked for a finance company, he was making good money. SubhanAllah, the bubble busted, the house mortgages and all that went bad, and they had put a balloon payment where after so many years you had to make this big payment. And he wasn't able to make the payment, this brother became homeless. I know him myself. This brother went from making a 6-figure salary and driving a nice 5 Series Beamer and having a $600,000 house. And this I'm talking about 15 years ago, I'm not recent, to literally living in a cardboard box. And all that he had put into that house was gone. His car was on riba. They took, they repoed his car. They ruined his credit. He couldn't get a job because when they would run his credit report, his credit report was bad. He didn't have an address to put on a CV or a resume. Muslim brother. And this is a very destructive sin. It destroys families. It destroys communities. It enslaves people. And you know who makes money off it? Those people sitting on those presidents of boards of banks, those people that don't do anything, they sit back and make you work for money. Those people that are from a particular community that don't do it to each other, but they enslave you. And the day you want to go and say something that they don't like, They can destroy your credit and ruin you.

Because they own you.

They own you. So may Allah protect us from these systems and may Allah forgive those shuyukh that make excuses for riba.

Ameen.

Oh, student loans are okay, one house is okay, this is okay, that's okay, it's okay, you're in the West. This is a sin that is war against Allah and His Messenger and we cannot engage in it.

And even on this, Sheikh, speaking about riba, Even on a business level, it does not make sense. Yeah, you're borrowing money and you end up spending more for no value added. It is just inflating the value of your currency and it's making you poorer. If you buy this cup for $10, that means it's worth $10. If you borrow riba, borrow money on riba, and you end up paying $12, $13, the 3 extra dollars you spent is money wasted. It just does not make sense. And people don't realize this, but this is how they choke you until you can't breathe anymore. That's what riba does to people. It basically puts you in a chokehold where every time the riba is getting worse and worse and worse until people don't have any money. If you look, one of the biggest reasons for people being going bankrupt, for people not having any money, becoming homeless, is because they borrow, they borrow until they can't make the payments, and then it's the race to the bottom. It goes down and it's very, very difficult to go back up after that.

And the way they do it is then they give you incentives or open up a credit card. We'll give you mileage, we'll give you—

this is one of the worst ones, by the way. Credit cards, the same thing. People will tell you, I promise you, on a business level, stay away from anything that looks even close to riba. People would disguise it in so many ways. And I'm mentioning this point because people think riba is just interest that you get in banks. They think it's just a bank loan where you have to pay more. That's riba. That's not it. Credit cards fall under riba. Late payment fees fall under riba. Do not sign contracts with late payment fees in there. This is haram. It's very important. People don't know this. They sign a lease for a car, at least for whatever it may be that has late payment fees. This is haram. It's very important we mention this. Another point, when it comes to even with credit cards, when it comes to they will give you points and they'll give you benefits from it, how they're wrapping it, they say you can have free hotels and free flights. Just to trap you in that contract. You'll start spending the money and end up engaging in riba.

And what's worse than that is they'll make you buy one credit card to pay off the other credit card, and then people start paying their credit card with credit cards and their interest on—

look at this, it's literally a Ponzi scheme.

It's a Ponzi scheme that enslaves you, subhanAllah, that literally puts chains on you, financial chains. And on top of it, you're declaring war with Allah (SWT) and His Messenger, subhanAllah. There is a hadith that Abu Lahya mentioned, it is so shocking, that riba is worse than somebody committing multiple zina with their own mother.

If you're listening to this, take your credit card, break it, burn it. If you're listening to this, you have loans, get away from it. Repent to Allah (AJ), ask Allah (AJ) to make it easy for you to get out of it. If you're looking at a loan, if you're hesitant about buying a house or doing something on a mortgage, on a loan, don't get into riba. I can tell you as a Muslim first, it is haram. You do not want to get in a war with the Lord of the world. If I told you now a country will declare war against you, you'd be afraid. The one who created the planet, you'll get in war with him just because you want to buy a house? Come on, bro. That's as a Muslim. And second, as a business owner, it does not make sense. Some of the most successful people, the ones who own a bank, will tell you take a loan, get credit cards, and so forth. Some of the richest ones will tell you do not borrow debt, it is terrible.

And this is why they encourage you, because they have an alternative motive, because they have stocks in banks, they have family members that are on boards of banks. You know, when we had the big bubble pop in the US and so on, and the housing bubble and all this, the same people that caused that bubble were paid by the government to fix it. So it was in their interest. They want to enslave you.

In their interest, nice joke.

Interest, no pun intended, right? And the last thing on this I want to say also about riba is many people think a fatwa can get you out of the punishment of Allah (SWT) on the Day of Judgment. It cannot. You know it's haram. You know in your heart it's haram. You listen to shi'ukh, they tell you it's haram. So if a sheikh gives you a fatwa, it will not make you escape from the punishment of Allah on the Day of Judgment. Just like How Allah (SWT) talked about the Christians and Jews worshipping their rabbis and priests. One of the Sahaba came to the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم), he said, 'O Messenger of Allah, we didn't worship them.' The Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) told them, 'Didn't you take halal what Allah made haram upon the tongues of those priests and rabbis? You worshipped them.' It's not an excuse that the priest said it's okay. It's not an excuse that the Rabbi said it's okay, and it's not an excuse that the Sheikh said it's okay. Halal and haram is in the Quran and the Sunnah. We cannot make excuses for it. Not student loans, not one house, not one car. You can't have one girlfriend for free. You can't rob one bank for free. You can't get into riba for free. It's haram, stay away from it.

Stay away from riba. It does not make sense. You'll put yourself in trouble with Allah (AJ), in trouble in this dunya, And there's nothing good with riba. May Allah make it easy for you. Stay away from riba. May Allah bless you.