You Will Never Achieve Success as a Muslim Without This Principle

How do you eat an elephant?

I don't know.

There's a beautiful, beautiful story.

How would you help someone be patient if they're going through a hard time?

If you look at these ayat of the Quran, you will find a solution. There is no enemy that you cannot defeat with. I mean, Apple had lost the battle against Microsoft. Look, Amazon started out with this idea of being a server that took 20 years to build.

How would you define patience? Because a lot of people would see patients and just say, okay. So I just sit there and wait.

That is absolutely not patience is.

Isalam alaikum. Welcome to a new episode where we're learning how to become wealthy, Learning from the Sahaba and the Sunnah, the prophet. In today's episode, I want to address a problem.

Hit me.

Problem that a lot of people have in the world. They believe everything should happen quickly. They believe we need to get rich fast. They believe we can't spend time in order to earn what we deserve. They think if they don't make money today, then there's no point doing business. Is this how we should think in Islam?

Absolutely not. Whether we're talking about business or we're talking about the deen or we're talking about family or any of those things, always think long term.

Where does that come from?

Bigger picture, it comes from Islam. Allah subhanahu wa ta' ala gives us this world to develop our Akhirah in this dunya. What's the point? We live, we work, we have families. But that's not the point. The point is to earn Jannah. And if you don't have your focus on your Akhirah, then you destroy your dunya and you destroy your Akhirah. But the Akhirah is not going to come to you right now. You're not going to make salah and suddenly a grape's going to drop from Jannah for you to eat per salah.

No, you have to be patient.

You have to be patient, right? And that's how business is. You invest, you put your time into it, you put your money into it, but the fruit's going to come later. You know, you deal with a difficult customer, but it could get you to a contract that will develop your business to level that you couldn't imagine. I'll give you a beautiful example from the Sahaba Radiallahu Anhum. And this is a really beautiful story this episode, man. I'm telling you, like, you guys need to share this, right?

And they need to pay attention because a lot of people might not Know this sahaba, but the story is beautiful.

Oh, this is such a beautiful story. Anas IBN Malik is a very famous sahabi. His mother, Umm Sulaiman, and her name is such a beautiful name. She was a woman that accepted Islam in Mecca and at an early time when a lot of people were not Muslim, she was open about her Islam. Her husband Malik didn't like it and he did not accept Islam and he did not want her to be Muslim and he did not want her to raise her children Muslim. And he said that you will put yourself in danger. The Quraish will attack you, they will harm you. You'll put me in danger and you put the children in danger. But Umm Sulayn rumayisa radiallahu anha. Her iman was so strong, she was such an amazing woman that she said, I don't care about any danger. I will never leave Islam and I will raise my children. On this Malik, fearing that the harm of her Islam were going to harm him, he ran away and he went, he left her and he left the children. He went to go enjoy his life and he got attacked by bandits and he was killed. Right. Now, Umm Sulaim, when she made the

hijra, what happened to her?

She was somebody who was known for her beauty. She was known for her intelligence. She was known for her good character, her haya, her shyness. She was known to be modest and trustworthy. So many men wanted to marry her. One of the mushrikeen, a person who was a mushrik at the time, Abu Talha, his name is actually Zayd IBN Sahel al Khazraji from the Khazraji tribe of Ansar of Medina. But he was very wealthy, he was very successful in business. And what was his business success was land and property. He owned a lot of land in Medina and at the time it was called Yathrab before, until the hijra of the prophet Sallallahu alaihi wasallam. And and he was a leader in his people and he had many beautiful gardens and the most beautiful, most valuable we'll talk about is Birha and we'll talk about that inshaallah. So with his wealth he heard about this woman and he approached her about marriage. Now she had children already. She had Anas IBN Malik, she had Bara IBN Malik and so on. But she was so sought after that many men wanted to marry her. So he told her, look, I want to marry you and I will put stacks of yellow and silver meaning Gold and silver in front of you, meaning if you want, you know, the equivalent today to be of millions of dollars worth of gold and silver, I will put that as a mahr. I'll give it to you to Mary. Now look at this woman and look at her iman and look at her love for Islam. She was not wealthy, so that's a

lot of money for her.

That's a lot of money for anybody. And she said, ya batalha, you are a man who is not rejected. Meaning if you put a proposal, you're not rejected. You have wealth, you have honor, you have status. He was a leader in his people. He had political strength. He had land. That was like, you know, one of the biggest land ownership amongst the ansar. She said, but you are a mushrik, you are a polytheist, and I am a Muslim, so I cannot marry you and I don't want.

Was she not afraid of saying this?

No. This was the honor and the bravery of those women, Subhanallah. So she told him that. And again, if you study her life and his life, they're amazing people. We need to learn about the salaf as salaheen, about the sahaba. So she told him that if you want to marry me, the only thing I want from my mehr is your Islam, okay? She used it for da'.

Wah. The brother's gonna take notes. The guy's gonna say, I wanna get married. No mahr. They're gonna use it. They're gonna say, I just want her to be Muslim, wallahi.

If they take this, it's better than any mihr they can imagine. Now, Abu Talha didn't jump at it. He didn't jump into it. He said, okay, let me think about it. So he went back and he learned about Islam. He went to the prophet Alayhi Sam. He asked about Islam and he became a Muslim not to marry her, but because he was convinced of it, right? And he went to marry her, and he still offered her mahr. And she refused it. She said, you Islam is my mihr. Look at how beautiful that is.

She held her promise.

He became a Muslim, and he became a very sincere, devout Muslim. Let me tell you what a beautiful. Because some people may have this. Oh, maybe he did it for her to get married. No. One day he was in his garden, and this was not just a garden. This was a farmland, a piece of prime real estate that was the most luxurious and most sought after prime piece of real estate in Medina Bir, the well of Ha. This is the area and he heard the Ayat where Allah says that you will not attain birth, true piety and righteousness until they will give from what they love the most. So he thought to himself, what do I love for my worldly possessions the most? It's this prime real estate. So he went to the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam. He said, o master of Allah, I heard this ayah and to implement it, I'm giving it away in Sadaqah. The whole land, the most valued real estate, I give it away.

Subhanallah.

Now what? Iman, that is right. He wasn't worried about, oh, right now this is my assets and my assets will go down and my net worth will go down. He was looking at the long term goal when he married this woman. He wasn't thinking, oh, if I give her gold or if I become Muslim and I can't deal with interest anymore in this. No, he was thinking long term. And look at the payback. What happened in this first thing with the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam. Now I want to point out something else too, very important. The Prophet could have taken that land for himself. He could have taken it for his children. He could have taken it and given it away to his friends.

Yes. What did he do with it?

He told him, give it to your relatives, Subhanallah. Look at how the Prophet saw, didn't

care about Dunya, distributed the wealth he

distributed, not even to his own, his people, his, he said, to your own relatives. So he went and he gave it away to his relatives who divided it up. Now he lost such prime real estate, but Allah raised his rank such. He became a very close companion. Here's a beautiful, beautiful story. He had a child with her and he was out traveling. And as you know, for business, for dawah. They used to travel as we have to. His child died young. Baby. Now this woman, Rameisa Umm Sulaim, the mother of Anas Ibn Malik, she, her husband is out for dawah, for jihad, for business, whatever. She's at home dealing with all the stress and her child dies. When he comes home, does she get angry? Where were you? I was going to by myself. And you weren't here. And now the child is dead. Go bury him. Why don't you deal with this? Why weren't you here for me? What does she do? She doesn't say anything. She tells everybody, don't say anything to him. She beautifies herself. She greets him. Look what a beautiful wife he got because he was patient long term. She spends the night with him as a husband and wife and in the morning she tells him, ya ba talha. What do you think of somebody who gives you something as a loan and takes it back? He says, of course, if somebody gives this their right to take it back,

it's a beautiful way to bring it.

He should then know that Allah had given us his child and he has taken him back.

That's an amazing. That's a beautiful way of.

How beautiful is that now? Abu Talhaha, he was shocked. He said, my child died and you didn't even tell me. You were keeping me happy and entertained. He went to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam to complain. The Prophet, allah has blessed you. Such a beautiful wife and such a wonderful woman that she knew you were coming back from travel, you'd be tired, you would have gone through these hardships and she wanted you to be happy and she was so patient. Allah honored those people. Abu Talhah, even at the time of his death he was very wealthy. All that he gave for the sake of Allah, Allah blessed him more with land, with more wealth. And he left the children, which was Anas IBN Malik and Singh, a lot of his wealth. Even though Anas e Malik was very poor from before. But Allah gave him lots of wealth because of the patience and the long term planning and strategy of Abu Talha and Ramaisa. And no doubt that they will be in a beautiful, wonderful spot in Jannah Subhanallah.

How can someone implement this in today's day and age? What problem do you see people have

when it comes to patience today, especially when you talk about business? People want instant gratification. They want to put a dollar in, they want to see $2 coming out and that's what they want. But that's not the way long term success works. If you look at any successful business model, whether you're talking about Apple products, if you're talking about Amazon, if you're talking about these, these people had to invest, they had to be patient, they had to look at, look, Amazon started out with this idea of being a server really, but their day to day operation was selling books. Amazon was used university books, which you know, look, is that really. But that's not what their plan was. Their long term was to such a database, such computer background that you could do computing off of it, that you could then make it into a marketplace that could handle that kind of e trade that it broke the Internet with.

Yeah, I mean it literally became the biggest marketplace and also for Amazon, where aws, Amazon, where people host their websites, one of the biggest hosting platforms as well, no doubt.

And people don't realize that, but a lot of Amazon's wealth is from their hosting, from their solutions for businesses because they set up such servers that took

20 years to build.

It took a lot of patience and time. It wasn't instant gratification. If you look at Apple products, I mean Apple had lost the battle against Microsoft, but they didn't just give up and try to match Microsoft $$ cent to cent. They always kept a higher mindset and a long vision. At a time where everybody looking at cell phones being smaller and smaller, the coolest cell phones were like the smallest. You would just be like, hello, Apple was talking about big screens and said nobody. People thought no way. But they were patient. And now everybody's looking at getting bigger and bigger screens. Now we're walking around with 50 inch TVs on our phones nowadays, right? So that's the thing. Long term planning, patience, looking at the end goal and having that in your life even as an individual. Don't talk about just my next week, I'm going to do this.

How would you help someone be patient and know that they need to wait for long term if they're going through a hard time?

Allah subhanahu wa ta' ala says isbiru usabiru rabitu, right? If you look at these Ayat of the Quran, you will find the solution is biru is to be patient. And this is referring to the Yahir and the people who believe Sabiru also means to be patient. So what's the difference is biru usa. They're both orders. What is the patient is Biru is to be patient. As Ibn Abbas and Dahaq and Mujahid have explained, upon the obedience of Allah subhanahu wa ta' ala and being away from the things that Allah has made haram is to be patient against the enemies when they try to attack you because you're being on the right path. Hold guard, be on guard, right? So first thing to understand if you want to be successful in dunya, in akhirah, in business, in life, in relationships, all of it comes with patience. There is no enemy. Whether it's your desires, whether it's the physical enemy in a battle, whether it's your own shortcomings being your enemies or iblees that you cannot defeat with patience,

patience always wins, right?

So learn that. Ponder upon these ayats, look at that and then understand. Patience isn't just one Step patience is going to be when you get to an action and then when the attack comes, when the retaliation from Shaitan comes, when the business landscape switches on you.

Yeah. And it becomes difficult and then you

have to bring more patience.

How would you define patience? Because a lot of people would see patience and just say, okay, so I just sit there and wait. That's what being patient means.

That is absolutely not. That's a paralysis. What does patience means then is to react to a situation in the best way possible without violating your own principles and not giving up on what your goals are.

Regardless of how you're feeling, regardless of

how you feel, regardless of what, what you're up against. You know, there's a saying in business. How do you eat an elephant? How do you eat an elephant?

I don't know.

One bite at a time. Even if something.

Is it halal to eat elephants?

There is khilaf of ulema on the issue of elephants. The classic opinions is that elephants are not halal because of the tusks. But many ulema today have said elephants are halal because their tusks are not for hunting, but they're just for show. They're actually eat. Eat the grass.

Okay, that was a parenthesis. I just got curious. I want to get a little elephant stick.

But think about this, right? Even if you see a problem, that is huge, Right. In business, calamity happens.

You lost a lot of money.

You want to break into a field that's. That looks like it's unpenetrable, but you can just take one bite at a time, one step at a time.

You know, that's a very good point. A lot of people who watch this content want to get into business, but they're afraid because they say it's so big. There's so many things I need to learn. And subhanallah. In today's day and age, we say just learn one skill at a time. Just start with one thing. Don't take 10 steps. You know what the first step is. Don't worry about the ninth step. Take the first step. Once you took the first one, take the second one.

The patience there then is you keep going. Right now you're on step number four. And some other business comes and copyrights your stuff and tries to shut you down. You don't just go, okay, forget it, never mind. I'm just going to sit around. That's not patience. No, you keep going. Now they attack. I'm still going to be patient through it. I'm going to keep moving. I'm not going to violate my principle. I'm not going to be like, okay, now I'm going to start cheating. Now I'm going to start lying because they did this. No, I keep to my principles and I don't give up my goals. Keep on going like that little fish in Neemo. Keep on swimming.

Keep on swimming. Barak Lala. Fishing. Being patient.

Great talking to you again.

That's amazing. How would you summarize this?

You're the summaries guy.

I'm going to summarize it. Let me think. Let me gather the thoughts.

All right.

So in today's episode, we learn that patience is the key if you want to be successful, not just in business. Here in this scenario with the Sahaba, we learn that being patient, he gave all his wealth away, all the real estate away. He ended up not only being blessed, but having a wife that was sought after. Subhanallah that rejected him. But he was patient. He went and studied Islam, learned about Islam, reverted to Islam because he was convinced, not just because of the to get married. And ultimately, thanks to his patient, he got rewarded, got married. Subhanallah, got more wealth and ended up Subhanallah.

Such an amazing wife.

Yeah, and such an amazing wife. And ended up being elevated. Subhanallah. Just because of patience. Subhanallah, nothing comes easy when the beautiful quote at the end that you gave was how you define patience, you define patience with how do you react? Do you react based on how you feel or do you make the decision that you know makes the most sense for your goals? That's real patience. That being said, we'll see you tomorrow for another episode.