Assalamu’alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh
Bismillahir- Rahmanir-Rahim
1. Opening
Friends whose hearts long for Paradise,
Has this nagging question ever crossed your mind: “Why is stepping to the mosque or seeking a halal plate of provision met with so many stumbling blocks, while the road to sin and haram provision seems rolled out with a red carpet, obstacle-free?”Know that this is no coincidence. This is Sunnatullah_—Allah’s fixed way, deliberately designed as an instrument of testing [_ibtilā’] to filter and examine who among us possesses pure faith. Allah does not look at the quantity of our lives, but at the quality of our God-consciousness.Let us reflect on Allah SWT’s words in Surah Al-Mulk:
الَّذِي خَلَقَ الْمَوْتَ وَالْحَيَاةَ لِيَبْلُوَكُمْ أَيُّكُمْ أَحْسَنُ عَمَلًا ۚ وَهُوَ الْعَزِيزُ الْغَفُورُ
“ who created death and life to test you [as to] which of you is best in deed. And He is the Almighty, the Most Forgiving.”[QS. Al-Mulk: 2]
This design of testing is very real, and Allah affirms in another verse that behind every dynamic of life, there are great signs for those who reflect:
إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَآيَاتٍ وَإِنْ كُنَّا لَمُبْتَلِينَ
“Indeed in that are signs, and indeed, We are ever testing.”
[QS. Al-Mu’minūn: 30]
Psychologically and spiritually, Allah deliberately hides ease behind the hardship of the halal path to preserve the purity of our motivation. Imagine if the formula were reversed: the halal path was always instant and made you automatically rich, while the haram path was complicated and made you instantly poor.If that were the case, people would flock to obedience not out of love, fear, or submission to Allah, but merely to chase worldly ease. Sincerity would vanish, and the essence of worship would lose its deepest meaning
.2. Lessons and Message
From this sunnatullah we draw a very lofty moral lesson. On the world’s stage, we often witness a visible material paradox. A sinner—say, the owner of a haram business like a nightclub or brothel—can rake in millions or even billions of rupiah in a single night with such ease.Yet in another corner, we see a postal worker or an old mechanic drenched in oil, smeared with mud, and beaten by torrential rain. They wring out their sweat from morning till evening just to bring home a packet of rice and barely enough money for their family.Outwardly, the world may deem the mechanic lowly and the nightclub owner noble because of his wealth. But in the eyes of Sharia, the layers of physical mud, black stains of oil, and wetness of the mechanic’s sweat are far cleaner, more fragrant, and more radiant than the luxury of a desk in a usury business or a sinful enterprise that is “filthy” before Allah SWT.
There is a true story about an old public minibus driver in a small town. One wet afternoon after rain, he found a briefcase left by a passenger on the back seat. When he opened it to look for the owner’s identity, his eyes widened. The bag was full of cash—hundreds of millions of rupiah, an amount he had never imagined in his entire life.At that moment, Satan whispered ease: “Just take it, this is a windfall. Your child needs tuition, your wife is sick.” The old driver trembled, tears falling as he thought of his life’s hardship. But the pearl of wisdom in his heart shouted louder: “This is not my right!”With a shaking body and his remaining strength, he drove his minibus searching for the owner’s address until late at night. When he handed the bag back intact, the owner wept with gratitude and tried to give him a large bundle of money as a thank-you gift.The old driver smiled and shook his head, tears wiping his wrinkled cheeks, then said: “Don’t reduce the reward of my honesty with this money, sir. I only want to feed my wife and children with money that is clearly halal, not from someone else’s property left behind.”That is the beauty of a soul that passed the heavy test of the halal path.
Why are gold and diamonds hidden deep in the earth’s belly, requiring sweat to dig up and temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius to smelt? Why aren’t they just lying on the sidewalk? The answer is simple: because they are of high value. So it is with Paradise and Allah’s pleasure. The halal path is deliberately made uphill and exhausting because it is a “smelting” process to forge the mentality of a noble servant. Meanwhile, sin and the haram path are like plastic waste—they’re everywhere, very easy to find on the roadside, yet they hold no value in the sight of history.
We can be strange in our thinking sometimes. There are people who complain: “Ustadh, I’ve tried an honest, halal herbal business, but why is the profit so slow? Meanwhile my neighbor who joined a scam investment and sells counterfeit goods just bought a new car so fast?”I said to him: “My brother, do you want to enter Paradise or a car dealership?” We often protest to Allah about why the right path is jammed and full of red lights. Yet, those red lights are installed so we don’t crash and arrive safely! If we insist on taking the highway of sin—smooth lanes but ending in the cliff of Hell—never mind a new car, our faith will be smashed to pieces. Besides, what’s the point of riding a luxury car if all the way you’re being chased by an ultra-strict “tax audit” of the Hereafter?
3. Conclusion and Closing
Friends, difficulty in taking the halal path is not a sign that Allah does not love us. On the contrary, it is a sign that Allah is valuing every drop of our sweat at a very high price. Never envy the ease obtained by those who commit haram; their ease is _istidrāj_—a trap of pleasure that slowly leads them to destruction.Stay proud to be a mechanic smeared with oil, stay firm as a weary worker, as long as the path we take is under the umbrella of Allah SWT’s pleasure. Because in the end, it is not how much wealth we accumulate, but how clean that wealth is when accounted for before Him.
. والله أعلم بالصواب
الحمد لله رب العالمين
Wassalamu’alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh.
Abu Sultan Al-Qadrie
