When Allah Tests You – Nouman Ali Khan

Allah says this town that used to live on the coast, by the way, if it’s a coastal town and you can already imagine use your minds, their economy depends on the sea. There are fishermen, right?
They do trade or coast you know, ships embark on their docks and they do trade with them, you know, or they go out and you know, get their food from the ocean. So that’s already understood. And Allah says they used to violate in the middle of matter of the Sabbath meaning they carried on doing their business even when Allah told them not to on Saturdays this was the time where they’re not supposed to do it, but they will do it and why would they do so why would they violate the Sabbath they have six other days to earn their their income or you know, fish for you know, for their fish.

So he says………

إِذْ تَأْتِيهِمْ حِيتَانُهُمْ يَوْمَ سَبْتِهِمْ شُرَّعًا
When on the day of Saturday, when it’s haram for them to go impermissible for them to go fishing. شُرَّعًا actually suggest that the fish would actually come to them. تَأْتِيهِمْ حِيتَانُهُمْ they don’t have to go to the fish, the fish are coming to them blinking time, Hey, you want to catch me?
It’s easy catch today. And they’re jumping up and down. They’re doing like flips in the air like, Man, this is easy catch. On Saturdays the fish would come up like It’s a festival. And other days وَيَوْمَ لَا يَسْبِتُونَ ۙ لَا تَأْتِيهِمْ the days that they don’t have Saturday the fish don’t come easy.

So they noticed even though they can get it’s not like they had no fish to catch, they could still catch, but it wasn’t easy. But on Saturdays, it was super easy.
It would come to them it would run toward the fish would run towards them. Right. And so and these are Muslims, by the way, they’re Muslims. Now imagine just by analogy, so you can, it’s closer to your in my context, imagine that you run a store, right?
You have a store, and you get no customers, you got like two customers a day. Most of the time you’re sitting there you know playing like you know, Crossy Road or something on your phone, you’re doing nothing, no customer show up. And then it’s like one o’clock or 13:15 13:15 you leave your store and you head towards the ‏مسجد by 13:45. The prayer is going to start and you’re going to be backed by three o’clock.

But every single week 12:45 30, 40, 50 customers start just coming through the door. And they’re buying everything stuff you’re trying to sell for six months, nobody’s touched it. They’re putting everything in the cart, and they’re buying, buying buying. And then Friday prayers getting late?
And you say no, no, you can’t buy right now. Oh, yeah, forget it. I won’t buy now. And then they just and you don’t see them again. Until next Friday. Right?

Exactly for the time for them there. Other than that, you get maybe 10% sales 90% of the sales happen, right as Friday prayers coming. Right?
So it’s pretty tempting to I mean, come on. I’ll still catch two rakat, Or it’s not that Haram is it?
Just one Friday, it’s not like I will become a non Muslim. It’s not so bad. So you start making calculations in your head, what’s the bigger loss?
missing the prayer or missing all these customers?

So this happens to these people over and over again. And eventually they start getting in the habit of violating the Saturday, they saw it enough times come in their face?
Probably not the first time they saw the fish come out. And they said, Yeah, I don’t care about Saturday. I don’t care about the Sabbath. It didn’t happen like that. It’s a slow, but regular temptation is hitting you every Friday, right?

It’s in their case every Saturday. So eventually they cave and it became a normal thing for them. It became a normal thing for them to violate the Sabbath. And so Allah says about these people that started violating the Sabbath {كَذَٰلِكَ نَبْلُوهُمْ} that is how we tested them {بِمَا كَانُوا يَفْسُقُونَ} because of other corruptions they were engaged in. Now this is a clue Allah is giving us.

Why did Allah test them in that way?
When Allah sees that one kind of corruption comes out in a person, one kind of sin they don’t care about. Then Allah opens doors to other sins. And he makes those other sins just right accessible to them. And he wants to see are you actually remorseful for the other smaller deeds, other corruptions that you’re engaged in?
Or you you want to walk away from them?
Or do you want if other doors were open to other corruption, you do that too, you will do that you take that also, you jump at it too.

And Allah says, This is how we tested them because of the corruption they used to engage in. Meaning these kinds of tests sometimes come to people that dabble in sin, that engage in corruption, and they don’t walk back from it. There’s what anybody can make a mistake. When you make a mistake. You make tauba you walk back, but if you refuse to walk back, and you keep being corrupt and corrupt and corrupting, corrupt, then Allah opens doors to even worse haram for you.

Now, why would Allah do that?
Allah does that in other places He describes that إِنَّمَا نُمْلِي لَهُمْ لِيَزْدَادُوا إِثْمًا
[03:178]
Allah extends their rope for them so they can earn even more sense. I always give the same analogy when I described this principle of the Quran, when Allah allows people to keep going
وَيَمُدُّهُمْ فِي طُغْيَانِهِمْ يَعْمَهُونَ
[2:15]
He keeps extending them in their rebellion. The analogy my teacher gave me is still stuck in my head. He gave the analogy of a dog. If you have a dog on a leash that’s one foot long, dog wants to run the cat because the leash keeps tugging at him, right.

So what the what the owner does to punish the dog, instead of giving him a one foot leash, he gives him a 200 foot leash, it’s still a leash, it’s still tied to the tree, and the dog thinks it’s free for 199 feet. Until he hits the 200 foot, what happens to him, he gets choked so hard because he was running so fast, you understand.
So the one foot leash was actually safer for the dog, the 200 foot leash actually kills him, destroys him, you want to rebel?
go ahead, you think you don’t have a leash on you. Go ahead and run, see how far you go. And the further you go, the harder the Choke, choke will be at the end.

That’s the idea. Allah says you want this then I’ll give you {نُوَلِّهِ مَا تَوَلَّىٰ} [04:115]
Quran says we’ll turn him in the direction he turns into, you want to turn in a certain direction, okay, I’ll open up all the doors that the road you want to take, Allah will not stop you from taking the road.
As a matter of fact, someone wants to take the right road, Allah will open more doors for them in the right direction
وَالَّذِينَ جَاهَدُوا فِينَا لَنَهْدِيَنَّهُمْ سُبُلَنَا
[29:69]
Somebody wants to take the wrong road, Allah will open more doors and more wrong and more wrong. Go ahead, take it, take it, take it, he’s not making you do it. He’s giving you the choice.

You can walk away from any of them at any point. But the other important thing before we get to the next ayat and maybe we won’t get to it today. Maybe in the next week, I’ll cover this more in depth, the response and what happens in the story.
But today, what I wanted to highlight is a kind of test that you and I have to be ready for, from Allah azzawa jal. And what’s that test?

That test is that the halal, the right way may seem like it requires more work. It requires more effort. It’s not as convenient. And the wrong way, is actually wide open, and extremely tempting. And super convenient and effortless. Where the good the benefit that you’re seeking from the halal, the Haram way. You have to, if you do the right thing, you have to make a lot of effort for it to you don’t have to, it won’t come to you, you have to go to it.
But the Haram you don’t even have to go to it. It’s coming to you like the fish are coming to you. Right?
You don’t have to go to them. They’re coming to you. تَأْتِيهِمْ حِيتَانُهُمْ يَوْمَ سَبْتِهِمْ شُرَّعًا
So when something is wrong, sometimes Allah will have that the test to you and me will be it’ll be knocking on your door.

Hey, you don’t have to come pursue me I’ll pursue you. The fishes income hunt me. You know, you don’t have to catch me, I’ll come to you. I’ll jump right in your basket. You know. So this this idea is a very powerful one, we have to look out for this test.
Because are we people that run after convenience. And as a result of looking for convenience, or quickly fulfilling what we desire, whether it’s money or lust or anything else, whatever we desire, there’s a halal road to take. And that road may be difficult, and there’s a haram road to take. And that’s super convenient, and extremely tempting.
And it whets the appetite and someone says I should just go for that it’s so much easier. Why am I making things hard on myself?
Why even put myself through that difficulty?

This is how Allah test not disbelievers. Remind yourself this is how Allah tests a believing community. These were a believing community they believed in Revelation. This is them.