Between Cisco and Sujud: Earning Your Livelihood, Taking Benefit from the Corporate Lifestyle

A Lecture by Suhaib Webb | Transcribed by Fuseina Mohamad

Part I | Part II | Q&A

Allah mentions the ruling on seeking a livelihood at the end of Surah Al Jumu`ah, “And when the prayer has been concluded, disperse within the land and seek from the bounty of Allah, and remember Allah often that you may succeed.” (Qur’an, 62:10) After you have finished the prayer, go search out the fadl (blessings) of Allah. Here this means work, as in a livelihood. The ulema (scholars) said that seeking a livelihood could have the following rulings:

1. Waajib (obligatory) for somebody who  has to, fulfill the basic needs of life
2. Recommended for someone who is not sure about his livelihood: does he have enough to make ends meet? It may be that seeking another job is recommended.
3. Makrooh (discouraged); if the person doubts that what he or she is doing is halal (permissible) or haraam (forbidden)
4. Haram (forbidden); if somebody seeks a livelihood from the forbidden things which Allah and His Messenger salla Allahu `alayhi wa sallam (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) prohibited or it is earned in a way that harms others.

But the general ruling on seeking a livelihood is ibaha (permissibility) or waajib. For someone who has to seek a livelihood to fulfill the basic needs of life, this is an obligation on the person.

The Proof for this is the statement of Allah,

“And it is He who created every thing upon the earth for you.”

Umar (radi Allahu `anhu – may Allah be pleased with him) one day came into the masjid of the Prophet (s) and found two young people, young men. They were sitting in the masjid of the Prophet (s). He asked them, “What do you do?”

They said, “We are from those people who worship Allah.”

Umar (r) said to them, “No, where do you work?”

They said to him, “We don’t work. We’re just righteous people who just make dhikr (remembrance) of Allah. We’re alhamdullilah (all praise is due to Allah) those people whom Allah chose to be close to Him.”

Then Umar said to them, “Wait one minute.” If Umar says to you “wait one minute” that means duck and cover. He came back with a stick and he began to hit them and he said, “Go work somewhere. Go find a job.”

So sometimes we find in our Islamic discourse, especially after the age of the righteous generations, when there was a mixture of foreign philosophies with some Islamic theology, that there is the understanding that being a successful person or being someone who works hard to be successful is something that we should be ashamed of. It is not something that we should be proud of – something that we recognize as a blessing from Allah. But Allah says rizq (provisions) al fadl (blessings). In Surah Al Jumu`ah He calls provisions fadl min Allah: “Seek from the blessings of Allah” (62:10), meaning wealth and provisions are from His blessings.

The Prophet (s) said in a sound hadith to Hakeem ibn Hizaam ibn Khuwaylid, “Hakeem, the upper hand is better than the lower hand.” We look at the Companions of the Prophet (s). What made them unique people is that they were successful. Many of them were successful in this life and successful with Allah. So, for example, if you take the ten who were promised paradise by the Prophet (s) and implant them in today’s society they would be on Forbes’ list of the 50 richest people. They were successful people, and because they were successful people they were able to help the Prophet (s) more than anyone else.

The best example is Abu Bakr (r) because his property and his money gave him transcendence, so he was able to free the slaves, he was able to give charity, and he was able to donate to the battles of the Prophet (s). In fact, the day after he became khalifa (caliph), Umar (r) saw him walking to work.

Umar said, “O Abu Bakr, where are you going?”

He said, “I have to work.”

Umar said, “You are the khalifa of the Muslims. How are you going to work? You’re going to be busy.”

Abu Bakr said, “I have to have a livelihood.” And this is how the salary of the khalifa was initiated because Abu Bakr still wanted to work.

Abdul Rahman ibn Awf (s), one of the ten promised paradise by the Prophet (s), when he migrated to Medina, as related by Imam Al Bukhari in his collection, came and gave salaams to the Prophet (s) after he arrived in Medina. The Prophet (s) said to him, “Where are you going?”

Abdul Rahman (r) said, “I’m going to the markets.” Why? To get busy, to develop some type of sustainable income for himself. The Prophet (s) did not rebuke him. The Prophet (s) did not refute or rebuke him for going to the markets because he knew that Abdul Rahman ibn Awf wanted to get married to an Ansari woman and needed to settle his affairs so we gather from this that that working and making an income is permissible.

Even those people who made hijrah (migrated) to Medina, we see in the Quran and also in the hadith of the Prophet (s) that there was some effort to help of them financially with their hijrah when they arrived in Medina, such that the Ansari who was helping Abdul Rahman ibn Awf said to him, “I will give you one of my houses.” They didn’t go without any type of economic promise or hope of economic benefits, although they struggled.

One of the reasons that we look at the companions of the Prophet (s), is because they represent the balanced model that we need today. There is the story of the Imam who played soccer and was fired from his position of Imam. So he asked his community why. They said because holy men cannot play soccer.

What kind of understanding do these people have about Islam? Subhan’Allah (glory be to Allah), it’s a very strange understanding of Islam. So his job is to eat biryani and mansaf, and die before he’s thirty-six because he doesn’t exercise? Then we say rahimahu Allah, kana rajulan salihan wa lakinahu kana yakul biryani kathira (may Allah have mercy on him, he was a good man). When he dies we say, “Oh he was a pious man but he ate a lot, masha’Allah.”

Maybe we think that the Prophet (s) encouraged poverty when he said “Allahuma ahyini miskeenan, O Allah resurrect me poor.” This du`a’ (supplication) is sometimes used by people to say that the Prophet (s) discouraged people from seeking a livelihood. But as the  Sh. Tahar Rayan taught us, what the Prophet (s) means here is “Resurrect me muftaqiran ilayk (reliant on You).” Resurrect me so that when I am resurrected the only reliance I have is on You. We have the term miskeen which is literally somebody who does not have any property and so on and so forth. But also we have the term miskeen for the one who relies on Allah, trusts in Allah alone, and this is the one the Prophet (s) meant.

What other proofs for this to do we have? The statement of the Prophet (s) when he said the best property is the property of the righteous person. And we have his companion Abu Talha Zaid ibn Sahal when he gave his garden for the sake of Allah. Allah said you will not attain bir (righteousness) until you give from what you love (3:92). Abu Talha said, “I love this garden,” so he gave it fi sabil Allah (for the sake of Allah).

Anas ibn Malik, the narrator of this hadith in al-Muwatta, says this was from the most beloved of Abu Talha’s property. So Imam al Baji al Maaliki, the great scholar, in al Muntaqa he says that it is acceptable for someone to love his property, though there are conditions for that love.  He described one of the greatest companions of the Prophet (s) Abu Talha saying that the most beloved thing to him from his property was the garden, and this wasn’t to debase himself but this was to state the reality of that person.

Aisha bint Abu Bakr (radi Allahu `anha – may Allah be pleased with her) used to love to wear under her jilbab a red saffron colored dress. She used to like this color because it was a beautiful color. Sometimes we think that the companions of the Prophet were walking around in rags because they wanted to. No, the poverty of the Prophet (s) and the poverty of his companions was due to circumstance, not choice.

Imam Abdul Rahman ibn Al Jawzi al Hanbali had a very strong, very sharp tongue. He said, “Those extreme people if they knew that the Prophet loved to wear the Yemeni dress (which is a very comfortable type of dress) and he loved nice perfume and he loved sweetmeat, if they knew this they would apostate and leave Islam.” He said because they made Islam so difficult they would not be able to fathom how the Prophet lived his life very simply.

As ibn Qayim mentions in Zad al Ma’ad—a four volume masterpiece about the Prophet—he said the Prophet (s) was very simple. Whatever somebody gave him, he would wear it as long as it was not something forbidden by Allah.

Among the great students of the companions of the Prophet (s) some of them were poor because of circumstance and some of them were rich. A good example is the grandfather and the father of Imam Maalik. They were people who had good wealth. Imam Maalik used to wear the clothes of a king when he related hadith. He would send his servants to the people and they would ask them, “Do you want to learn hadith or Islamic law?” They would say to him or her, “We want to learn Islamic law.” Then Imam Maalik would come out immediately. But if they said, “We want to learn from the hadith of the Prophet,” Imam Maalik would go make ghusl, put on ‘ud (incense), put on the best clothes he had, then come and teach hadith.

People actually used to chastise him. Some ascetic people wrote him letters and they said to him, “Why are you dressed like that? Why do you look nice? You should be more pious, you should be like this…”

And his response is interesting. He said, “What you are doing is khayr (good) and what I am doing is khayr (good). Khalas (finished), leave me alone.”

Many of us know Imam Abu Hanifa as a teacher and a faqih (expert in Islamic jurisprudence) who used to relate hadith on behalf of the Prophet. But if you wanted to buy silk in the city of Abu Hanifa the best place to buy silk was his shop that he ran with his brother. So even though he was an Imam he still had his business; he still made money to be sufficient.

Imam Ahmed ibn Hanbal once was asked, “If somebody has a hundred thousand dinar can he be from the people of zuhud, can he be a pious person?”

Imam Ahmed, who was the strictest of the four as far as being a person of zuhud (asceticism), said yes as long as the person doesn’t put love for that money in his heart. And this is a strict person.

Imam Ahmed also noted that the qualties of a mufit are five; one of them is that he should earn enough to keep himself self sufficient.

al-Shaf’i used to say, “If I’m busy with the basal (onions), I cannot think about the masail (issues at hand).”

Imam Abu Hamad al Ghazaali, who died 505 after hijri, many times people see him as the archetype of the ascetic personality. But once he lamented, “Ya salaam! (O peace!) There are some people, they made everything haraam and everything difficult on the people until the only thing that you can find halal to eat, if you follow the opinion of these people, is the grass on the ground.” And then he chastised them. He said, “What is wrong with these people? Why did they make the religion this way?”

So the question is what is zuhud? What does it mean to be a person who is a zaahid? And how can we gain this understanding of az-zaahid? Is it a condition related to the physical or to the internal?

As with most of the scholars, ibn Qayim mentioned, in Madarij al Salikin and others, zuhud doesn’t necessarily have to do with how much you have, but zuhud deals with how you handle what you have. Being in corporate America and working in corporate America has nothing to do with your piety. It has nothing to do with your piety. The Prophet (s) said that taqwa (piety) is here, pointing to his heart.

Some people came to me and they said, “Oh you are much more pious than us.”

I said, “Why?”

“Because you sit in the office all day and you read books, and you don’t go out, and you don’t mix with this and that. Masha’Allah.”

I said, “That’s not piety, man, that’s luck. That’s qadr (Allah’s decree).”

But the scholars used to say something interesting about Umar ibn Abdul Aziz. They said that they respect Umar ibn Abdul Aziz more because he had the propensity to do wrong and he did not do it. He had the chance to do wrong and he did not do it. That’s why Umar ibn Abdul Aziz is respected more than others. Those zuhadaa, those people who used to sit in their offices away from the people, they said, “By Allah we respect Umar more then we respect ourselves.” Why? Because he had temptations in front of him and he controlled himself and left the evil things for the sake of Allah.

Another point is where did the Prophet’s companions settle after the time of Umar (r)? Umar kept them in Medina, but after the time of Umar (r), the majority of the companions of the Prophet went where? To the caves? To the mountains? They went to the major urban centers of the world: Kufa (Iraq), Basra (Iraq), Sham (Syria), Masr (Egypt). They went all over the world to the major cities, except for a few of them, and they engaged the people. That’s how Islam spread. And when they went to those places were Muslims the majority or the minority? Nobody ever thinks about this. Islam was still a minority, but they functioned within the society, brought benefit to the society, and by them, the Companions of the Prophet, Islam spread. By dealing with the people. By engaging the people.

And that’s why when Umar was asked who is the best person: the one who flees from the people or the one who mixes with the people, he said the one who mixes with the people. He said the one who mixes with the people are those Allah has tested.

So my point is, sometimes I notice that people feel an inferiority complex because they are in a professional field. Wallahi (by Allah) you should not feel this way. Your example, all of you, is like those Yemenis who went to Malaysia. How did they spread Islam in Malaysia? It was through business. Through dealing with the people, engaging with the people. We are not going to spread Islam through an Imam who sits in an office. Islam is not going to be presented to the people in America if a reporter comes to one of our religious leaders in the community and interviews him on TV and he says, “Islam means peace. Muslims are good people. We don’t do anything wrong, we’re a constitutional religion,” and so on and so forth, and they have no one to talk to or to see. So, by Allah, to some degree I envy you, because you’re able to interact with the people.