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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
I want to talk very briefly about Black Friday, but first, I don’t want to get into the controversy over the name. Some Muslims take offense to the term “black” being associated with the holy day of Friday; personally I don’t, but I respect other people’s opinions. This is not the topic of this brief talk. What I will be looking at is the practice of what they call Black Friday, so I ask you to focus on the practice and not the name. For those who may not know, this day happens the day after Thanksgiving in America, and it’s now spreading to other countries. It marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season, and retailers take advantage by offering their best deals of the year on this one day only—50, 60, 70 percent off. In many cases, they give the highest discounts and even give away free items to the first hundred people in line, or whatever it is. So what happens is you have people lining up for hours and hours before the stores open, and in some extreme cases, people actually camp outside the doors the night before.
Now, I want to mention three ahadith and one ayah from the Quran. In the term of the hadith, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Whoever gives up prayer is a disbeliever.” In another term of the hadith, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “The first thing which a person will be brought to account for on the Day of Judgment is the Salah.” The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) once was standing in prayer so long that his feet began to swell. His wife, Aisha (radiallahu anha), seeing this, asked, “Why do you endure such pain when all of your sins have been forgiven?” He said, “Should I not be a grateful servant?” And in the Quran, Surah 74, ayah 42, the people in Paradise asked the people in Hell, “What caused you to be in hell?” and they reply, “We were not of those who prayed.”
Now, what does all of this have to do with quote-unquote “Black Friday”? What these quotes show us is just how critical prayer is. Now think about how many of us will wake up at five in the morning, or maybe earlier, to stand for hours and hours for those doorbuster deals, but we don’t wake up for Fajr prayer. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no problem waking up early and standing in line for a good deal. That’s being frugal, and that’s consistent with Islamic principles. I sometimes have gone early and stood in those lines—I mean, maybe not at 5:00 a.m., but I’ve done it before—but I also pray my Fajr Salah.
For those who are thinking, “This doesn’t apply to me because stores don’t do this where I live,” understand the principle of what I’m saying, because it’s the principle that applies to all Muslims. The principle is making sure that our priorities are in order. We save money and we plan for our retirement, but do we save money and plan for our Hajj? While we’re at work, we take lunch breaks every day, but on Fridays, we don’t take a break to go to Juma prayer. Some of us sacrifice food and drink as part of a diet to lose weight, but we don’t make that same sacrifice in Ramadan by fasting. We say we worship Allah alone, but we’re constantly striving to please people.
So, this is just a reminder for myself first, and to any Muslim or a god-fearing person listening to this. Let’s use this day, yes, to save money, but first and foremost, let’s use it to reflect on our priorities. Do we sincerely and truly have Allah, have God, our Creator, at the center of our lives? And are we putting Him first before anything else? If we are—if we’re waking up for Fajr, if we’re praying our five daily prayers, and at the very least striving to practice the essentials—then yes, go out and stand in those lines and buy whatever you want, assuming, of course, it’s halal, it’s permissible by our Deen, and that you’re not going to any extremes to save a few.
Now, what’s the solution if we’re not waking up for Fajr and praying on a consistent basis, or if we’re motivated more by dunya than Deen? I recommend listening to a khutbah that I gave called “How to Transform Our Islamic Faith into Action.” The link is in the description down below, or you can go to my website, aydenzayn.com—that’s a-y-d-e-n z-a-y-n dot com.
Again, I want to say that this issue has a lot of other deeper issues associated with it, like mass consumerism, materialism, the actual term that some people may have a problem with, etc. These are different discussions altogether. What I looked at here is the effort that some of us exert and the sacrifices we make simply to save money (dunya), but we don’t exert that same effort for our Deen. Priorities—that’s my message here, and I encourage you not to lose sight of it. Allah knows best, and may He guide us all.
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