In a season of consumerist madness, let’s be grateful, and give:

At this time of year the stores are pushing their sales at us. Advertising is everywhere. There if a frenzy to buy, buy, buy. Let’s realize that this is not a spiritual way of life. It’s not an appropriate lifestylefor someone who is dedicated to God. The consumerist madness is a deception. There’s no joy orpeace attached to it. It’s a shallow illusion.
Look at what society has done to itself in the name of consumerism. A day of thanks (Thanksgiving) has become the prelude to “Black Friday”, the biggest shopping day of the year. Itused to be that Black Friday did not begin until Friday morning, out of respect for Thanksgiving. Then the starting gun was moved to midnight, and now it has crept into Thursday evening. Nothing is sacred.
The Prophet ‘Isa ibn Maryam (Jesus the son of Mary), peace be upon him, has been turned into a marketing strategy. His purported birthday has become a month of shopping insanity, presidedover by a mythical sub-deity named Santa. People go into debt, they fight over sale goods… no mention is made of faith.
We Muslims fall prey to thesame consumerist lifestyle. Sometimes the holy monthof Ramadan becomes a month of shopping, sleeping and binge eating, astaghfirullah.
Let us – Christians, Muslims,Jews and all people of God – not follow this path. Let’shew to a way of sacrifice, zakat (purification), sadaqah (charity), zuhd (giving up material luxury).We don’t have to be monks, but we must focus on the things that matter: faith and family.
There are movements that advocate a simple living, back-to-nature, low-impactlifestyle. In Islam this is called zuhd , which could be translated as detachment or asceticism. Zuhd is a choice that a person makes to give up the hunger for material possessions and transgressive carnal experiences, and live a simple lifestyle dedicated to God.
That’s what we need.
The faith in our hearts is more important than the brand name of the clothes we wear. Where our feet carry us – to someplace good or bad – is more important than the cost of our shoes. The sincerity in our hearts is more important than any gift. May Allah help us to see what is important in life.
The Enjoyment of Delusion
There’s a powerful verse from the Bible, Proverbs 30:8-9:
Give me neither poverty nor riches,
grant me only my share of bread to eat,
for fear that surrounded byplenty, I should fall away
and say, “Yahweh – who is Yahweh?”
or else in destitution, take to stealing
and profane the name of my God.
(Yahweh is an ancient Hebrew name for God).
If you visit the shopping malls at Christmastime, andread the news stories of people lining up from the night before and huddling in sleeping bags in order tobuy the latest gadgets, then trampling each other in the rush; if you turn on the TV to the usual Christmas comedies and “Frosty the Snowman” cartoons, you see that God has been forgotten, and has even become taboo. It’s not politically correct tospeak of God. Just watch what we broadcast, be hypnotized by our Christmas elevator music, buy and forget…
Allah says about this:
“Know that the life of thisworld is but amusement and diversion and adornment and boasting to one another and competition in increase of wealth and children – like the example of a rainwhose [resulting] plant growth pleases the tillers; then it dries and you see it turned yellow; then it becomes debris. And in the Hereafter is severe punishment and forgiveness from Allah and approval. And what is the worldly life except the enjoyment of delusion.” – Quran, Surat Al-Hadeed, 57:20
This theme is struck repeatedly in the Quran. The amusement and adornment of the dunya is an illusion that dries up and crumbles like a corn stalk, and becomes dust. It is empty, the enjoyment of delusion . Wow. That phrase, “enjoyment of delusion”, makes me think of a madman alone in a room, tied in a straight jacket, engaged in a pleasant delusion playing only in his mind.
I know people who have a bedroom devoted to all thejunk that they have boughtbut do not use. They never enter that room and the door is kept locked. Isn’t that a kind of mental illness?
Gratitude
How do we resist the onslaught of the season? How do we remember Allah?/