Let me begin with this homily of the most relevant and profound one from our leader, Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w). He says: “The people who face the most difficult tests are the prophets, then the righteous, then those following them in degree. A person is tried according to his religion. So, if there is firmness in his religion, then the trial is increased, and if there is a weakness, then it is lightened. Verily a trial remains with a servant until he walks the earth having no sin left upon him.”
Today, the whole of humankind is undergoing one trial, tribulation, challenge, or other. Contemplated carefully, it would be discovered that difficult times such as these are not new. Ironically, however, humankind has learned only one lesson perfectly well from history – their inability to learn lessons of history! Had the contrary been the case, perhaps we would not be here, in this abyss, wearing the toga of remorse and melancholy, bewailing the seemingly inimitable. Had the contrary been the case, we would have remembered that life has always been lived like a pendulum that swings hither and thither, forward and backwards.
The Almighty refers to days such as this as al-Ayyam – the days of life; al-Ayyam: days of utter incertitude; al-Ayyam – the days of victory and loss; al-Ayyam- the rolling stones of life between happiness and sadness; al-Ayyam – the days of utter helpless when wisdom becomes folly when medics fall sick when farmers go hungry when the powerful become powerless.
Such days are referred to in the Quran as al-Ayyam – Read the last testament thus- “If (and whenever) you are afflicted”, so says our Creator – by hunger, by want, by desires not met, unfulfilled hopes- “be sure that a similar affliction has been experienced by others. Such days (al-Ayyam – days of varying fortunes) are given to men and men by and in turns: that He (our Creator) may know those that believe, and that He may take to Himself from your ranks Martyr-witnesses (to Truth); be sure that He loves not those that who do wrong (Quran 3: 140).
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Brethren, Al-Ayyam – days when it feels as if we never went through pleasure and plenitude before appearing to be here. Days when both the rich and the poor are now equal – equals, not by choice but by force. These are days when the rich are crying not out of poverty but out of fear of becoming poor. I once heard that the rich also cry; indeed, the rich are crying now!
As for the poor, the current situation is familiar because it is strange; it is strange because these are times being superintended by familiar strangers! The poor are therefore not crying, not at all. Rather, the poor are ‘laughing’. The poor are ‘laughing’ at the sight of the rich who are crying and shouting that these times are hard.
For the poor, the times have always been hard. For the poor, life has always been about living on the margins of life, of existence; of picking crumbs from the stable and table of the rich. For the poor, life is all about looking up to the skies, to the face of the Almighty in the hope that He would one day do it like it did when he turned the desert land of Makkah and Madinah into the land of plenty and security.
For the poor, the days and times have always been hard, very hard indeed. Before today, the poor in Nigeria had always lived on the margins of existence. He has always known for a fact that life refers to “days of days” – a day in which he would find something to eat; then days and nights when he would go hungry. Thus, when Ronald Reagan once said that “inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man”, these descriptions were germane only to the rich who lived at the centre of plum and pleasure. As far as the poor are concerned, inflation is a register that is relevant to the ‘haves’, not the ‘have-nots’.
How then would the poor survive particularly now that a bag of rice is heading towards a hundred-thousand-naira mark? But that question is probably not as urgent as this one – who exactly are the poor in this nation today? He is my neighbour- his salary per month remains thirty thousand naira! He has an aged mother. He has four children. He must pay rent. He must pay school fees! He must report to the office every day! A bottle of insulin that he takes which helps to put his blood sugar level under control now costs eighteen thousand naira! He needs to take at least one within two weeks! He desires to live, but life keeps beckoning him to exit!!!
But have we not all become poor? Are we not all suffering from different degrees of poverty- poverty of faith even as our factories are daily being converted to places of worship? Are we all not suffering from poverty of contentment, compassion, and empathy? What else other than the poverty of empathy and compassion would make a man turn his fellow man into a chattel worthy of being sold or killed? Billions of naira have been allocated to the village. But the only new thing inhabitants of my city have heard of is that our chief is now a proud owner of a private jet!
