Time Is Not Money
By Abdulfatah Oladeinde
Friday, May 02, 2008
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•Lagos
State Governor, Raji Babatunde (SAN) (left), exchanging
pleasantries with the Christian Association of Nigeria,
(CAN), Lagos State Chairman during the opening ceremony
of a one-day seminar for religious leaders in Lagos
State at the state secretariat, Alausa recently. Watching
(middle) is the Chief Iman of Lagos, Sheikh Garba Akinola
Ibrahim.
PHOTO: Sun News Publishing
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Islam encourages Muslims to care for time, to utilise it
and not to waste it. Besides, it holds them responsible for
their time. The righteous early Muslims were aware of that
responsibility, so they acted accordingly. Describing their
care for time, Hassan Al-Basry said, "I saw those people
and how they were more careful about their time than about
their Dirhams and Dinars [i.e. their money]."
An important requirement for a Muslim's life is to be careful
about time, to invest it wisely and to benefit from it. In
this regard, Ibn-ul Qayyim says, "The highest, most worthy
and most useful of reflection is what is intended for Allah
and the Hereafter.
There are various forms of reflection intended for Allah.
One of them is reflecting on time, duty and function and focusing
entirely on it, for the knowledgeable one is the breed of
his time. If he wastes it, all his interests are wasted, for
all interests arise from time. If he wastes his time, he can
never regain it." Also, Imam Shafi'i said, "Out
of my company with Sufis (spiritualists), I benefited only
two things, one of which is their saying: like a sword, time
will cut you if you do not cut it. ..." In other words,
if you do not spend time doing something useful, you are the
loser by wasting it.
As expressed by Imam Hassan Al-Banna, "Time is life itself."
Reflecting on this, Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyyah's said: "One's
time is in fact his age. It is the material of his eternal
life either in everlasting joy or painful torture. It passes
more quickly than clouds do. It is only the time one dedicates
to Allah that constitutes one's real life and age.
The rest does not count; the life he leads in it is only animal
life. Compared to a life of indulgence in ‘appetitive’
activities, false aspirations and negligence of Allah's remembrance
- and at best in sleep and being idle - death is a much better
alternative."
Time is considered a vehicle for work. According to Ibn-ul-Qayyim,
"The year is like a tree, months are its branches, days
are the branch sticks, hours are its leaves, and the breaths
are its fruits. Therefore, if one's breaths are in obedience
[to Allah and His Messenger], the fruits of his tree are good.
If they are in disobedience, his fruits are bitter. The harvest
is on the Appointed Day, when one's fruits are found out to
be either good or bitter."
Such is the Islamic view of time, and such were the ways of
the righteous early Muslims’ ways with it. How do we
compare with them now? Obviously, there is a big gap between
the way they cared for time and the way we are wasting it.
The sad and painful thing about us now is that "our nation
has been improvising ways of wasting time at the public and
the private levels.
As a result, the world is already proceeding to the future
without us, as if we were the 'orphans of history'. If such
improvisation is not directed to investing and utilising our
time properly, the gap between the future and us will widen
further, and we will remain importers and consumers of cultural
products. Eventually, our survival will be entirely dependent
on the producers of those products." [Khuldun Al-Ahdab,
‘Reflections on the Value of Time’] Therefore,
Muslims must unite their efforts to identify weaknesses for
treatment, and must give time its due attention as demanded
by Islam.
The following are some of the most important duties demanded
of Muslims:
1. Ensuring benefiting from time
2. Utilising leisure time
3. Racing for good deeds
4. Learning from the passage of time
5. Seeking the superior times
6. Planning and organising time
7. Fulfilment of time commitments
8. Necessary awareness of time wasters
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