Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

inna al-mubadhdhirīn
—the 
ism faʿil
(active participle)
is used—which suggests these are people who do this all the time. They just
develop this habit and they do it all the time. What does Allah say about them? It
is one of the worst things said in the Qur’an about people. It is one of the worst
labels, ever given, in the entire Qur’an. Allah says:
For those who squander wastefully are Satan’s brothers, and Satan is
ever ungrateful to his Lord.
(Al-Isrā’ 17: 27)
Inna al-mubadhdhirīn
kānū ikhwān al-shayāṭīn
—the people who spend
recklessly all the time, prematurely spending their money, they have been
declared the brothers of 
shayāṭīn
. They are the brothers of the devils.
Why in the world would these people who spend recklessly be considered
brothers of 
shayāṭīn
? Let’s think about this for a little bit. First and foremost: 
al-

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ʿajalah min al-shayṭān
—rushing comes from 
shayṭān
. To begin with the idea of
you becoming impulsive and rushing into spending your money, without
thinking twice about it, is actually something satanic. Secondly, when you spend
a lot of money frivolously on useless things—if people spend tons of money on
entertainment, which industry makes a lot of money? You’re spending it, you’re
the customer. You don’t make the money it’s the entertainment industry that
makes the money. So when you spend your money on useless things, useless
industries become successful. When you spend your money on wasteful things,
the wasteful enterprise, the wasteful corporations, they’re the ones that thrive.
And when they thrive 
shayṭān
’s work succeeds in society. We become part of
the machinery of 
shayṭān
.
The other part of this, that’s really important to understand, 
inna al-
mubadhdhirīn
kānū ikhwān al-shayāṭīn
—Allah tells us Himself: 
wa-kāna al-
shayṭān li-Rabbihī kafūrā
—please listen to this part very carefully, it’s the
scariest part. Allah could have told us so many things about 
shayṭān
in this 
āyah
,
but the one thing He told us is that 
shayṭān
has always been extremely ungrateful
to his Master. Allah mentions his extreme ingratitude. You will notice something
about shopaholics, that’s what they call them, right? Shopaholics? They shop all
the time. They’re never done buying shoes. They’re never done buying
technology. They’re never done buying whatever else. They’re constantly
buying, buying, buying and buying. Guess what? They’re never happy. They’re
never grateful for what they have; their eyes are always on what they don’t have.
What more can I buy? What more can I acquire? What more can I get? All the
time.
In other words, this idea of the constant consumer—you can only be a
constant consumer if you’re constantly dissatisfied. And dissatisfaction is the
exact opposite of gratitude. 
Shayṭān
is dissatisfied, he’s ungrateful; and so is a
mubadhdhir
. So is someone who spends frivolously all the time. They are never
grateful, they are never appreciative. Actually, when that mentality sets in, the
only thing they appreciate is what they don’t have. They actually don’t value
what they do have, they only value what they don’t have. If they have a really
nice car; you sit in their car and say, ‘Wow, this is a really nice car’, but their
eyes are on some other car. ‘Well, I was thinking about getting that one.’ They
could have a really nice house; you go to their house and say, ‘Wow, this is an
amazing house’, but they are like, ‘Well, actually I was thinking of moving to a
better neighbourhood’. They’re looking at a better house; they’re looking at
another house.

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We’ve turned some of our children into this monster. We buy them one
video game, another video game, another, then another, and now they’ve got a
collection. They’ve got this massive collection. ‘Hey, wow, you have that game?
And you have that game?’ ‘Yeah, but I don’t have THAT one.’ What’s really
burning their soul right now is that they don’t have THAT one. It’s the same
with the new iPhone culture, ‘You have an iPhone 4?