SheikhOnDeRun
saalamAlaikum
This is an excerpt from the famous book Islam and The World by Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, a famous scholar. It talks about the ill effects of materialism that has come over Muslim world. In the passage, it refers to only Arabs but I am sure it can relate to any Muslim regardless of where he is Arab or Non-Arab.
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A Curb on Extravagance and the Liquidation of the Growing Disparity among People
Owing to various influences the Arabs have, unfortunately, acquired habits of spending extravagantly on the non-essentials of life and on pomp and show. And side by side of this extravagance, there exist poverty and wretchedness, want and hunger. When a person looks at the big cities of the Arab World he is filled with shame and his distress verges on tears by the appalling disparity among classes which he finds there. He sees on the one hand, a man who spends lavishly on the luxuries of life and on the other, a destitute who cannot afford to have even one meal a day or a piece of cloth to cover his naked body. When Arab men of wealth sail in their powerful limousines, a host of hungry children clad in rags run by, begging for coppers.
As long as lofty mansions stand by the side of hovels and hunger and want side by side with opulence, doors on forces of disruption will never be closed. No propaganda however loud and persuasive and no power however strong and pervasive can do it. Unless the Islamic system with all its virtues is established in these lands, the immutable retributive laws of God will usher in, as a reaction, a system that will be ruthless and cruel.