By Shaykh Husain Abdul Sattar
The following is a transcription of a portion of a lecture entitled Protecting Your Spiritual Wealth delivered by Shaykh Husain Abdul Sattar with additional notes and references by Mawlana Ahsan Syed.
When an individual has wealth, he protects it according to its value because it is more likely to be involved in theft. The level of security for his wealth will be proportional to the amount of wealth he possesses. Spiritual wealth (one’s good deeds) works exactly the same way. The more spiritual wealth a believer has, the risk of theft increases. The difference in the believer’s case is that the thief is always Shaytan.
One of the many different ways that Shaytan dissolves a believer’s “assets” is by placing doubt within his mind. The type of doubt can be as minor as how many raka‘ah’s he has prayed to something as severe as doubting the existence of Allah. The doubts placed by Shaytan, almost always, are connected to the deen. For instance, we won’t ever be uncertain as to whether we ate lunch today or not, but doubts like “do we have wudu’ or not” arise quite often. These doubts can completely dissolve the spiritual effect of an ‘ibadah. Thus the Prophet of Allah (upon him be peace and blessings) said: