As I scrolled down on the Wikipedia article, I read about all of his accomplishments, his fortune, his fame, his prestige, the love that people all over the world had for him…but I couldn’t stop thinking that, despite all of this so-called pleasure, all of his riches and his fame, his closest family and friend said that he could never find happiness. And so, I had found my khutbah topic. Michael Jackson’s death sent shockwaves across the internet, and as Muslims, we have a couple of options: we can sit and talk about him, trying to debunk whether he really was a Muslim, talking about him being in Dubai or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia, or we can hope and pray that he was and try to derive some lessons to actually yield a fruitful conversation. Thought about logically, the second choice seems way better.

We hear it all the time, it’s almost become a cliché in masjid circles and gatherings that “this world can never give you true happiness.” But really, if we sit and reflect on the life and death of our brother Michael, we see the reality of this statement, and how it came to fruition painfully in the life of this troubled man. Money was never an issue (until his last days, when he accrued a horrendous amount of debt), he could have had anything he wanted – he even bought himself a monkey named Bubbles. Yet he would still complain about how he never felt happy, how he was always in pain. Physical pain, maybe, but it was clear that he was in a sort of spiritual pain as well. In his life and his death, there is a huge lesson for us and our focus on this earth. Allah says in Surat Adh-Dhariyaat, “And I have not created jinn or mankid except to worship Me.” We must take the example of our brother Michael as a bitter, sour reminder, and re-focus our goals in life towards pleasing Allah. Everything in this life is temporary – our houses, our cars, our jobs, even our Neverland Ranches – but Allah is Everlasting, and so is the hereafter, so it only makes sense to focus our efforts in life towards that.

What are some ways that we can remind ourselves to do this?

First and foremost is to connect with our Creator, Allah, by reading His Noble Book – The Qur’an. Reading the Qur’an, the last couple of sections especially, will serve as really strong reminders for the hereafter. And here’s a tip I’ve found helpful: don’t read it like you’d read any other book. Read it like a manual to your life. Just like how we take our automobile manual to find out what’s wrong with our ride, we should take our Soul Manual to find out what’s wrong with our hearts.

Secondly is to spend time with the family. We should encourage each other to pray together, and if we can, have a halaqa at least once a week where we sit together and read Islamically oriented material as a group, and talk about how it applies to our lives. This will most definitely increase the blessings in the house, and will encourage everyone to focus on the hereafter as a team.

And lastly, but not least important, is to do work with the needy. Volunteer to do work with different groups, Muslim or non-Muslim, to help those less fortunate. Remind yourselves, as you’re helping them, that it’s by the grace of Allah that we are in the position that we’re in, so we should thank him and remind ourselves how temporary our station of comfort could be. One great group that does great things is MSA National with their Project Downtown efforts. Check it out in a city near you.

Any goodness from this article is from Allah, and any mistakes of from myself and Shaytan.