Bismillahi rahmani raheem, assalamu alaikum.
Growing up an Arab in a western country, at least here in Australia their is a 50% chance you will get involved in the car scene, not only did I have cousin’s heavily involved but many people I grew up with were involved in various aspects of the car industry.
I had no delusions about cars growing up, I loved beauty and there was plenty of that in cars from the shape to the engine, I remember by the time I was 15 I had already scene my friends older brother pull apart an entire engine bolt by bolt clean every part and put it back together bolt by bolt. But the people involved were immature and the entire scene was under a cloud of Maskh, you can like something but that doesn’t mean you give it respect and I never did I always saw it for what it was because I had perspective these were not real men who stood for something they believed in, this was nothing more than candy to them and so like their mindset they made their cars look like candy and toys.
It should be no surprise if you have been reading my writing for some time, that I already know my place in Jannah, I bring this up because I earned that in part dealing with the fitnah that the people involved with cars bring with them. For a long time I wondered what would happen to these people in the Akhira, more precisely what would happen to everything that came out of this car scene that evolved over the past 100 years, men of Allah are not so childish they don’t have an interest in something created to serve the nafs.
One of Allah’s Mala’ikah gave me the answer in a dream, He showed me my future in the Akhira, He presented me and my wife with a racing car and began explaining to me its characteristics, qualities, engine, how it handles, feels to drive and how I should drive it, He gave me all the knowledge I would need to drive it at speed on my trip with my wife and He was very happy with the knowledge He was passing on to me.
Later on I wondered why the Angel was so happy with the knowledge he was passing on to me, the answer came in the form of a simple sentence, “this is the kind of knowledge Mala’ikah love.”
To many all that knowledge may seem technical but in my respect this is all basic knowledge, the statement was made in relation to scientific knowledge which is very technical and very few people can understand it, the kind of knowledge Mala’ikah love is the kind that tells people what they need to help them and its breadth and length can be seen from understanding how a car works and handles without going into the fine tuning of the car like a racing car driver, this is the standard with the Mala’ikah and this is the example they used to show me.
Shaykh Rami Al Rifai.