The Dwellings of Thamūd

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: do not enter the dwellings of the people who wronged themselves unless you are going to weep; if you are not going to weep, then do not enter their dwellings, lest the punishment that afflicted them afflict you (al-Bukhārī 4419). And then the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told them simply to pour away the water they had drawn, and to feed the dough they had made with that water to the animals. So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) wanted to have nothing to do with Thamūd, or their land, or their water — nothing. And the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told us why: we should either take the reminder and the lesson, and weep because of what happened to them; or else we should stay away, because the punishment of Allah could befall us as it befell them.

And what we learn from this is that we should have no pride whatsoever in the so-called civilisations of the past that were mushrikūn and were punished by Allah (swt). How can we have pride in Babylon, and Firʿawn, and all of these other kuffār, when they were enemies of Allah (swt)? How can we be proud of the pyramids, or proud of the ruins of Babel, or the ruins that exist in other parts of the Muslim world — whether they are Roman or Greek or whatever — when these were people who were kuffār, who were enemies of Allah (swt)? It is very sad to see Muslims taking pride in their pre-Islamic history. And this is a plot by the enemies of Allah (swt): by the way, they have mentioned in some of their writings that we want to revive the pre-Islamic history in order to attach the Muslims to it, and this will lessen their attachment to their Islamic history.

We need to put things in the right perspective. These are the enemies of Allah (swt), and we should not visit their sites unless we are going to take the reminder from them, and unless it is going to soften our hearts and make us weep because of the fate that befell them, because of the wrath of Allah (swt) upon them, because of their kufr. Nowadays it is a shame to see some Muslims taking photographs next to the mummy of Firʿawn, smiling and happy. It is a shame to see that some Muslims go as far as naming their sons Firʿawn — having pride in that part of history to the extent that they would name their sons Firʿawn. And this is because of this revival — and they are called civilisations; they are called civilisations in a good sense, when in reality they have no civilisation at all.