Imagine our lives without clothes.
And Islam does not reject people wearing beautiful clothes. It is a misconception. The Prophet (Peace be upon Him) addressed the companions once and said, by Allah, he who has an atom weight or an ant weight of arrogance in his heart would not be admitted to Jannah, would not be admitted to Paradise.

And one of the companions (may Allah be pleased with them) stood and said o Prophet of Allah (peace be upon Him), I like to have a beautiful thob, beautiful dress and I love my shoes to be beautiful as well, so is this part of arrogance?

And the Prophet (peace be upon Him) said, No, Allah is beautiful and Allah (may He be glorified and exalted) loves beauty. So Prophet (peace be upon Him) approved the fact that people wear beautiful clothes.

 

There is nothing wrong in that in Islam; yet internal beauty is far superior.
However, why do we see people following fashion blindly now-a-days? There are a number of reasons.

Among them, is peer pressure.

When I am with my friends and each and every one of them is boasting off his watch, his car, the way he is dressed and they look down at me, I feel that I have to excel whether in bad or in good. I have to do something so that I can be like them. So this is peer pressure.

Not only that so many times you find people blindly following fashion because they love celebrities.

So if I love an actor or an actress, if I love a pop star, if I love a footballer, I would like to wear the things that he wears. And that is why they pay millions of dollars to get the royalties to have an athlete wear a certain brand because they know the impact on the viewers or on the fans of that athlete.

So they are willing to play millions of dollars just for him to wear their logo. And among the reasons that people follow fashion blindly is that people have a defect. They have weakness in their personalities and they would like to hide these shortcomings by following the fashion so that people would think they are cool or sophisticated not knowing that people are not impressed by the outer shell. They are impressed by the content, by what is inside.

 

A proper Muslim is not impressed by fashion and he does not follow fashion blindly. A proper Muslim wears good clothes, wear clean clothes, wears decent clothes that protects his identity and identity for a Muslim is extremely important.

I can recognize a Muslim even if I see him in Siberia or in the jungles of Africa or in New York or Tokyo. I can tell if he is a true practicing Muslim that he is a Muslim. But if he is not if he has lost his identity I cannot make him out from a Jew, Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist etc, because they all look alike.

A Muslim always protects his identity through how he looks and through how he acts.
Blindly following fashion has dire impact and negative effects on the Muslims. Among the bad effects, it causes people to waste money extravagantly. How is that?

People keep on following fashion and fashion keeps on changing so every week every month they keep on buying new clothes they keep on buying new gadgets because this is fashion and that is why it is a billion dollar industry. You have cat walks, you have designers, you have special magazines, and you have special channels, TV channels supporting the fashion so that they would keep the people, Muslims and Non-Muslims alike.

They will keep them in this vicious circle going round and round blindly not knowing what to do just following what they say. Today fashion is you wear miniskirts all women wear mini-skirts whether it is permissible in their religion or not. Tomorrow the fashion is that they wear long dresses, long sleeves and a head scarf…OK. We will follow the fashion.

Men are alike, movie stars are clean shaven, and we shave our beards. Tomorrow a movie star comes with a thick a big beard ever body is doing it.

Because they are like sheep, they just follow their master and they follow their shepherds. Following fashion is a waste of time because you keep on wasting a portion of your life reading learning visiting shops and asking about prices so that you can see what fits you and what does not and this is not what a proper Muslim should do. Among the shortcomings of following fashion is that you end up doing things that angers Allah (The Almighty), the creator of heavens and the earth, why? I will tell you why.

Allah (may He be glorified and exalted) forbade for us men to imitate women and forbade women from imitating men and He cursed those who do this. How many times you have seen fashion that resembles the dress of opposite sex? You have women wearing suites, ties, you have women wearing men’s clothes and on the opposite you find some men wearing something that resembles women clothing and you so many times be shocked of the things that men could wear.
Following fashion blindly ignites arrogance in the heart. It makes people want to show off to boast about what they are doing because they want to satisfy themselves internally.

So they start to show-off and each and every one of us looks at what the other is wearing and how can I imitate or how can I criticize. So if I am unable to imitate him and wear like he is wearing I will then criticize and look down at him. Why is that? Because we are blindly pursuing and following what is known as fashion.
Why was Adam and Eve thrown out of paradise?

Because they ate from the forbidden tree which caused them to realize their nakedness so they were descended to earth and Allah gave them the blessing and favor of the clothes. And a Muslim is always covered and he is always protective of his body.

Now look at how shaytan works, it was shaytan who deceived our parents to eat from the forbidden tree and this is what caused their nakedness to be apparent. So nakedness is part of shaytan what the devil lives on. And if you look at the fashion you will find that it is based on nakedness.

Expose as much as possible from a women’s body and this is why you have this passion of those who are not Muslims to towards nakedness. They love to go to strip clubs, to nude beaches, to watch nudity and this shows that this level of civilization they claim to have reached is not civilization because if you go to the jungles of Africa, you will find people nude there as well and they don’t have any civilization.

So it is the shaytan, it is the devil who, is implanting this in our heads. Following fashion ignites hatred, enmity in the hearts because of the envies of what you wear and that you are not able to wear it. And it ignites desires and lusts and this is the goal of shaytan.

The goal of the devil is that he makes people pursue their desires and lust because of what they had seen on the opposite sex.
Therefore, I call you not to follow fashion blindly. Follow your identity as a Muslim. Be proud of who you are and never ever think down of yourself just because you are not following what the others are blindly following.