Quotes About Detachment and Freedom from Dunya (Worldly Life)

“When you are free inside, you will never allow anyone to take away your freedom. And when you have inner freedom, you can look through tyrants and thugs to the Lord of the tyrants and thugs. When you are free inside, you become unenslaveable, because you can only enslave a person with attachments. You can only threaten a person who is afraid of loss. You only have power over someone when they need or want something that you have the ability to take away. But there is only one thing which no person has the power to take away from you: God.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Our weight was only meant to be carried by God. We are told in the Quran: “…whoever rejects evil and believes in God hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And God hears and knows all things.” (Qur’an 2: 256)

There is a crucial lesson in this verse: that there is only one handhold that never breaks. There is only one place where we can lay our dependencies. There is only one relationship that should define our self-worth and only one source from which to seek our ultimate happiness, fulfillment, and security. That place is God.

Yasmin Mogahed

“This world cannot break you—unless you give it permission. And it cannot own you unless you hand it the keys – unless you give it your heart. And so, if you have handed those keys to dunya for a while—take them back. This isn’t the End. You don’t have to die here. Reclaim your heart and place it with its rightful owner:

God.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Fasting is all about detachment. It is the detachment from food, drink, sexual intimacy, vain speech. By restraining our physical self, we ennoble, purify and exalt our spiritual self. Through fasting we are forced to detach ourselves from our physical needs, desires, and pleasures.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Five times a day we must pull away from the dunya to focus on our Creator and ultimate purpose. Five times a day, we detach ourselves from whatever we are doing of worldly life, and turn to God. Prayer could have been prescribed only once a day or week or all five prayers could have been done at one time each day. But it is not. The prayers are spread throughout the day. If one keeps to their prayers at their specified times, there is no opportunity to get attached. As soon as we begin to become engrossed in whatever dunya matter we’re involved in (the job we’re doing, the show we’re watching, the test we’re studying for, the person we can’t get off our mind), we are forced to detach from it and turn our focus to the only true object of attachment.

Yasmin Mogahed

“If there is anything—or anyone—other than God, that we could never give up, then we have a false attachment. Why was Prophet Ibrahim told to sacrifice his son? It was to free him. It was to free him from a false attachment. Once he was free, his object of love (not attachment) was given back to him.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Like the ocean’s water entering the boat, the moment that we let the dunya enter our hearts, we will sink. The ocean was never intended to enter the boat; it was intended only as a means that must remain outside of it. The dunya, too, was never intended to enter our heart. It is only a means that must not enter or control us. This is why Allah (swt) repeatedly refers to the dunya in the Qur’an as a mata’a. The word mata’a can be translated as a “resource for transitory worldly delight.” It is a resource. It is a tool. It is the path—not the destination.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Detachment [from Dunya] is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.

Imam Ali bin Abi Talib

“This worldly life, the dunya, is just like the ocean. And our hearts are the ships. We can use the ocean for our needs and as a means to get to our final destination. But the ocean is only that: a means. It is a means for seeking food of the sea. It is a means of travel. It is a means of seeking a higher purpose.

Yasmin Mogahed

“When what you hold on to is strong, you too become strong, and with that strength comes the truest freedom. It is of that freedom that Ibn Taymiyyah, may Allah have mercy on him, said: “What can my enemies do to me? I have in my breast both my heaven and my garden. If I travel they are with me, never leaving me. Imprisonment for me is a chance to be alone with my Lord. To be killed is martyrdom and to be exiled from my land is a spiritual journey.” (Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Wabil, p.69)

Yasmin Mogahed

“One easy step to make the dunya stop breaking your heart: stop loving it!

Yasmin Mogahed

“Stop trying to make this life into what it cannot and never was intended to be: jennah. Only then will it stop breaking your heart.

Yasmin Mogahed

“Attachments are the chains that bind us to the earth. It only hurts because of them. Find freedom.

Yasmin Mogahed

“The world is a shadow: if you run after it, you will not catch it, but if you turn your back to it, it will follow you.

Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyyah

“If you are able to conquer your own nafs, other nufoos will automatically be conquered, for they will take yours as a leader.

Yasir Qadhi

“This world in the eyes of the believer is like the restroom: he has a need for it and uses it, but it occupies no love in his heart.

Ibn Taymiyyah

“Allah has created you free, therefore be free the way He has created you, work solely for Allah and stop trying to please people.

Imam ash-Shafi`i

“Be indifferent to the world and Allah will love you; be indifferent to what people possess and they will love you.

Prophet Muhammad ﷺ

“Lower your gaze from the world and turn your heart away from it…

Umar ibn al-Khattab

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