The sermon in Basra

The town he had founded on Umar's instruction was still young, but it was already changing. Supply lines were open, and a measure of comfort was reaching people who had known nothing like it before.

Utbah stood before them and reminded them what the earliest years had actually been like — a small number of Muslims with almost nothing, some so poor that a single cloak had to be torn in two so that two men could each cover part of themselves, others going hungry enough that they ate leaves until it hurt to chew.

He told them plainly that no worldly condition lasts. The world, he said in substance, was already turning away, while the Hereafter was turning toward them — and that a day was coming when the closest tie between people would not be family, but the deeds each person had brought.

It was not a rejection of the ease that had come to them, but a warning against forgetting where they had started, and what actually mattered in the end.