Remnants of Illusion: A Spider's Thread Separating Opportunity from Luck

A fabricated story circulated on social media for three years, recounting how a TV presenter missed a golden opportunity to become a millionaire, offered to her by Bill Gates on a silver platter during a televised interview where Gates appeared with his authentic voice. The story’s narrator emphasized the importance of seizing opportunities that come only once.

In this fake tale, the presenter asks the famous billionaire Bill Gates, “How did you become a billionaire?” Gates then pulls a checkbook from his pocket, signs a blank check without writing any amount, tears it off, and hands it to the presenter, saying, “Write the amount you deem appropriate.” The presenter was stunned, believing he was joking and that his request had nothing to do with her question. She took the check, looked at it with confusion and surprise, then turned to Gates as if she didn’t understand his request. He repeated his instruction with emphasis: “Write the amount you deem appropriate.”

The presenter returned the check to the table, picked up a pen, and wrote “$100” in the amount field. She handed the check back to Gates, who filled in the remaining blank fields and returned it to her, saying, “Madam, the scene you just witnessed is a practical answer to your question: ‘How did you become a billionaire?’ The answer was right in front of you, in how you failed to seize the golden opportunity that came your way. If I were you, I would have written one hundred million. I would have honored whatever amount you wrote to keep my promise. But you lost this rare golden opportunity. I became a billionaire because I seized every opportunity.”

That is the fabricated story. But what if this golden opportunity were real? What if your dream came true without you asking for it? What if a fly brought you luck, money, and fame by chance? What if your fortune depended on the wing of a fly—the very insect about which Allah, the Exalted, says in Surah Al-Hajj, verse 73: “O mankind, a parable is presented, so listen to it. Indeed, those you invoke besides Allah will never create a fly, even if they gathered together for that purpose. And if a fly should steal away a thing from them, they would not recover it from it. Weak is the petitioner and the petitioned.”

Just as we view flies as weak creatures, a single fly can accomplish the impossible. This insect became the reason for British golfer Tommy Fleetwood’s fame at the U.S. BMW Golf Championship in August 2025, where he won a prize money nearing one million dollars. Without the fly’s intervention—or rather, its “interference”—Fleetwood would not have won this prize, making it one of the most amusing and bizarre incidents in modern sports history.

Fleetwood struck the ball toward the hole. The ball rolled slowly toward the hole and stopped on its edge, with less than half of it hanging over the bottom. The audience remained silent to help the ball focus and then drop, with everyone eager to cheer if it fell. But it did not drop. For less than three seconds—which felt like an eternity to Fleetwood—he stared at that cursed ball. Then came the relief: a small fly landed on the ball, moved across its surface, then slowly walked toward the top and then toward the part hanging over the hole, adding weight to the ball and causing it to fall into the abyss. “And you did not throw when you threw, but Allah threw.” Thus, he became one of the most famous golfers.