Husain Sattar – Unmarked Fruit
AI: Summary ©
The speaker provides two advice to others: to recognize the lineage of one's fruit and mark it on a box. They stress the importance of studying and learning about our own lineage to see if it is in line with our lineage. They also advise against gathering permanent gatherings and caution against regretting decisions. They reflect on regretting decisions and regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret regret
AI: Summary ©
So in this gathering, what I wanted to
do is actually share 2 pieces of advice.
And these two pieces of advice I heard,
Sheikh Zofokar give
to me and to other individuals.
So I thought that why don't I just
pass them on to you? Actually, the I
don't know why they just sometimes they just
pop up in in your mind, but so
I just wanted to share those 2 pieces
of advice.
Okay. The first piece of advice
is that he used to say to us
that
don't be like unmarked fruit.
Don't be like unmarked fruit.
So, obviously, that requires some tafsir. What does
it mean to be unmarked fruit?
So if you look at,
people who are into
growing fruits like grapefruits,
the farmers who grow the grapefruits,
they know
the lineage of each tree from which the
fruit arises.
So for example, there's
I mean, let's take oranges. Right? There's clementine
oranges. There's navel oranges. There's this orange. There's
that orange. And people who are very into
this I don't know if if you ever
gone to these websites where they sell fruit.
You They sell you the very expensive fruit
and they send it to your home, not
the one that you buy in the grocery
store. Individual farms.
They have particular trees.
Right? So they say, okay. This is Texas
citrus grapefruit. It's from this lineage of this
type of tree, and then it produces a
very valuable fruit.
So what they do is
when they're preparing
to send out these gift boxes of fruits,
what they do is they package the fruit
according to the lineage of the tree.
Then they mark on that box that this
is from this tree and it takes on
a particular value. This is from this tree,
it takes on another particular value. This is
from another tree, it takes on that particular
value.
So that's called the marked fruit.
And marked fruit has a very high value.
Now at the same time what happens is
as they're collecting all the fruit from the
trees, inevitably there's going to be some fruit
on the ground.
That's the fruit that fell by itself or
some birds came on the branch and the
fruit fell down or something knocked it off.
And what happens is the trees are so
close to each other that sometimes they can't
tell when they see a piece of fruit
on the ground which tree it came from.
So they have they put that in a
separate crate and they don't mark that. So
that's unmarked fruit.
Now, unmarked fruit has a much less much
lower value as compared to marked fruit. Alright.
So how does that apply? That's just the
background. Right? So he used to say, don't
be like unmarked fruit.
Now what does that mean?
That means that
you should always recognize
that we have a lineage from which we
took our Deen.
We have a lineage from which we took
our Deen. It really this is something that
really, unfortunately, plagues people from the subcontinent
especially.
So everything that we take from our Deen,
all this knowledge that exists in our forefathers,
all of the efforts that our forefathers have
made from this Deen, this is all lineage
based.
Right? So we come from a very special
tree.
We're not just unmarked fruit just laying on
the ground. Nobody knows where we came from.
We come from a very special tree
and that tree traces
itself back all the way to the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
But in this day and age, what happens
is people become very confused about their lineage.
Even people from the subcontinent see, people from
the subcontinent, they assume that Arabic is not
the mother tongue. Right? So therefore,
knowledge is somehow deficient in the subcontinent
and it must be proficiently present in the
Arab countries because in the Arab countries you
find that everybody speaks Arabic as their mother
tongue, but that's not the truth.
There are very incredible scholars that came from
the subcontinent.
And those scholars from the subcontinent, they represent
our forefathers. They represent our heritage. That's why
we have the din that we have. When
you go around the United States and you
see the activity that's present in the Deen,
in every place you're gonna find a strong
component of people from the subcontinent
influencing Islam in that part of the world.
Now, you think about it. The people from
the subcontinent, right, Pakistan and India, they're converts
into the Deen in the end. They weren't
the original people upon whom the Deen was
revealed. In the end, they're still converts into
the Deen. And you see that
so much of the Deen is being held
up by their efforts, right? As was present
if you go back a 100 years on
the Bosnians
and other different communities and even continues till
this day. But you'll see the prevalence
of the subcontinent,
that didn't come out of nowhere. That's not
just unmarked fruit that fell on the ground.
We have a very strong tradition. And if
you go through and you read about that
tradition, you'll begin to see that these scholars
were incredible.
They represented the pinnacle of knowledge, and they
preserved the Deen in a way that left
the world envious.
That's the way that they preserved the Deen.
So unfortunately, in this day and age, we
find ourselves very much
unmarked.
Now why is that a problem? If you
know anybody, I know a couple of people
like this and I'm sure everybody has someone.
If you know someone who their parents left
them when they were young or their father
left them when they were young or let's
say they somehow lost their parents when they
were young you'll see that they are very
uncomfortable with themselves.
And sometimes you read in the newspaper for
example that there's this person, he lost his
father when he was 3.
Then he spends 10 years trying to find
his father, He'll go on this long, long
journey. He says, I just couldn't live in
peace. I just couldn't be comfortable with myself
because I wanted to know who my father
was. I wanted to meet my father.
So people who don't know their lineage, it
makes them very uncomfortable about themselves and it
leaves them with a void within themselves.
And then, that void is never satisfied until
they discover who they really are.
So, in the same way,
we should recognize that we have a very
strong lineage.
We come from a very strong lineage and
unfortunately, we come into an environment like America,
we get very confused about who we are,
we don't know who our forefathers are, we
don't know who our elders are, we begin
to leave the path of our elders and
instead of tying ourselves to this
this valuable lineage, we become lost and we
become confused about who we really are.
So it's very important
and we should make a habit out of
this. In fact, Sheikh Zobkar used to tell
us to make a habit out of this
that we become very familiar with our Akavadin.
He used to sit down, and he used
to tell us about the various Masha'ach that
passed through the Silsula.
Right? The purpose wasn't necessarily to tell stories.
Oh, look. If this type of person came,
this type of person came. It was to
connect us back to our lineage, to show
that, look. The people before you were very
deep in their dikar of Allah, and that
you're coming from the same nisbah, and that
this isn't what's expected of you as well,
and you should live up to your lineage.
Sometimes people say that to their children as
well. Don't you know that you're the son
of Mr. Smith? You should live up
to the Smith name. That's what they'll tell
their child.
What do they mean by that? They mean
to look back at your lineage. Look how
respected it is.
You too should recognize that you come from
this lineage and you should live up to
it. So in the same way, it's very
important that we study
the lineage of our knowledge which goes right
through the scholars of the subcontinent
and we should study their lives, we should
read about their lives, we should
understand what they went through to get the
knowledge and you'll begin to see what a
great tradition it really is. Alright? Number 1.
Number 2, the same thing with our Moshiach
that came before us. We should read about
their lives. We should know who they are.
We should study what they did because that
makes us back ties us back into our
lineage.
So that's the first piece of advice.
And that actually advice is sufficient. But the
second piece of advice
was that he used to say
that you should recognize that no gathering is
established to be permanent.
No gathering
is established to be permanent.
Now the example of this and the pinnacle
of it is basically the
revelation of Idaja Anasulullahhiwalfat.
Okay? When this Surah of the Quran was
revealed which basically is giving the glad tidings
that this hard work of the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam over so many years will now
result in people coming into the Deen
in large, large numbers.
So basically, this verse or this actually Surah
is giving the glad tidings of the success
of the message of the Prophet
and its final culmination in tons of people
coming into the Deen.
Now when that was revealed, the Sahaba all
rejoiced. They said, SubhanAllah,
years years of sacrifice, years years of effort,
years years of devoting ourselves to this mission,
and now Allah is giving us the glad
tidings that people will come in crowds into
the Deen. Everybody was rejoicing,
except 1,
Hazrat Abu Bakr
When that Surah was revealed, he sat crying.
So people, they were shocked.
They said, You spent so many years sacrificing.
Look at all of the work that we've
put in. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is giving
you the glad tidings that people are now
going to come into this message and worship
Allah the way they were supposed to worship
Allah. Why are you crying? He said, Because
now I know that the mission of the
Prophet is complete.
If the mission of the Prophet
is complete, it means that he too will
no longer remain.
This actually, while it seems like a glad
tiding that so many people will come into
the Deen, it actually on the other hand
is a warning that the Popesite is to
be taken up away from this earth very
shortly.
So this was the depth, but see there
was an understanding
that no gathering is created to be permanent.
They knew in the back of their mind
that this was not gonna last forever. Right?
That there will come a day when the
Popsalh Shalom will be separated from the community
in that way.
So
that's the basis and the principle upon which
we take advantage of our gatherings. They used
to say to us, no gathering is permanent.
Take advantage of these opportunities. I'm sitting here
with you now. You have the opportunity to
do the work you're supposed to do, to
put your time into the thick or to
be regular in your attendance because see, these
days will not last. And I'll tell you,
people go back in their life and they
say, you know, I have regrets. Somebody says,
okay, I was gonna buy this house. I
didn't buy the house in 1997. I should
have bought it in 1997. Now the housing
market is doubled. Oh, I regret that. Right?
So people will come up with all these
regrets as they reflect in their life. I'll
tell you, I look back at my life
and the biggest regret
biggest regret that I have is that those
moments that I had the opportunity to take
advantage, I didn't fully take advantage.
Now those those moments are just dreams in
my mind, you know, they'd exist as if
they were just never even occurred. I sit
back and I think, subhanallah, I had that
this opportunity to spend time with my shayef,
this opportunity to spend time with my shayef,
and I didn't max out on it. Right?
I did whatever I could or whatever I
understood at that time, but now in retrospect,
right,
I look back and that's a huge regret
because those gatherings are no longer,
those opportunities are no longer. He used to
say that he used to tell this to
his, there used to be like a small
gathering similar to this type of gathering in
the very beginning stages when he started training
people.
And maybe the 1st 2, 3 years while
he was in this initial stage of training
people when he had just obtained his Khilafah,
he used to regularly sit in a small
gathering in his town like this.
And then what happened was as he became
more busy, he began to travel, he got
more there were more students coming to him,
etcetera. Then he started having to travel and
he was very rarely at home. In fact,
he would spend 2 weeks in that city
in a year as opposed to the 52,
53 weeks that he used to spend. Right?
So
then people used to say later on, they
used to say, oh, we made a big
mistake. Oh, we lost out. We didn't take
full advantage. It used to be that every
single week we used to sit here, now
that opportunity no longer remains.
So see these gatherings, they they are never
designed to be permanent. They are never designed
to be permanent. People take advantage, you take
what you can take, you put your full
effort in, try to take as much as
you can out of these gatherings because they
will not be there tomorrow.
They just will not remain. And it's interesting
because I'll meet people who
met other, you know, like my Sheikh Sheikh.
Right? And then, they'll say, Oh, you know,
he came to me and he came to
my Masjid and he used to regularly be
there and I didn't take advantage of it.
I didn't even know what was going on.
Now, those opportunities are gone. I regret that
so much.
I hear them telling me these stories and
I think, If I was him, if I
had that chance, I would have been there
constantly, right? But who knows if I would
have been there constantly, you never know. The
Sahaba, they took advantage of the Prophet
That's the thing that you have to learn
from the Sahaba,
They took full advantage of the Prophet
And when he left them, they were totally
trained and totally prepared to do what they
needed to do. Although, they had their sense
of loss, but they I mean, you think
about it this way,
They were he was able to stand in
front of them and ask them, did I
not complete what Allah
sent me to complete? And all of them
were able to say, yes, we testify that
you have completed your spread of the message,
and then the Prophet made Allah
the witness that they testified.
That's very rare. That's very unique. Right? There's
no place in history where you're going to
find that an individual can say that, I
did everything I wanted to do.
Ask and pick up the biography, the autobiographies
of people. Right? They'll say, oh, I had
so many other great ideas but I became
weak and I couldn't write and I couldn't
think and I couldn't this and I couldn't
that.
Everybody in the end, they are limited. But
here, you have an example, the prophet is
standing in front of everybody and saying, have
I not delivered the message that I was
supposed to deliver to you? And everybody is
saying, Yes, you completed your message. And then
he's making Allah
his witness that he has completed the spread
of the message that he was that was
placed on his shoulders.
So
SubhanAllah,
they took advantage of that. They were able
to fully max out on what the Prophet
brought them but that's because they recognized that
these gatherings were not permanent. So, you have
to recognize
this point as well.
In this limited time which we call life,
take full advantage. Don't assume a moment to
be without value. Every moment has value. Every
gathering has its purpose. Every time we sit
together, there is some benefit to be taken
whether it be from the fact that I'm
talking or whether it be from the fact
that you're meeting other people around you or
whether it be from the fact that Allah
rewards us even for just making the effort
to come to the Masjid.
So the whole gathering is blessed. There's
benefit upon benefit upon benefit, but you have
to max out on it because these opportunities
don't remain. Who knows where ICC will be
200 years from now. Right? Who knows where
each of us will be 10 years from
now, 5 years from now? Life just changes.
Life is made that way. It's always dynamic.
It's never static.
So
advice number 1,
don't be unmarked fruit. And I advice number
2, take full advantage of the opportunities as
they present themselves to you because
they don't last.
They're made to move. They're made to change.
They're made to go to different places so
that other people can benefit as well. So
may Allah
give us a Tawfiq to take advantage of
these few,
words of advice.