Mirza Yawar Baig – Give not take
AI: Summary ©
The importance of deciding which country one is from is discussed, along with the need to determine one's success and influence. The speakers stress the importance of not giving up one's professional life to achieve wealth and success, rather focusing on their own values and living life to the fullest. The Muslims face issues of disunity and dis peace in the Muslim Um Qaeda, which is a problem of the Muslim umroom. The speakers emphasize the need to not give up one's professional life to achieve wealth and success, rather focusing on their own values and living life to the fullest.
AI: Summary ©
Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wasalatu wassalamu
ala ashrafil anbiya wal mursaleen, Muhammadur Rasulullahi sallallahu
alaihi wa ala alihi wasallam, tasliman katheeran katheera,
Fama wabado.
My brothers and sisters, let me begin by
asking you a question.
Which country are you from?
You?
Pakistan?
And you?
Syria?
And you?
Palestine?
And you?
Sudan?
And you?
America?
And you?
Somalia?
MashaAllah, therein lies the answer.
For many of you, you were born here,
you grew up here, you went to school
and college here, you got or want to
get a job here, you value your status,
meaning your immigration status, but when I ask
where you are from, you name some other
country.
As if you are there, as if you
are here only temporarily, waiting to return to
your real home.
That shows that you are living in your
own house as a tenant, not as the
owner.
That will therefore define your sense of investment,
responsibility, gain or loss.
It will define your behavior.
And in the end, it will define your
influence.
We need to decide if we are owners
or tenants.
It is essential to decide this because there
is a very big difference in roles and
responsibilities, in profit and loss.
If you own your home, then its well
-being, repair, maintenance, decoration or modification are your
responsibility because the property belongs to you.
You take the rent, you benefit from any
increase in property value, you can sell the
property or use it for anything you wish.
It is yours, but if you are only
a tenant, then you are here today, but
gone tomorrow.
So though you may suffer some inconvenience if
the property is not maintained well, it really
doesn't bother you too much because you are
not the owner.
I submit to you, please wake up.
This is your country and you are American.
No matter what you imagine, you can't last
one week in the country you think you
belong to.
If you don't believe me, ask your parents
or grandparents what their childhood was like.
Yes, listen to your parents, listen to their
stories and take notes.
If nothing, it will do wonders for your
relationship.
But you are raised in a culture where
you are told that you are the best,
smartest, cutest gift to mankind since plastics, and
you believe it.
So you lose the free wisdom that is
yours for the asking from your parents and
elders.
But you won't listen to them.
You don't sit with them.
And if you are questioned, you say something
totally stupid like, Dad says he walked 10
miles barefoot to the school because he had
no shoes and there was no bus, so
what?
What good is that to me?
Why should I listen to this boring story?
I say to you that you are right
because you only see the heat and the
dust and the sweat on the bare feet.
You are too stupid to see beyond to
the determination, the ambition, the dreams, the grit
to take the pain without complaint to make
something of his life, to be able to
have a son who thinks his dad is
a fool.
And so you get to learn things unnecessarily
the hard way, your call.
Remember, you can only change what you own.
You can live in a rented house and
complain until you die about all that is
wrong with that house and what needs to
be done.
You will be totally right but totally helpless
because you don't own the house.
Same thing with the society you live in.
Until you start thinking of it as your
society, you cannot change anything.
For example, ask how many people complain about
the political system in this country and then
ask how many of them register and go
to vote.
Ask how many complain about schools and then
ask how many stand for elections to school
boards.
All you need to do is just stand
up and they will take you but you
won't do that.
Ask how many complain about local administration.
Ask how many volunteer on committees.
Ask how many volunteer to work in the
fire service and the police.
Ask how many complain about the genocide in
Gaza or the invasion of Lebanon.
Ask how many Muslims are in the protests,
picket lines, student camps.
Ask who is getting doxxed and losing job
offers.
Ask if they are stupid or are they
owners.
Ask how many complain about Muslim refugee children
coming through Christian and Jewish refugee assistance programs
which are state-funded and then go into
non-Muslim foster homes.
Ask why there is no Muslim family service
organization and why Muslims don't volunteer as foster
parents for Muslim and other children.
Ask how many people talk about the problem
of disunity in the Muslim Ummah and then
ask how many want a world that is
free of Shias or Sunnis or Salafis or
Sufis or whatever depending on who you are.
How then are we going to be united?
So do we really want unity or is
it a joke?
Complain to Allah alone in the night and
in the morning act, invest, sweat and work
yourself to a standstill if you want change.
That is the law.
The difference between owners and tenants is the
difference between contributors and consumers.
Power depends on territory or power comes with
territory.
Contribution defines territory.
Consumers are manipulated, they are used.
Contributors are respected and they call the shots.
Consumers at best may win a game.
Contributors own the game.
They can never lose unless they stop contributing.
Read the history of the Muslims and you
will see that the decline started when we
switched from being contributors and became consumers.
If you want power, start contributing.
It's like a tweet by someone who was
against BDS and the boycott campaign.
The tweet said, I want to boycott everything
made by Muslims.
Can someone please send out a list?
What's the answer to that?
I remind myself that the battle of Qadisiyah
was fought in 636-637 AD near a
place called Al-Hira, which is in present
day Iraq.
And this was between the army of the
Sasanian king, the Sasanian Persian king Yazdegerd III,
and commanded by his general Rustam Farrukhzad, and
the army of the Rashidun Khilafa of Sayyidina
Awar ibn al-Khattab, commanded by Sa'd ibn
Abi Waqas.
Rustam Farrukhzad sent a message to Sa'd ibn
Abi Waqas, asking him to send a representative
for him to question.
Sa'd ibn Abi Waqas sent Rabi'a ibn
Awar, a Sahabi, who was only mentioned in
this one incident, and had it not been
for this incident, he may never have been
mentioned.
They tried to disarm Rabi'a ibn Awar,
but he refused to give up his arms.
He said, you invited me, leave me as
I am, or I will return.
Now Rustam asked him why the Muslims had
come.
He offered every soldier and the Muslim army
gold, if they returned without fighting.
Rabi'a ibn Awar refused the gold, and
he said, we have not come to take
anything from you.
Rustam asked, then why have you come?
Rabi'a ibn Awar's answer is the answer
for all Muslims.
He said, Ibn
Awar said, He said, From
the worship of the slaves, and take you
to the worship of the creator of humanity,
the creator of the slaves.
From the confusion, constriction, the arguments and noise,
of different religions, towards the justice of Islam.
From the constriction, the stress, the problems of
the life of this world, to the expanse,
the freedom, from stress of the life of
this world and the hereafter.
This is the beauty of Islam, that Islam
invites us to a beauty of this life
and the hereafter.
The problem is that we have forgotten that
we came to give, we didn't come to
take.
But instead of giving, we are now taking
from everywhere.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala sent us, sent
his Nabi sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, with a
game plan, with a whole way of life,
meant for us, to learn and to teach
others.
Instead of that, we forgot the Nabi sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam, we forgot the plan, we
forgot his teachings, and now we are running,
like ignorant people behind others, and trying to
live our lives like theirs, even though we
see that their lives are so full of
stress, and so full of pain and suffering
and confusion, but we run behind them, and
we think that somehow we are going to
have a beautiful life.
I remind myself and you, let us own
responsibility for ourselves, own responsibility for our families,
own responsibility for our society, environment, own responsibility
for our country, and say, whichever country you
live in, if you are living there, do
something for the country, do something for the
nation, do something which makes you stand out
as a contributor, to the nation that you
live in, because you are taking from that
nation.
We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to
make us net contributors, that we give back
more than we take.