Leadership is earned

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise be to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. Peace and blessings be upon the honourable prophets and messengers. Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him and upon his family and his companions, and he is very much in peace. In the next lecture, in the book of Fitna, in the book of Zunan ibn Majah, Abu Hurayla, may Allah be pleased with him, said, The Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him and upon his family and his companions, said, Islam has begun to be strange, and it will come back as it began, so be kind to the stranger. Or as the Prophet said, peace be upon him. In the book of Fitna, the book of trials and tribulations, in Zunan ibn Majah, Abu Hurayla narrates that Rasulullah said, Islam began as something strange, and it will return to being something strange. Give glad tidings, give the good news of Thuwa to the people, to the strangers, to the people the world will call strangers. Thuwa is a tree in Jannah. The point I want to make is that if you take this Alice, and if you map it onto what I was telling you the other day, the secret of success is to differentiate, right? You remember that? Three, four days back in my khatira, I said differentiate, because if you are like everybody else, then you are one grain of sand, one grain of rice in a sack. Differentiate, stand out. A flag is a piece of cloth, right? What is a flag? It is a cloth, and if the flag gets dirty and you wash it and you hang it on the line, clothesline, and along with the flag is your shirt and your trousers and something else, and if a soldier is passing by, if somebody is passing by, they will not salute the flag. Nobody salutes a flag which is on a clothesline, right? But if the flag is flying high on the flagpole, then people salute the flag. Don't talk about whether saluting the flag is jahez or not jahez. I'm talking about what people... The problem with giving Muslims advice is everything gets converted into some masala or fiqh. Forget that. The flag is recognized as a symbol of the nation only when it is flying high on the flagpost. Same flag. Flag hasn't changed. You didn't change the color of the flag or the nature of the cloth. No. Same flag. When it is on a clothesline, when it is, within quotes, hanging out, nobody respects it. Nobody respects it. But the same piece of cloth, when it is flying high, it becomes a symbol of the nation and it is saluted. Differentiation creates brand. Brand inspires loyalty. Loyalty enables influence. You remember I said this? This is the manifestation in our life today of the hadith, Fatuba Lil Kodaba. So who is the gharib? Gharib in Arabic means ajeeb, strange. Not gharib in Urdu means poor, no. It means strange, ajeeb, not usual, not like everybody else. So who is the gharib? Who are the gharaba? In a society that is based on corruption, a person of integrity is gharib. He is a stranger. Everybody takes bribes? He says, I don't take bribes. You are a stranger. In a society where even the ulama, even the scholars take money to give khutba of Juma, they take money to glorify Allah, if you say I glorify Allah only for the love of Allah, you are a stranger. Gharib. In a society which is characterized with promiscuity and shamelessness, a person of dignity and honor is gharib, stands out. In a society which is based on cruelty, on oppression, on grabbing people's wealth and grabbing people's dignity and violating their rights and so on and so forth, a person who stands up and says I will not do that and I will not allow you to do that is gharib. He is a stranger. In a society that is sunk and drowning in hubbu dunya, in the love of the dunya, where people are, they have no problem making money in ways which Allah has declared to be haram. A person who stands up and says no, I will earn only halal. I will not earn haram. I will not earn haram because Allah is my raziq.