Rockefeller’s advice – 6

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the honor of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad and the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his master, peace and blessings be upon him, are very much in agreement. Now we come to the sixth point of Rockefeller's advice to his son, which was, he said, business is war, act accordingly. Now, Andrew Carnegie was his greatest competitor in the oil business. And when they built a pipeline threatening Standard Oil, which is Rockefeller's company, Rockefeller bought the railroad and he bought the oil transportation. He bought Monopoly from the railroad and dropped shipping costs and crushed his competitor. His advice was, attack where they are weakest, not strongest. Having said that, this is one point on which I do not agree. And I'll give you my reasons by telling you two stories. One is a story which I heard, which I also... confirmed it to the extent possible, which is in Saudi Arabia, in Makkah, in one of the big binoud stores. Somebody started a typical similar store. Binoud is a grocery store, big, big, huge big grocery store, grocery store chain. So somebody opened another grocery store across the street from them. With food and tea and whatever else. You know, whatever they're selling. So the manager of the binoud store, obviously, he got worried. And, you know, he said, what's going to happen to our business and so on. But the owner of binoud, he responded and he said to the manager, send some of your people to help him. And he sent him food, he sent him tea. And he said to them, we have a Musalla here in the store. So at the time of Salah, you're welcome to come and pray here with us and so on. The manager was shocked because, you know, you're supposed to kill your competition. And here you're helping the competition. The owner explained very simply, and this is where our Islamic values and ethics and our aqidah and our faith are. And this is where our Islamic values and ethics and our aqidah and our faith are. And this is where our Islamic values and ethics and our faith are. And our faith must come in the way always for decision making. And he says that our sustenance has been determined by Allah. Allah SWT wrote what we are supposed to get. And they will not, a competition, they will not be able to take even one rial if it is already declared for us. It belongs to us. So why don't we try to get some rewards, hasanat, and help them? Now, this is the business philosophy which... is rooted in Islam. And I see this wherever people are following the religion, alhamdulillah. One of the places I see it is in Hyderabad. In Turbazar, there is... which is the bazaar that comes... that is after... when you're going towards your city, when you pass Mazamjai market, the... Usmanganj, which is the... not Turbazar, Usmanganj. Usmanganj, which is the bazaar that... comes after Mazamjai market. Usmanganj has a whole series of hardware stores. So they sell everything. I mean, you name it, they sell it. Including... you know, electrical fittings and lights and this and that. And all kinds of hardware. Now, almost all the stores... I'm saying almost as a safety measure. But all the stores... are owned by Buhari people. Every single one of them. Now, you go to any of those stores... and you ask for whatever thing you want. If that person doesn't have it, he won't tell you, I don't have it. He will give you a seat. He will order some tea for you. And he will send his... employee... to a neighboring store... and say, with the instruction that... this is what this customer wants. If they have it, bring it. And the neighboring store will give him that item... and... the item is given to you. He won't send you to that store. He'll get the item for you from the neighboring store. Now, the neighboring store... is his competition. Right? But they treat each other as... as if all those stores... have the same warehouse. And they're all outlets for the same warehouse... and for the same material. Which obviously they're not the individual... independent businesses. But they treat each other as if they're part of the same... families selling the same things. And I asked one of them, and they said, this is Baraka. I said, Alhamdulillah, you know, when I have... if I can help him, I help him. When he can help me, he helps me. We are all brothers. Now, this is the spirit... of buying and selling that I have seen. Even in people who are not Muslim. Especially in Hyderabad. And I'm sure it's there in other places. Where there are markets... of the same thing. So there are jewellery markets, for example. All jewellers in that market. You might say, well, you know, why are all... jewellers in the same place? I mean, they should be in different places... because they're selling the same product. And why put everything together? And their point is, we do it because... it's easier for the customer. Customer comes to one place. But when they go from place to place, if they need help... they help each other. And they help each... and effectively they're helping, you know, their own competition. Now, this is what I want to promote in this case. Not Rockefeller's principle that business is war. I say business is not war. Business is the most beautiful way of connecting with each other. Of building community. There's nothing that's better than business to build community. Because... you have to put your money... where your mouth is. And that's the best way of building community. Because... when you collaborate with people... you get some good things happen. Business is also something to think about... in terms of... in terms of... of influencing. Because today the world is run by businessmen. Politicians... are the agents of businessmen and women. They are... they are not... they don't run the world. The world is run by businessmen. And if business is... treated as war... which unfortunately it is in most places... we get the kind of world we have. But think about business as... treated as... instead of war as a community building process. You will believe me, I have a very different... very different world. I've always believed that... if you want... if you want... if you want... if you want... if you want... prosperity... then... the logical thing is... we need to build... a client base... which is prosperous. To build a client base which is prosperous... you cannot have cutthroat competition. If you have cutthroat competition... you will... it's win-lose. And you will get... what we have today which is... a huge difference... between... the wealthy... the haves and the have-nots... the wealthy and the poor. Instead of that... if you build a big middle class... you will still have wealthy people... you will still have people who are poor... but first of all you will not have the abject... soul-killing poverty that there is today. The poor will be... they will be poor as in comparison to the wealthy... but they will not be poor as in starving... as in being deprived of... of... of... of... of... of... of... of health... care... or being deprived of... you know... the necessities of life. On the other hand... you will not have the super rich... and the super wealthy... who then have to show off their wealth... by the price of their toys. On the other hand... you would have wealthy who are concerned... about others... and who... the wonderful stories we hear... about the Sahaba... about the Tabain... about the people... of the past... and how they used to take their wealth... and treat it as... a way of earning... the Rida of Allah . So... one of the people shaded... under the Arsh of Allah ... on this Day of Judgement... on the Day of Judgement... will be a... honest business person. And therefore... if you look at business... business men and women... we have for example the... beautiful example of Khadija Al-Kubra... and of course of Rasulullah ... himself... of Omar bin Al-Khattab... of Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq... of Uthman bin Affan... of Abdur Rahman bin Auf... and so on... and all these people... who are business men and women... and who... were not business men and women... in the cut throat competition... kind of business world... but they were business men and women... with a conscience... and who used their money... to earn Jannah... who used their money... to please Allah . Who used their money... to please Allah . Who used their money... to uplift the poor... Who used their money... in positive ways... and when you do that... it also makes... eminent economic sense... where you are building... a whole middle class... which has... enhanced buying power... because if you have an economy... this is what distinguishes... even today for example... the economies of... of... take for example... the Netherlands and... of Sweden... of Switzerland... and all these... European countries... and compare that with... other economies... where there is a huge... difference between the... super wealthy and the super poor... you have much more buying power... in these economies because... of the big middle class... so you have... you have a lot more people... who can afford... what is being produced... rather than having just... a handful of people... and the rest of them... all they can do is... look at shop windows and... you know... wish they could buy things... but they can't buy them... because they don't have the... they don't have the money... so... I... in this case I disagree... with... John D. Rockefeller... where he says... business is war... I say business is not war... business is the... enormous opportunity... to build a society... which is based on... on social justice... and to build a society... and to build a society... which has a strong middle class... to be... to become influential... in the best of ways... and to build capacity...