بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
...وَأَحۡسِنُوٓاْۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ
wa ahsinoo; innal laaha yuhibbul muhsineen
Part of Al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:195 (last part of the ayat)... and persevere in doing good: behold, God loves the doers of good..
Plant fruit-bearing trees
Imagine a teaching parable: at the dawn of creation, Allah gave each and every one of us a small piece of arable land for cultivation. We could grow all kinds of crops in it to feed ourselves as well as feed others. He also sent many people to guide us on how to best cultivate crops, and what to do with the produce.
Eventually, mankind understood that they needed to plant some fruit-bearing trees, and although the trees might not bear immediate fruit, if we persevered and took good care of the trees, one day they would bear fruit. Lots of fruit. And this fruit could be consumed by us, or shared with our friends and neighbors, and shared with those who did not have anything to eat so that they could eat to their heart's content.
Most people would plant good-quality fruit-bearing trees, and tasty, sweet fruit was in abundant supply. And it was all good.
Then one day, a few of us had this idea. Instead of putting all our energy into planting trees, why don’t we spend time and energy encouraging others to plant trees? This will be a better use of our time, since we would now be responsible for the planting of many more trees, rather than just a few trees that would fit our land. So we became good at motivating others. Also, we developed infographics, memes, videos, and step-by-step instructions on how to grow good trees. Which ones are the best trees to grow? Which ones are the best fruits? We started arguing over whose farming methods were the best and why other people’s methods would not bear fruit. We started having a great number of followers who used to listen to us.
But instead of listening to us and planting trees, our followers really liked our techniques of motivation, and representation of information, so they ended up sharing this information with others. They spent most of their time sharing information with others on how to plant good trees. They figured that if it worked for us, it would work for them. And so more and more people became busy talking about agriculture, and fewer and fewer people actually planted trees.
So it happened that one day it was discovered that there was a severe shortage of fruit in the market, and even those who previously had enough to eat had to go hungry. However, techniques on growing trees, and highly detailed agricultural nuances and differences were in abundance. Alas, that day we discovered that we could not eat infographics, articles or videos. If only we had spent our time growing fruit instead...
