Thanksgiving to Allah

Por: Shaij Ahmed Bermejo

Today I would like to talk about a quality that we are tremendously in need of in this world in which we live, a world and a society in which we continually fall into the error of believing that things belong to us, that what we have is because of our intellect or our work, that what we are is because of ourselves; but to think in this way is a very serious mistake, for we should know that, as Allah says in His Book: “The gifts you have come from Allah” Therefore, everything we are, everything we have, everything we possess comes from Allah; And that brings us to the quality or the issue I want to talk about today, which is gratitude.
And what is gratitude?
Thanks, shukr in Arabic, consists of thanking the one who has given you and granted you their favors, whether in a matter of your Din, your Dunya, your interior or your exterior.
And the big question, which I suppose we all know the answer to, is: Who was it that gave you all those blessings, all those favors?
It has been Allah, for everything comes from Allah, whether it is much or little, whether it is great or small, everything we have, everything we possess, comes from Allah.
The first step we must take is to recognize these gifts. And there are many people who do not understand this and, as I have said previously, in this society in which we are made to believe that we are the ones who get things is even more difficult to understand.
But we must be aware that the first step on this path is to recognize the gifts.
To do this, we must stop the train of our lives for a moment and reflect on everything that Allah has given us, which, believe me, is much, much more than we sometimes imagine.
Even if a poor man among the Muslims, who has barely enough to eat, who is sick, with a terrible disease, were to reflect on the gifts that Allah has given him, if he were sincere in doing so, he would realize it and remain patient in his adversity, grateful for what Allah has given him, who in the eyes of a person who does not have this knowledge may think that all he has is misfortunes and hardships, but that it certainly possesses much more, since it possesses above all things, the gift of Islam.
It is often said that gratitude brings nothing but good; and this is one of the great blessings of thankfulness, because if you are thankful, Allah will give you more: “If you are thankful, I will give you even more” (Ibrahim, 9).
And notice the greatness and mercy of Allah present in this verse, as He tells us that thankfulness, recognition and thanksgiving for gifts is for ourselves, Allah does not need it, Allah does not need it; He tells us, as a sign of His immense generosity and mercy, “Be thankful, and if you are, if you are truly thankful, then I will give you even more.”
Within thankfulness is personal thankfulness, the one you make to Allah for the goods with which He has favored you, such as your wealth, your health, your wife, your children, your house and above all Islam, each and every one of the gifts that Allah has given you; This is personal gratitude, which is obligatory for all of us; and it is not to thank for the sake of thanking, thankfulness, as we will see later, is to recognize who it is that has given it to you, and this is the gratitude of the heart, to give thanks for it, praising it, and this is the gratitude of the tongue; and finally, to use what he has given you in obedience, and this is the gratitude of the members of the body.
But there is another type of gratitude that we could define as general gratitude and that is to be grateful for the gifts that Allah has given to humanity, such as the Messenger or the Koran, but also the seas, the rivers, the breadth of the earth, having created us different; all this is part of what Allah has given to mankind and for which each of us should be grateful. The origin of thankfulness is the inner knowledge, the knowledge of the heart that this blessing, that this ni’ma comes only from Allah, you have not attained it either by your intelligence, or by your strength, or by your effort, you have it solely and exclusively by the favor of Allah and His mercy.
And the goal of thankfulness is to be grateful to Allah with each of those gifts that He has given you, that is, that each of those gifts you use in obedience to Allah; and may you know that if you do not use those gifts in obedience to Allah, then you will be using them in disobedience; and in that case, blessings will be replaced by their opposite, and the one who acts in this way will lose his gifts as he forgets Allah.
In fact, Allah says in the Qur’an: “That is because Allah does not change the favor He has bestowed on a people as long as they do not change what is in themselves.” The moment these people stop being grateful for what Allah has given them, it is the moment when the same thing happens as with Firatoum, with Qarun, etc., who think that what they have, they have for themselves, for their strength and for their intelligence; and we don’t have to go that far; nowadays, around us, this happens a lot, we think that what we have is for us and we forget that what we have is part of Allah’s gifts.
And by forgetting it, it is very likely that Allah will take it away from us.
That is why we must increase in saying, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah wa shukruillah, for everything, for all that he has given us and continues to give us.
“Musa, prayer and peace be upon him, said to his Lord: “Lord! How was Adam able to fulfill the thankfulness of what You did to Him? Thou didst create him with Thy hand, breathed Thy spirit into him, made him dwell in Thy Garden, and commanded the angels to bow down to him, which they did?”
Said: “O Muse!
Adam knew that it came from me and praised me for it . And this was in gratitude for what I did to him.”
And believe me when I tell you that even if we were to be grateful to Allah for what He has granted us every moment of our lives, it would not be enough; but know and always remember that His Mercy and Generosity are above all things.
Part of thankfulness is to rejoice in what you have, to appreciate it, not to devalue it, to recognize that Allah has given it to you and to use it in what pleases Him, since that gift He has given you is neither more nor less than a means to draw closer to Him; it is so with each and every gift: they are tools that Allah has given us to facilitate our closeness to Him.
It is also part of gratitude in never despising gifts, no matter how small and insignificant they may seem; not only what Allah gives you, but anyone who gives you, for it is possible that Allah is using that person as an intermediary, and if you deny and despise what He is giving you, you will be despising what Allah gives you.
It is reported that Allah, subahanhu wa ta’ala, said to one of His Prophets: “When it is my will, I grant you even a miserable and poor grain of wheat, know that giving it to you is because I have remembered you, therefore be grateful to me.”
All this is part of the gratitude that is due to Allah for all that He has given us, and so one of the great men of knowledge said: “I took care of three things with thankfulness:

• The first of these is that Allah created a thousand kinds of creatures, and I saw that the sons of Adam are the noblest of creatures, and He made me to be of men.
• The second is that I saw that Islam is the best of religions and the most beloved to Allah, the Exalted, and it made me a Muslim.
• And the third is that I saw that the community of Muhammad, to whom Allah gives His grace and peace, is the best of the communities and has made me belong to the community of Muhammad.”

Reflect on what you have, give thanks to Allah and thanks to it Allah will give you even more. Alhamdulillahi ‘ala ni’matil Islam, wa kafa biha ni’mah.

Published with the author’s permission from: http://ahmedbermejo.com