CHAPTERS:
Sometimes We Take Many Luxuries For Granted and We Complain Too Much
Ingratitude is Closely Related to Disbelief
Three Ways to Show Gratitude
How to Increase Gratitude? Look to Those Who Have Less Than You
My Near-Death Experience and the Gratitude That Resulted
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
In Surah 7, Ayah 17 of the Qur’an, Shaitan, our sworn enemy, is quoted as saying: “I will come to them from in front of them, from behind them, from their right and from their left, and you will find most of them ungrateful.”
When I was at the office a few years ago, I was in the kitchen, and I was microwaving my lunch. Another coworker came in, and there’s another microwave right next to me. He started fiddling with the microwave; he put his food in, he was kind of, you know, having trouble with the controls. He kept on pushing the buttons, getting really frustrated, and he said, “You know, I, I just want to put my food in there, I want to press the button, and I just want to heat up the food and be on my way and be done with it.” And I looked at him and I said some very simple words that kind of calmed him down. I said, “First world problems.” And he said, “Oh, yeah, okay, you’re right, you’re right.” And by saying that, he realized the luxuries that we have where we can just have our microwave, pop in the food, and and and heat up in a matter of seconds. And so he felt a little bit embarrassed by that. And I find a lot of people doing this. They, they kind of take for granted so many blessings that we have, and we forget the convenience of life that we have.
I remember a few years ago when the new iPhones came out, maybe it was like iPhone 6 or iPhone 7, I don’t remember which one, but it made a big jump from the smaller screens to the larger screens. And the screen was like, you know, 70%, 80% bigger than the old ones, and it was kind of a new thing and people were not used to it. And so a few months later, you started getting people going online and chatting on social media, giving their feedback about the new iPhone. And I read one complaint that really struck me. The person who was writing this complaint, they said, “You know, because the screen is so big, when I have to reach my thumb to the top of the screen to press on it, over time it caused my thumb to get a little sore.” I was like, are you serious? Really? This is what we’re, we’re complaining about? So again, these these things that we don’t realize sometimes are such a luxury for us, we complain about oftentimes unnecessarily.
And myself, I’m not innocent of this, because many years back I was driving to an Islamic conference, an ICNA conference, I forget exactly where, but it was somewhere in the Midwest, and I was driving north through the mountains, the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. And if any of you have ever been on that drive, you know that the roads are very windy, little one-lane roads, very windy, up and down the mountain, actually kind of a scary drive, to be honest. And I was driving my little car, going maybe a little bit faster than I should, and I was constantly turning and turning left and turning right and going up the hill and constantly turning, to the point that after an hour, after being done with that drive, my shoulders were sore. And I had never experienced that driving before, constantly turning and constantly turning, and it resulted in this soreness. And when I finally got to the conference, I was getting out, I was walking towards the conference, and I bumped into this, this brother. He was like, “Hey, how you doing? Where’d you come from?” And I told him where I came from, and the drive was very difficult. I said, “It was so difficult that my shoulders are sore.” And he said to me, “Imagine how they traveled 200 years ago through those mountains, on horseback or on foot, and how they felt.” And so I felt like that guy, that coworker in my office who was fiddling with the microwave. I felt the same exact way. I felt embarrassed, I felt ashamed that we take for granted so many luxuries and so many things that we have to make our life easy and convenient. Yes, my shoulders were sore, but big deal. Wasn’t worth the complaint, especially if you have the perspective and you look back and you see how people lived back then and the struggles they had to endure, and also the people that live now, because there are people all over the world who don’t have access to these things that we have.
So we’re all guilty of this. And so what we need to do, in my opinion, is we need to be a little bit less complaining and we need to do a little bit more thinking. And so in this Khutbah, I want to talk about this concept of gratitude and how we need to really have that feeling in ourselves of gratitude throughout our lives.
Now, why is it important to have gratitude? If we look at the concept of kufr, we all as Muslims, we think of this word as meaning disbelief, and it’s something that we never want to be associated with, the idea of of kufr, of disbelief. When you mention it to Muslims, they get nervous. And if you look at the word kufr, of course it means disbelief, but the literal definition of it is to cover over or to cover up. Like the farmer who puts the seed in the ground and they cover up the seed, that’s considered kufr. But there are many meanings to it, and one of those meanings which is very interesting to me when I learned this, and maybe some of you don’t know, is to be ungrateful. The idea of kufr: to be ungrateful. And it’s mentioned many times in the Qur’an, and Allah condemns the kafireen, those who have this, this idea of kufr, not only disbelief but also ingratitude.
And if you look at the opposite of kufr, what’s the word? The opposite word for kufr is shukur. So you see the, the similarities, shukur and kufr. And we know that shukur means thankfulness. So we can see just how imperative it is for us to be grateful. And of course, as Muslims, we should be grateful to Allah, because Allah is the source of all good, He’s the provider of everything, and He’s our protector. So we need to be more grateful to Allah.
So how can we show this gratitude? How can we be grateful? If you look at the works of the scholars, they say it’s in three main ways:
One… To recognize the blessings of Allah. Not only recognizing in your mind, but recognizing it in your heart. And if we do this on a consistent basis throughout our lives, we will be less likely, less likely to take the blessings of Allah for granted. Now, of course, we all make mistakes, we’re all humans, we do it at times, but the idea is to catch yourself when you do that. You know, when you complain about things like I said, car or iPhone or microwave, whatever, just try to catch yourself and be like, “You know what, maybe I shouldn’t be complaining about this. I’m complaining too much. Let me show some more gratitude.” And so the first way the scholars say is to recognize the blessings of Allah.
Two… To say thank you. To say Alhamdulillah, vocalize it. Alhamdulillah. And you not only say it to Allah, but if somebody gives you something, you are obligated to say thank you to them, even though it comes from Allah. Because we know that everything is given by Allah; Allah is our Provider. But sometimes He uses people to give us things, bestow things on us. And the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “Those of you who are not thankful to people are not thankful to Allah.” So we have to say thank you to those people. So again, first way: recognize the blessings of Allah. Second way: to say thank you.
Three… To do good works, to do righteous deeds, good actions. There’s many things that we can do, and I don’t have to go into a long list of things that we can do, I’m sure you all know them. Just to mention a few of them, we can be of service to our community, help people, perform acts of charity as much as you can, more thikr. But one of the most important things that we can do is to pray. And the reason why I want to highlight this one is because of a beautiful hadith that I read many, many, many years ago, and it really, again, it had an impact upon me. And that is when Aisha, may Allah be pleased with her, saw the Prophet, peace be upon him, praying all night long, and after he was done one night, she came to him and she said, “O Prophet of Allah, why do you do this? All your sins have been forgiven.” What did he say? The key words, the key phrase: “Should I not be a grateful servant?” Even the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, guaranteed Paradise, the most beloved to Allah, he could have said, “I’m good, no problem, don’t need to pray all night, let me get my sleep.” But because of that station that he was granted, he felt an obligation, he felt compelled to show that gratitude through his actions. And so I’m not asking you, I’m not saying that we should pray all night every night, I’m not even saying we should pray all night one night. I, I barely do that, maybe in Ramadan. But we need to increase our good deeds, increase our deeds of service. This is a way that we show our gratitude to Allah, because Allah doesn’t want us always just to say it, He wants us to also show it to others and in our lives.
So let’s pray to Allah, O Allah, please make us among the grateful. Please, Allah, forgive us for any times that we complained where we shouldn’t have complained. Please, Allah, forgive us for any times that we were ungrateful. Please, Allah, increase us in our practice, increase us, Ya Allah, in our iman, in our taqwa, and please, Allah, forgive us for all of our shortcomings, all of our sins. Grant us the best of this life and the best of the Hereafter, and bless all the Muslims, past, present, and future, and shower Your mercy and Your blessings upon Prophet Muhammad, his companions, and his family until the end of time. Ameen. Ask Allah for forgiveness.
(End of first khutbah)
In surah 55 of the Qur’an, called Ar-Rahman, Allah repeatedly asks us the question: “Which of the favors of your Lord will you deny?” And He repeats this over and over and over again: “Which of the favors of your Lord will you deny?” He says this 31 times, emphasizing the importance of the favors that He bestows upon us.
Now I want to ask you the question, think about this. What did you have for breakfast this morning? When you opened your closet, how many choices of shirts did you have? How many choices of pants did you have? How many choices of shoes? For some of us, we actually walked into our closet, which means we had a pretty big closet. I’ve seen closets—not mine, but I’ve seen some people’s closets that are as big as some people’s bedrooms. And I’ve seen some people’s bedrooms that are as big as some people’s houses, literally. Think about it. What kind of car did you drive? All these blessings that we have that, again, we, we take for granted, because here in the West, in America especially, we live such a luxurious life that most of the world doesn’t enjoy.
And so the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “Look at those who have less than you, and don’t look at those who have more than you, so you can better appreciate the blessings that Allah has given to you.” And so this is the key: we have to look at those who have less than us.
And this happened to me very profoundly when I was at an ISNA conference and I was walking around the bazaar, and I saw a pamphlet. It was a booth for Palestine; they were trying to raise money for Palestine. And I saw a pamphlet that they had, and I picked it up and I started reading it. And I opened it and they showed a picture of a boy who was just simply playing in his yard, just simply playing with his friends. And somebody came and threw a Molotov cocktail—you know, this, this bottle with with oil in it and a and a lit fire—and it landed near him and it exploded and it engulfed his body in flames. And he survived, but they had a picture of him. And brothers, I cannot describe what I saw. Literally, his, his face had melted and and it had fused with his chest, and so he had no neck. It was this skin just running off his face down to his chest. And I was just standing there in tears, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. And this is something that happens that we are shielded from for the most part in our in our cushy lives. And I’m guilty of this, too. I’m not, I’m not criticizing anybody. I’m simply saying that we just need to think about those who are less fortunate than us. Do it more, try to think about it more. And every now and then, I think about this boy, and I think about those who are so much less fortunate than we are. And this should be a motivation for us, not only, of course, to help those people with whatever we can, to make dua for them, and I ask you and anybody hearing this to make dua for that boy and for anybody who is suffering at the hands of oppression or persecution or difficulties, whether they be in another country or whether they be in our own neighborhood, ‘cuz we have a lot of suffering going on. But the point of this khutbah is to just show more gratitude for what we have.
Another personal story, and this is a very strange thing that happened to me. I was at an intersection waiting for the light. There was a major highway, so the crossroad that was in front of me, fast cars were coming, 60 miles per hour, 70 miles per hour. And I was waiting at the light, it was nighttime. And I was sitting there in the intersection, and there was a car straight across from me also waiting to turn. I was getting ready to turn left, and they were turning left on the opposite side. And I was just sitting there, staring right at them. And all of a sudden, they flashed their lights at me, their brights. They just clicked it on, clicked it off, clicked it on, clicked it off. And it just struck me as very odd. Why did they do that? And so the light, which was red for me and red for him, it then changed to green for both of us to turn left. And so I paused, and I was like, “Wait a second, let me see what they’re going to do,” because I have no idea why they flashed me. And so I paused and I waited for two seconds. He started pulling out into the intersection. And again, I waited. Okay, everything’s cool. Okay, fine. Then I started going. As soon as I pulled out, a car on my left-hand side barreled right across and missed me literally by an inch, and they were going 70 miles per hour, at least!
Now think about that. Had I not delayed, I probably would have been hit by that car broadsided. I probably would have been killed. Now I know my last khutbah was about that everything happens according to Allah’s plan, and so it was not destined for that to happen for me at that time, obviously, because it didn’t happen. So I’m simply saying, what if? I’m simply saying, what if that car didn’t flash their lights, and what if the light turned green and I pulled out immediately? I’m saying, what if? If that happened, I probably would not be standing before you right now, or maybe I’d be in a hospital paralyzed. And this happened 25 years ago. So I think about that all the time. I feel like I have that gratitude that for some reason—I don’t know who was in that car, maybe Allah sent an angel, I don’t know, not that I’m worthy of it—but He caused that person to flicker their lights to alarm me, that’s the way I see it. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but it was just so odd to me. That never happened to me before in my life, that somebody would flick their lights like that, and that I would pull out and suddenly a car running the red light would just go right in front of me, missing me by an inch. So again, let’s try and find those moments in our life where we can be more grateful, to increase our gratitude, and as a result, it may increase our connection to Allah and our good deeds.
And there’s many stories that I can give you, I don’t have time to go into them, but I’m telling you these stories because they happened to me. What about those times where Allah saved us from something and it never happened to us, so we don’t know that we were saved? You know, there was a, a guy, an extremist Muslim, who, I don’t know if you heard the story, many years ago, was walking to Time Square. He was intending to bomb Time Square. And of course, we condemn that. Terrorism is condemned in Islam. But he’s a Muslim, he had his, his backward, ignorant, diseased beliefs and misplaced beliefs. And so he was doing it for whatever reason he believed he thought was righteous. But the point being is that he was on his way to Time Square with pipe bombs in his backpack, and as he was getting off the subway, he was in the subway station, for some reason they went off and they exploded in his backpack, and he got injured and he fell to the ground, and people came rushing and they eventually arrested him and everything. But I want you to think about this: How many people would have been injured or killed had he been successful in his attack? There are people walking around the world probably right now in America or wherever they are, enjoying their life. They went on with their lives, had no idea that they were that close to being injured or killed. No idea. And so my point is, imagine how many times Allah may have saved us or maybe somebody saved us doing something that we had no idea about. And yet, we go about living our lives unaware of that. And so I even thank Allah for that. I say, “Allah, thank you for saving me from things that I don’t even know about. Thank you for providing Your blessings, and sometimes those blessings come in hidden forms.”
And one natural consequence of this gratitude will be a nearness to Allah. The more grateful we are, the more near we will be to Allah, because when we’re grateful to Him, our love will naturally increase, and so will our faith, Inshallah, and hopefully our practice.
So, O Allah, make us among those who are grateful. Bless us to not only speak the words of gratitude, but to genuinely feel gratitude and to act in accordance with those feelings by living a life of gratitude. O Allah, forgive us for all of our sins, first and last, big and small, overt and covert. Guide us to the best of this life and the best of the Hereafter. Shower Your mercy and Your blessings upon the Prophets, all the Prophets, and all the followers of the Prophets. Shower Your mercy and Your blessings upon Prophet Muhammad, his companions, and his family until the Day of Judgment. O Allah, make us more grateful, make us more grateful to You. Give us the the understanding and the ability to see all of the uh all of the good deeds or or all of the goodness that You have blessed us with, and forgive us for being ungrateful and guide us and give us the best of this life and the best of the Hereafter.
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