Husain Sattar – Standing in Shukr
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Muhammad
On one occasion, the companions of Rasulullah Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam,
they noticed that
the Prophet
was so abundant in his worship
that his feet began to swell.
And there are a series of ahadith that
discussed this notion of the prophet alaihi salam's
feet swelling
because he was so abundant in his worship.
Now you know that when a person stands
and if they stand for a long period
of time, their feet begin to swell.
You can ask,
a teacher,
a classroom teacher,
who has to stand 7 or 8 hours
a day sometimes,
and they tell you that at the end
of the day, their feet are swollen.
You can ask, somebody who happens to work
in a construction industry,
and they spend most of the day
on their feet. At the end of the
day, they can clearly show you that their
feet are swollen.
So it's part of human physiology that when
a human being stands for a long period
of time, their feet begin to swell.
Now
people
will have swollen feet for different circumstances. Some
people say, I stood in line 8 hours
to get tickets for a basketball game. My
feet are so swollen.
Some people will say, I work so hard
in order to earn
my wealth. My feet are swollen.
But in the case of Rasool Allah radiates
anam, ajeeb,
that his feet were swollen
through due to the worship of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala. And how many people can say
that I stood so long and prayed so
long that my feet were swollen?
Although it's it's not anything aji it's not
anything particular to Surah
Surah Alaihi Salam. It's not that only his
feet were would swell were a person to
stand that long.
It's part of our human physiology. If anybody
were to stand that long, they get swollen
feet or edema. We call it edema medically.
They get swollen feet.
So this is one of the very special
characteristics of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam that he
was so into his worship
and so driven to worship Allah
that consistently,
you'll see in Hadith various people coming to
Rasulullah SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam and complaining that, Yeah
Rasulullah, your feet are swollen
because you're worshiping so much. It was a
consistent thing. This wasn't something that happened once.
It wasn't something that happened twice. It was
something that regularly happened. He so regularly worshiped
Allah,
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
especially throughout the night that his feet would
swell.
Now the interesting thing is that
we we should be able to appreciate that
in and of itself.
And and it and it's, it should be
a mark of of a of a messenger
in a way, because the messengers are the
closest to Allah
But the Sahaba, they took it one step
further.
And they came on on on some occasions,
they came to Rasool Allah SAW Allahu Alaihi
Wasallam and they said, you know, You Rasool
Allah, you're worshiping so much
and your feet are swelling when you worship.
But isn't it that Allah has
forgiven you?
Isn't it that Allah
has forgiven all of any any possibility of
a mistake? Were a mistake to occur theoretically,
were a mistake to occurred from you,
it's it's established
from the Quran that what is what any
possible mistake that would be that that would
occur by Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wasalam is already
forgiven.
So they would come to the messenger and
they would say, yeah Rasulullah, you stand so
much in prayer. You stand so much in
worship, but
everything is forgiven for you.
And this highlights a very,
important
notion,
in that
many times the acts that we do, they're
driven by, you know, by driven they're driven
by some underlying
desire. And one of the driving forces of
acts of worship is forgiveness.
Right? I mean, there's different reasons why people
perform worship. One reason we perform worship is
because we have to. Because my name is
Mohammed, and Mohammed is supposed to be Muslim,
and Muslims are supposed to pray. So the
person simply prays. Either it's part of their
culture or part of their habit or they
were sort of raised that way or they
just feel like it's something they have to
do. So that's one thing that may drive
a person to worship. Another thing that may
drive a person to worship is they may
be afraid.
They may say, if I don't do this,
what will Allah do with me on the
day of judgment? I don't wanna go to
the hellfire.
So that would be a reason for a
person to, be driven towards worship. Another person
might say, I just wanna be in Jannah.
I wanna I wanna live a life of
a king. I want everything. I want to
eat, and I want to just relax, and
I want that all my wishes be fulfilled.
And that may drive a person to to
worship.
And so sohaba, they came to Rasool Allah
with one of the front under one one
of the fundamental premises about of why per
a person were with worship. And they said
to him, Rasuulullah, you stand so much in
prayer,
and your feet are swollen.
Yet isn't it that all of your sins
involve the possibility, the fear the theoretically were
some mistake to arise from you? Isn't it
that that's already been forgiven, whether it be
in the future or whether it be in
the past?
And so so also I sent him he
made a statement that is often quoted by
our scholars, and it's something that it's almost
something that each of us should memorize.
He just said a few words in response.
He said, Afalaaqun
Abdan Shaqura.
If it's that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
was so merciful to me,
that were a mistake to arise it would
be forgiven,
then shouldn't I be thankful to my Lord?
Shouldn't I do shukr of my lord?
And that was enough.
That rhetorical question, and it's a rhetorical question
back to the Sahaba. It's not they're not
expecting an answer. Oh, yeah. That's right. You're
right. Just that statement
wasn't enough to silence all of the companions
and the scholars till the day of judgment,
because it quiets everyone,
because it highlights
the underlying premise of the worship of Rasulullah
SAW Alaihi Wasallam, which was shirkr of Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
Being thankful to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And that is the highest, one of the
highest levels
of what drives human beings to worship,
is to be thankful.
Now,
when a person one of the one of
the,
signs
of a person progressing towards Allah
is that
they
learn to be thankful for that which they
have
as opposed to complaining
for that which they don't have.
It's a very important premise in our deen.
One of the signs of approach of towards
Allah
is that the servant learns
to be thankful for that which they have
as opposed to complaining for that which they
don't have.
And it's when they reach such a status
that
the they become thankful to their Lord, and
when they become thankful to their Lord, that
becomes the fundamental
driving force that leads them to worship. And
it's in that circumstance
that a person can easily worship hours at
night.
Easily worship hours at night. Now worshiping hours
at night
is not a laundry list thing it's not
a listed thing that had if I put
it on my checklist, it'll automatically occur.
No. You can't do that. You could say,
I'm gonna sleep all day, and I'm gonna
worship all night. You won't be able to
do it.
You won't be able to do it with
the drive and the desire that is is
necessary in such a beautiful act.
But what is what underlies that, and what
allows the servant to approach and achieve that
is thankfulness.
It's when they learn to be thankful for
what they have. Now, the goal of one
of the one of the goals of Islam
is that the servant learn to be thankful
for what they have, and learn to look
at what they have and say, and
to not complain about something they don't have.
These are two things that go hand in
hand.
And what is the goal of Shepah?
The goal of Shepah is opposite.
It's to make you forget the billions of
blessings that have been bestowed upon you
and to highlight and zoom in at high
power on one
thing that you don't have,
and make you think that you have nothing
because you don't have that one thing.
And it's Ajib because each of us have
been given billions of blessings, literally billions of
blessings.
Okay? And we've been given we have not
been given just a few things.
Everybody's been given billions of blessings and you
haven't been given 5 or 10 things.
And the Sharia says, Focus on the 1,000,000,000
things that you've been given
and don't worry about the 5 to 10
things, that's a part of your patience in
this life to show that you're thankful to
Allah.
And Sha'ban
trains us or calls us to ignoring the
billions of blessings
and instead turning to the 2 or 3
things that we don't have and making them
the biggest issue in our life.
And once that occurs now look, the person
who learns to be thankful for any one
of the billion things that they've been given,
it's not even a 1,000,000,000 it's more than
that. Because it clearly comes in the Quran
that were you to count the blessings of
Allah, you would not be able to do
it. So it's got to be more than
a 1000000000, but I'm just putting 1,000,000,000 as
a number so that we can capture something
in our mind.
If we were to be thankful for even
1 of the billions of blessings that we've
been given,
then
our life would be made.
And all Chaplain has to do is to
make us complain about one thing, and he
has his,
he has you on the path that he
wants you to be on. Because it wipes
out the whole force behind worship.
Now if a person,
you know, ajeev, most people in the world
don't even have a home.
Right? You look at look at just look
at globally globally. Look at look at all
of humanity.
Most people in the world don't have don't
own their own home.
Okay?
But you'll meet Muslims, and they own their
own home, and it's it's enough space for
them. But rather than saying, Alhamdulillah,
I have a home, they'll say, well, you
know, I could use 500 more square feet.
And, yeah, no, no, I this I I
admit, you know, the the little person who's
achieved a little bit more in the deen,
no, no, no, no, brother, I admit this
is a great house. The backyard's a little
bit small.
Right? Or, you know, No no no, I
have no complaints about my house. Alhamdulillah, we
pray here and everything, but I don't have
a basement. I don't have a basement. You
don't know how much how badly we need
a basement.
So this is human nature.
Human nature is to forget about all that
you've been given
and to immediately focus on the one thing
that we haven't been given or the 2
things that we haven't been given and
pound you know, hound on them, hound on
them, hound on them,
then that destroys human beings worship.
Whereas the Prophet
was so thankful for one blessing. What's the
one blessing that Allah
had overlooked the possibility of mistake?
That that one blessing, one blessing
drove him to worship at night
over and over and over again, such that
his feet would swell consistently.
SubhanAllah. Now, you know, sometimes we hear ahadith,
right? For example, you hear the hadith that
an individual who makes wudu,
his sins are washed away when he washes
his hands,
and His sins are washed away when He
washes His feet,
and His sins are washed away when He
washes His face.
How many of us have even prayed 2
rakah to just thank Allah for that opportunity
that occurs 5 times a day?
That's such an I mean, that is an
amazing opportunity that Allah gives us the opportunity
to cleanse ourselves in such a way that
we don't even have to do anything except
wash with water,
which is beneficial to us anyway. And that
simple washing is not only washing away the
filth, but it's washing away the sin as
well.
And how many of us can say that
we prayed even one night to thank Allah
that our wuglu is a mechanism by which
we can be purified?
How many of us can say that the
we we know that the prophet
established that each prayer wipes away the sins
between the previous prayer? How many of us
have prayed to raka even to thank Allah
that you created you gave us the opportunity
to pray, and it wipes away sin after
sin after sin?
How many of us have said, You Allah,
thank you for the blessing of Ramadan, and
we prayed one night to thank Allah for
the blessing of Ramadan?
How many of us in the case of
Hajj, I'm fine, once in a lifetime, have
not gone for Hajj, have thanked Allah for
the Hajj.
Going for Hajj is one thing, you know,
we go for Hajj. But how many of
us have come back from Hajj and then
said, You Allah, you gave me this opportunity.
Let me thank you in some way that
I'm so thankful that I'm driven to not
sleep this week because what you allowed me
to perform was far beyond what my wildest
dreams could have imagined.
We don't we don't have that. We don't
instead,
we're looking at the things that we don't
have,
and we spend the night fighting about them.
Husband and wife will stay up all night
fighting with each other about why the food
wasn't warm for dinner,
or why a gift wasn't given on this
day,
and they'll argue hours at night.
But neither of them have ever stood at
stayed up any night to thank Allah for
His blessings.
But they can count so many nights that
they stayed up and they fought.
How many times people come and sit in
front of me and they say, You don't
know what a headache I have. My wife
didn't let me sleep last night. She argued
with me all night.
People can people can quote the number of
days,
yet they can't quote the number of times
that they thanked Allah.
We you know, the the sign of a
child
is that they forget the blessings that Allah
has given them, and they focus on the
1 or 2 things that they don't have.
And the sign of an Islamic adult, spiritually
mature adult,
is that they calculate the blessings, and they
are so awed by one that they can't
get to the next.
They can't even move
to the next because they're so awed by
the first blessing the moment they reflect on
it. They begin to reflect on the fact
that Allah gave them an eye,
and they can't get to the fact that
there's a second eye as well.
That's the sign of a Muslim.
That is the true sign of a Muslim.
Rather than saying, how come my eyes aren't
landing on a new piece of furniture in
my house?'
That person is spiritually immature.
So if we desire
the depth of Ibadah,
it's not something that we just put down
on a list and we can check off
the box and Allah will will give it
to us.
Depth of Ibadah is driven
by an underlying
appreciation of the blessings of Allah.
I'm so thankful to my lord that the
sun rose. I can't get beyond that back.
Let me bow in his worship.
I'm so thankful to my lord that food
was available
at this meal. I can't get beyond that.
Whether it tasted good or not doesn't matter.
It's food.
And they get stuck on that point, and
they must bow themselves in worship.
This is the sign.
This is the sign of spiritual maturity.
I can tell you, I mean, how many
times I have a whole laundry list of
people who wanna come and sit and talk.
How many times have people come and sit
and said to me, I'm so thankful to
it, my lord.
Everybody wants to talk about a problem.
Everybody wants to say,
you know, I can't deal with this part
of my life. I can't deal with that
part of my life. My this person doesn't
treat me this way. The weather's not cooperating
with me. My job is not cooperating with
me. And they completely are oblivious to the
fact that they can stand up and move
their joints.
They're completely oblivious to the fact that they're
eating 3 meals a day.
They're completely oblivious to the fact that they're
sitting in the masjid.
Allah gave them the gift of Islam,
and they're so caught up in that which
they have not been given.
That's spiritual death.
Spiritual death, now you know I mean
in anything, in anything there's so many blessings.
If there's a husband and wife,
there's 99 good things that exist between that
husband and wife and each one inherently has
deficiencies because each one is a human being.
There is no perfect wife on this planet,
and there is no perfect husband on this
planet.
But what's perfect is that Allah provided that
opportunity
to be husband and wife.
So we should bask in that perfection of
the opportunity to have nikah,
rather than Allah left us alone in a
corner and said, you have to now live
a celibate life for 50 years, then you'll
get Jannah, and there you'll be married. It
could have been that way.
It could have been that way and we
would be complaining then. We would be complaining,
we said we can't have nikka.
Then the complaint would have been that.
This is what children do, you know, they
complain complain complain. You give it to them,
then they complain about the thing.
This is spiritual immaturity.
If we desire to achieve
a closeness to Allah
that closeness will come through shukr of Allah
through being cognizant
of every blessing,
learning to appreciate every blessing.
Now you see that in any particular field,
the field is always defined by the ability
to appreciate something that it already exists. For
example, a physician
is nothing special.
What is a physician? It's an individual who
has the ability to appreciate illness in a
human being. It's there. We all see it,
but we don't understand the depth behind it.
So what is a physician? It's someone who
learns to appreciate
how to look at an illness, how to
diagnose an illness, and then subsequently how to
treat that illness.
So they see things a little bit differently.
So what is a Muslim? A Muslim is
a person who learns to appreciate
all the blessings around them. And what are
the demands of the Quran? The demands of
the Quran are basically this, the Quran tells
you look at the sun, look at the
earth, look at the moon, look at the
world around you, look at the sky, look
at history, look at the fact that you
were given the messenger, look at the fact
that you were given the Quran, look at
the fact that you are allowed to circle
the house of Allah, look at the fact
that you've been given Ramadan. It hits you
with blessing upon blessing upon blessing upon blessing,
And it that should be enough to floor
the human being, to floor the Muslim because
the Muslim is the one who perceives these
things.
You know, I can give a 5 year
old a medical textbook, they won't understand it
because they can't perceive it.
Although it's fact, they can't perceive it. The
Quran is establishing fact.
The question is do we perceive it?
If we can't perceive it, the defect is
not the Quran, the defect is us. It's
in our it's our inability to perceive.
But the Quran's demand is to realize that
there are countless blessings around us.
Right? And to be constantly thankful
to Allah
for those.
Now the funny thing the funny funny thing
is that
life is tough and we do have difficulties,
and nobody can deny those difficulties. But if
you actually want to uplift those difficulties,
then it's simply by being thankful that Allah
takes care of those difficulties as well,
spiritually and physically.
Because Allah clearly states in the Quran that,
That if you thank Me, I will increase
you.
So it all goes back to shukr anyway.
If you have a problem with your brother
and you're fighting with your blood brother and
you want that your blood brother be closer
to you,
they will never be closer to you if
you go and knock on his door and
tell him, you're the worst brother in the
world. I hate you. Don't you know how
disgusting you are? Do you know you don't
let me sleep at night because I'm worried
about our relationship? Which brother then is gonna
say, oh, let me hug you. That was
so deep.
Nobody's going to say that.
Nobody's going to say that. You're gonna push
that person away because complaining
pushes human beings away. It pushes the mercy
of Allah away.
But if you were to turn to Allah
and say, Yeah, Allah.
Thank you for providing me with a brother.
Some people don't even have can't even have
the notion that they have a brother.
And, Yeah, Allah. If you were to,
You Allah, I thank you for this and
I thank you for this and I thank
for this. Allah knows the du'a in your
heart that you hide away because you're so
thankful to Allah. And Allah is very quick
to answer it.
Allah is very quick to answer
when it's beneficial for us. And if it's
not beneficial for us, then we're patient with
it anyway.
But it I mean, if you wanna look
at difficult life,
then we could say that the prophet had
many things to complain about. He couldn't complain,
my people are throwing me out. Where do
you find that complaint? Show me the statement
of Rasool Allah, where he's complaining about his
people throwing him out. He could have complained.
He could have said, my mother passed away.
My father passed away. Which complaint do we
see of that?
Where do we find that complaint? Well, he
could've complained when I complained when I was
a child. My parents passed away.
He could've complained, my children passed away in
my arms. Which one of us would be
able to even stand that?
We wouldn't be able to withstand that. He
could have said, my people threw me out.
He could have said he could have there
are many things he could have complained about,
yet he was focused on the blessings that
were bestowed upon him.
And he's focused on one blessing, subhanAllah, on
that one blessing that Allah had forget forgiven
the potential
for a mistake,
let alone how many more blessings were bestowed
upon Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wasallam, and he was
constantly thankful for them.
So we have to if we desire
to wake up in the night and to
pray to Allah, if we desire
that maybe one night, just one night, that
our feet swell
rather than standing in front because we stood
and played video games, but because we stood
and we prayed,
then it's going to come from that type
of attitude. It's not going to come from
my wife doesn't treat me this way, my
husband doesn't treat me that way, My mother-in-law
doesn't treat me the way I deserve to
be treated. My father-in-law doesn't treat me the
way I deserve to be treated. My in
laws aren't treating me with the respect that
I deserve to have.
This person my boss doesn't treat me like
how I should be treated. That's life.
That's not gonna go away by complaining.
It goes away
by learning to turn away from it
and saying, well, alhamdulillah, look at these other
50,000,000 things that I do have.
Look, people are starving, I'm not.
People don't have a roof over their head,
I'm fine.
People are dying of disease, I'm healthy.
You know how much problems there are in
the world?
The problem is is that we live in
a bubble.
You know, we don't even know what goes
on out there. And we just surround ourselves
in our little bubble, and we expect everything
to be the way we want it.
That's bay being a baby.
You know, we're babies. We're spiritually and forget
about being infants. We're spiritually babies.
We have no appreciation of the suffering of
the people around us.
We have no appreciation of the difficulty of
life. And instead,
we, you know, we grew up with a
silver spoon, and we want a gold one.
So we have to And that's not going
to produce a Muslim.
It'll produce a Muslim. It's not gonna produce
the depth of Ibada that we we desire.
Depth of Ibada comes from thanking Allah
and seeking out other people's difficulties
and alleviating them so that they thank Allah
and they make dua for us. This is
called Islam.
And there are very few people practicing this
type of Islam in this day and age.
But this is what the demand of Islam
is,
to be thankful for that, whatever it is,
whatever it is. There are some things worthy
of complaining about, but they're very few.
But anyway, but we all have something. We
all have been given so many things. That's
something, so many things.
Just try to go beyond your hand. The
fact that the joints bend, the fact that
you can perceive, the fact that you can
touch, the fact that you can move.
I mean, it should stop there. We shouldn't
even I should I should I it shouldn't
be able to go beyond my hand, and
I should totally be floored and worship for
the rest of my life because this is
such an amazing creation. I can move it.
I can turn it. I can grab with
it. I can make the with it.
SubhanAllah.
SubhanAllah that I can make takbir with it,
that I have the sense to take these
hands and to raise them this way. When
people are doing so many other things with
their hands, that Allah gave me the wisdom
that I can make takbir with my hands.
SubhanAllah.
That's enough.
It's enough.
Life is life. It's always gonna be difficult.
If one thing is not there, another problem
will be there.
But we don't focus on those problems.
We focus on that which Allah has given
us and that is enough to pacify. You
know, a baby gets a pacifier and then
they don't cry.
I'm pacified by my hand.
I'm pacified by the fact that I can
make takbir with my hand.
I'm pacified by the fact that I get
an opportunity to look at Muslims. I'm pacified.
There's so many things to pacify us.
Yes. We wanna cry. There's difficulty. It's life.
Life is meant to be difficulties. Sometimes it
drives you to cry, but there's so many
pacifiers.
So may Allah
give us a to
thank him for that which he has bestowed
upon us, and may he use it may
we use that thankfulness as a mechanism to
increase us both physically and spiritually, both in
this life and in the hereafter.