Mustafa Khattab – Showing Gratitude to Allah
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In the name of Allah, the most gracious,
most merciful,
all praise is due to Allah We
praise him and we seek his forgiveness and
assistance,
and we take refuge in him from the
evils of ourselves and our shortcomings.
Whomever Allah guides, there is none to misguide
him, and whomever Allah leads to go astray,
there is none to guide him.
We bear with us that there is none
worthy of our worship except Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala, the creator, the sustainer of the universe.
And we bear witness that Muhammad
is the seal of the prophets
and the final messenger to all humanity.
Indeed the most truthful word is the book
of Allah in the Quran.
Allah says in the Quran
chapter 4 verse 1.
Oh mankind,
be mindful
of your Lord who created you from a
single soul,
and from that soul he created its mate.
And from these 2, Adam and Eve,
he created multitudes
of nations and peoples.
And be mindful of Allah, in whose name
you plead with one another,
and honor your family relations. Indeed, Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala
is ever watchful
over you.
This day,
a year ago,
the,
Thanksgiving Day
and the Black Friday.
That day last year was the Eid ul
Adhar
day, and
I remember on that day, I gave a
Khutba on how to show gratitude
to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And today, I'm pretty much gonna
repeat the same lecture for two reasons. Number
1,
half of the people were asleep,
and the second half probably
don't remember what they had in for breakfast.
So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us in
the Quran that reminder
benefits those who believe.
We have 2 types
of days in our lives. There are good
times,
and in Islam you are required to be
grateful to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala during
the time of prosperity.
There are also some difficult times,
and Islamically you are required to show patience.
To be patient
at difficult times and to be good to
to to be grateful at good times.
We spoke about the different types of patience
before,
so today, inshallah, we'll talk about
being grateful to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Allah tells us in the Quran,
Allah says that Allah has showered
his favors and his blessings on you. Those
favors and blessings that you know of, and
there are blessings and favors that you don't
know of, because they are hidden from us.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala also tells us in
the Quran,
Wa in ta'udduu nayamatallahi
laatuhsua
inna insana lavaloomukafar.
In Surat Ibrahim, Allah
says, if you were to calculate
only one blessing of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
that he has bestowed upon you, you will
never be able to calculate it.
Indeed, man is a wrongdoer,
ungrateful.
In another verse, we saw at Sad, in
chapter Sad, Allah says,
Very few
among my servants who are indeed grateful,
but the rest
are not.
In the Quran, the word means
2 things. It could mean a disbeliever,
and it could mean ungrateful.
Those who are grateful,
they only benefit themselves. They don't benefit Allah.
And those who are ungrateful,
they only
hurt themselves.
So, again, the word Kafir in the Quran
means a disbeliever
or it could mean a someone who is
ungrateful to Allah
What are the kinds of favors that Allah
has given us?
If you can just sit and reflect on
the things that God or Allah
has bestowed upon
you, you'll be amazed how many things you
have. Sometimes you think you got nothing,
but Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, has given you
too much that you are not aware of.
For every Muslim, the greatest
honor and the greatest favor in this life
is to be a Muslim.
Because think
think, you know, think about all the people
who lived as Muslims,
all the people who live in this life
without guidance,
the people who
don't believe that God even exists,
all the atheists and agnostics,
and there are over 1,000,000,000 of them in
this world.
Think about Hindus.
There are about 1,000,000,000 of them.
Think about Buddhists.
There are 500,000,000
of them.
Think about people of other faith.
Those who don't worship God in the right
way
and those who don't show gratitude to him
for whatever he has given them and those
who don't even believe that he exists.
And every time you ask someone who is
atheist,
why don't you recognize the fact that there
is someone
who created this magnificent
universe
with all the numerations
and,
varieties in the universe and all the things
being put together in a very,
complex manner because
there's no way that everything came about by
chance.
They tell you, for example, that we don't
believe in anything that we are unable to
see
or smell or touch or taste.
If you ask them, what is the difference
between someone who is alive and someone who
is dead?
The difference is the soul.
And no one has ever seen, touched, or
smelled, or tasted the soul.
So tell them, if you don't believe in
the things that you are unable to see,
or smell, or touch, or taste, then technically
you are dead.
Because no one has ever seen your soul,
or touched, or squeezed, or tasted your soul.
So you are dead.
Then
you have Hindus and I've
studied Hinduism for some time. I've visited Hindu
temples,
and I I till this moment, I don't
know if they have a 1,000 gods or
if they don't believe in God. I don't
know.
And one time I visited a
temple in Los Angeles,
and they have
little
gods for $10 each.
And I'm joking with another friend, and I
said, you know,
I wouldn't pay $10 for a god. Maybe
they have a smaller god. Maybe I'm willing
to pay $5 for a God Junior, a
smaller God. So can you imagine buying and
selling God?
This reminds me of the pre Islamic times
when people like Omar al Khattab,
who later accepted Islam, they used to
make gods of dates,
and they worship it all day long, and
whenever they get hungry, they eat it.
And in another case, the people who worship
idols,
and I remember reading in several stories
that some of them who later became Muslims,
they saw
dogs urinating on their gods.
So the person said to himself, if my
god is unable
to protect himself from a god,
then how come he will be able to
protect me?
And they became Muslim people like Abu Zalefari
and the other companions.
Then you
have
2,000,000,000 2,000,000,000 people in this world who worship
a human being by the name of Jesus
Christ.
And he himself
never said anywhere,
not even once, that I'm God or worship
me.
And as we know, in the book of
Matthew, Jesus
prostrated himself. He put his face on the
floor and prayed to God in the Garden
of Gethsemane.
And the Isa Alaihi Salam told the people
the Lord's prayer to say, our heavenly father,
hallowed be thy name, and he never told
them to pray to him. So Isa Alaihi
Salam himself, Jesus was praying to God,
and he never told anyone to pray to
him.
He was in the womb of his mother
for 9 months.
Can you imagine God being in the womb
of a lady for 9 months?
God needing to be breastfed,
God needing to eat and drink and to
go to the restroom, as Allah says in
Surat Al Mahina,
that
that Jesus and his mother, they were human
beings and they used to eat food,
which means that eventually they had to go
to the restroom
and relieve themselves.
So can you imagine God go into the
restroom to relieve himself?
So
you have all these ideologies and all these
philosophies
around you,
and none of the people
and none of the objects that are being
worshiped besides God
ever claimed to be God and never
said to people worship me. Whether they are
idols or Jesus or Buddha
or the holy cow in India or the
egg,
the elephant head
god in in in China. None of them
ever taught, nobody worship me.
But the only one who said I created
and I deserve to be worshiped, you see,
billions of people not
recognize that he is a creator, not recognize
that he exists,
not recognize the fact that, he is worthy
of their gratitude and worship.
The second great favor is
that Allah has given you life
because there are so many people who are
dead now.
So you have this favor that you have
lived
long enough
to pray to Allah and worship him and
get all these blessings.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has given you tongue
to speak with.
He has given you ears to hear with.
He has given you eyes to see with.
He has given you brains to think with,
and so on and so forth.
If
you have a house,
then you should be grateful to Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala because there are 1,000,000 in this
world who are homeless.
If you have a job,
then you should be grateful because there are
1,000,000 in our world who are jobless.
If
you have
a wife
or
a husband or children,
they should be grateful because there are 1,000,000
or 1,000,000,000 in this world who are wifeless
or husbandless
or childless.
If you have a car or a van,
then you should be grateful to Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala and not complain
about
the model or the make of your car
because there are 1,000,000,000 in this world
who are carless and vanless,
If this is grammatically okay.
So you should be grateful for the little
that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has given you.
There are people, billions in this world,
who don't get 2 meals a day. I
know people who get 5 meals a day.
There are people who get 1 meal a
day. There are people who work 14 or
15 miles to get a cup of dirty
water in Central Africa.
So you should be grateful
to Allah
for whatever
he has given
you. Can you imagine
your life
without
one of these favors I mentioned? Although there
are other 1,000
and hundreds
of other favors, I'm just giving you a
taste
of these favors of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Can you imagine yourself without eyes?
And as Allah says, if you count the
blessings of one favor, you will never be
able to count
Think of the eye
if you are blind.
You will never be able to get a
good education.
You will never be able to find a
good job.
You will never be able to find a
good
lady of your choice or a good husband
of your choice. Your life will be miserable.
You will use your hands to feel your
way,
and you will never know which is which.
If you want to fix some tea, you
will go to the restroom.
If you need to relieve yourself, urinate, you
go to the kitchen
because you can't see.
If you are
a lady
and they marry you with the ugliest man
in the world, you have no way of
knowing.
And you if you are a man
and they marry you a one eyed, one
legged, which
Mike Tyson's ugly sister, you have no way
of knowing.
So this is just one example of the
favors of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Your life
will be completely difficult and unbearable.
And although we have all these favors,
most of the people don't show gratitude.
They don't even say thank you.
You have people like Karl Marx and and
Lenin who deny the very existence of Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, but he provides for them
by day and night.
He created them,
so it is the right on him to
provide for them.
And every time they deny his existence, he
would never cut his supplies for them. When
was the last time you heard that God
told
call Marx if you don't pay your oxygen
bill, we'll cut you off.
Never happened
because Allah has to provide for them because
he created them. In the hereafter,
there will be judgment,
and everyone will be judged according to his
or her actions and decisions in this life.
What makes people ungrateful to Allah
in this world? There are several reasons.
Number 1,
positions.
If you are a president or a leader,
you might think you don't need Allah, so
you don't show gratitude.
And Allah says it in the Quran,
That
man becomes arrogant and ungrateful
when he or she knows that they are
self sufficient, so they didn't need God. So
they don't show gratitude.
In the story of pharaoh,
pharaoh.
He denied the existence of God, and he
didn't want to follow Musa Moses alaihis salaam.
And he said,
I'm
your lord,
the most high.
And I'm not for sure
if drugs
and marijuana existed at time at that time
because he didn't only say that he was
high.
He said he was the most high.
Then you have some people who were deceived
by their money, people like Korah in the
Quran and in the Bible,
and he denied God. He was not willing
to give
charity to the people, and he said,
I got all this wealth
because of my knowledge.
So what should I thank God for?
He didn't do anything for me, so I
don't owe him anything.
Then you have people like the Shaitan, the
devil,
who was so arrogant,
so ungrateful
because of his origins.
When Allah told them in the Quran to
prostrate himself
out of respect for Adam, alaihis salam, he
said,
I'm better than him.
You created me from fire, and you created
him from mud.
So I shouldn't
bow down to him.
So the angels were much much better than
the devils because the angels are created of
light,
and light is much better than fire, but
still they prostrated themselves to Adam alaihi salaam.
So you got someone who is much better
than you, who is grateful,
and he made sujood or prostrations to Adam
out of respect,
but the shaitan
denied and he was driven out of the
mercy of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. We ask
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to show us the
proper way, conduct, ask him of his blessings.
All praise is due to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
We bear witness that there is none worthy
of worship except him, and we bear witness
that Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
is the prophet of God who has sent
as a mercy to all mankind.
How can we show gratitude to Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala? There are so many ways
through which you can
give
thanks to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
There are so many ways for thanksgiving,
and believe it or not, cooking at Tabi
is not one of them.
There are so many ways you can show
gratitude to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. The first
one of them,
to acknowledge deep in your heart that whatever
you have in this life is only from
Allah.
And Allah said it in the Quran,
Whatever favor or blessing you have in this
life is from Allah.
It's not from anyone.
Your salary
is not from your boss or his boss,
but these people are just FedEx people.
If you do your job, you do your
part, Allah Subhanahu Wa'ala will send them to
deliver
your salary for you.
So you shouldn't think that your boss is
the one who provides for you. It is
Allah.
But these people are just agents
for God.
Number 2, you have to acknowledge with your
tongue, and thank God for whatever he has
given you.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam says in
the Hadith, in the lawha,
layalbaalmalalabdi,
and yakhulalaklata
The prophet
says that God is very pleased
with his servant.
Whenever he or she eats something,
they thank Allah for it.
Whenever they drink,
they thank Allah for the water
that he has provided for them.
So Allah is pleased
when people do this.
Can you imagine
if
someone like
brother Mustafa,
he is very good to me.
He
created me.
He gave me a lady to marry. He
gave me a house. He gave me a
job. He gave me a nice car. He
gave me vacations in Hawaii for the summer.
Then
I don't even say thank you.
I go and thank someone else, like brother
Gillette. So how do you think brother Mustafa
would feel? He would be very disappointed.
This
is how Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, how things
when Allah creates
all these people, billions of them, and very
few of them actually show gratitude.
They thank someone else or
they tell him, they tell God,
you don't exist.
Help.
So this is number 2. Number 1, you
acknowledge with your heart. Number 2,
you say it with your tongue that you
thank God. And number 3, which is very
important,
you have to help those who are less
fortunate.
You give your charity,
your zakat, you help the people who need
help.
The orphans, the widows, the poor people. They
are the people who are less fortunate. You
help them. And this is their riot on
you.
So when you give someone zakat or a
charity,
you're not doing them a favor.
This is the riot on you.
Number
4,
that
every time Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala gives you
a favor and then listen, you have to
enjoy it. If Allah gives you 1,000,000,000 of
dollars,
you won't sleep in the street
because Allah
wants to see the trace of his favors
on you.
That Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala likes to see
the impact,
the
influence of his favors on the people. If
he gives you money, you enjoy your life.
If he gives you a nice job, you
enjoy your life.
And Allah says in Surat,
And proclaim
the favors of your Lord.
But if Allah has given you all these
favors,
and you like them, and you don't use
them, so they are not actually yours. What
is yours in this life is what you
use.
So,
you do your part, you do a good
job, if Allah gives you money or whatever,
then you recognize that he is the provider,
and you help other people, and enjoy
the favors of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Without going to the extremes,
without being cheap and stingy, and without being,
extravagant,
if I pronounce it correctly.
Number 5, and this is the last one.
The last one,
and I don't want to forget this one.
The Prophet
used to ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
to help him, thank him.
Because you yourself, with your,
limited knowledge,
with your limited power, will never be able
to thank Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
dutifully or in the right way.
So the Prophet
used to make Dua
by saying, Allahumma
Oh Allah, help me
to worship you,
to thank you, and to be dutiful to
you in the right way. And this is
what we need to do. We ask Allah
to show us the right way, to thank
him, and to show gratitude to
him. We ask him subhanahu wa ta'ala to
forgive us anything we have done by ignorance,
mistake, or forgetfulness.
And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to
give us the best in this life, the
best in the life to come, and to
give us sincerity in everything we say and
do, and to accept our good deeds according
to the best of our intentions,
and to forgive us any mistakes that we
have committed in this life, and to and
to forgive all Muslims, those who are living
and those who are dead.