Yousuf Raza – Quran Daily Surah alFatiha Alhamdulillah2
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The concept of "ar neither" is discussed, which refers to the human experience of affirmation and pride. It is important to consider the human experience of pride, which is not just about the feeling of entitlement, but about the ability to achieve it. The importance of "ENTitlement" is discussed, which is not just about the feeling of entitlement, but about the ability to achieve it. The transcript ends with a recitation of the phrase coin, and a discussion of the importance of practicing gratitude towards Allah's creation.
AI: Summary ©
All right, bismillah, alhamdulillah, wassalatu wassalamu ala rasoolillah,
assalamu alaykum and hello to all those watching,
to all those listening.
This is part two of us talking about
alhamdulillah, which is the first phrase in the
first ayah, or maybe the second ayah if
we count bismillahirrahmanirrahim as the first ayah of
Surat al-Fatiha.
So we spoke about yesterday as to how
one dimension of alhamdulillah or alhamdulillah to be
more particular is that of affirmation, is that
of praise.
And the other dimension we spoke about is
that of gratitude.
And I was thinking that this relates very
directly to a kind of arrogance that human
beings are very prone to developing within themselves
that also has two dimensions to it.
The first dimension in which the human being
would arrogate to themselves as if their emotions
or their opinions based on those emotions are
100% correct.
If I feel it, it is reflective of
reality absolutely.
If I am angry at someone, that is
because they 100% deserve that anger.
If I hate someone, then they 100%
objectively deserve that hatred.
So there is this arrogance that emotions breed
in that kind of that absolute view that
affirms itself as the final authority on knowledge.
And whatever we spoke about yesterday or in
the previous video with respect to affirming the
praise and all the positivity for Allah will
allow for us to bypass or will allow
for us to deal with this this pathology
that arises from within us that isn't willing
to look beyond its own self.
But a constant reiteration of Alhamdulillah will allow
for us to see beyond this, see and
look for knowledge and affirm knowledge as having
coming as coming from the ultimate source of
knowledge that is Allah, which is beyond our
emotions, outside of our emotions, understanding of fallibility.
Basically, when we were acknowledging Alhamdulillah and not
arrogating to ourselves the final last word on
whatever matter that is being discussed, whether our
intellectual opinions or emotional opinions, it creates this
openness towards other possibilities.
This humility is generated, which allows for growth.
Remember, arrogance cannot grow.
Arrogance, by definition, has already directed to itself
or affirmed for itself the maximal potential of
growth.
Whereas humility, with respect to openness to knowledge
outside of one's own whether emotional opinions or
intellectual opinions, humility opens up the doors for
growth by further knowledge.
And according that praise and affirmation to Allah
would mean that that your humility is so
much more open to so many more infinite
possibilities.
Because really you are directing it, that affirmation
to Allah, who is the source of infinite
abundance, right?
Whereas when it was affirmed to me, myself,
and I alone, it was affirmed to something
very limited.
It was very restricted and there were incredible
issues with growth over there.
Now, also the second dimension of arrogance is
that sense of entitlement.
And this sense of entitlement relates directly to
the second dimension of Hamd, which is gratitude,
right?
So remember when we spoke about Alhamdulillah, we
said it's praise and affirmation, but it's also
gratitude, being grateful.
Now, the sense of gratitude is the direct
opposite.
Rather, it is the cure for a sense
of entitlement.
And understand that as a tendency, this is
very pervasive.
Almost every single human being will be vulnerable
to, at some point in time, or perhaps
most points in time, having this sense of
entitlement, having this sense of, oh, no, I
deserve this.
Oh, no, no, it has to be mine.
It should be mine.
Because when you have that sense of entitlement,
whenever somebody gives you something, whenever somebody does
something for you, you don't feel gratitude.
You just think they've done something that you
deserved inherently, just for how wonderful or how
beautiful you are.
And that's the end of the story.
If anything, they did not do enough for
you, that you deserved so much more.
So a person with a sense of entitlement
is never really satisfied.
He always thinks that he drew the short
straw.
He always thinks that he should have gotten
more and more and more and never really
had enough, no matter how much anyone does
for them, whether that's their parents or siblings
or friends or what have you.
Everyone is not giving them what they inherently
deserve.
And they've never stopped to think as to
where they get this sense of entitlement from
or what makes them, what justifies this sense
of entitlement.
Why are they entitled?
They just are.
These are just habits of an attitude that
they have developed for themselves and they never
stopped to examine or question it.
So here we are exploring, alhamdulillah, in the
dimension of gratitude, exploring that unexplored but incredibly
dangerous sense of entitlement that makes you pick
fights and develop conflicts where they're not warranted,
where you feel you're absolutely justified, where you
may not be, to question that sense of
entitlement and develop that sense of gratitude.
That when that gratitude comes in, and understand
that when we're talking about gratitude towards Allah,
we're automatically talking about gratitude towards people.
For a hadith of the Prophet ﷺ, where
he said that whoever مَا لَا يَشْكُرُ اللَّهُ
مَا لَا يَشْكُرُ النَّاسُ The one, the person
is not grateful to Allah, the one who
is not grateful to people.
So like we said with respect to praise
and affirmation, praising and affirming Allah does not
mean negating and refuting everyone else and negating
that they're not even real or this is
all a deception and nothing is real, only
Allah is real, even I am not real.
That is not what alhamdulillah connotes, right?
Just like that, gratitude to Allah does not
mean you start being ungrateful to everyone else.
Rather, gratitude towards people is a necessary prerequisite
of gratitude to Allah and it works the
other way around as well.
The more you develop a sense of gratitude
towards Allah, the more you are fighting off
that tendency within yourself of that sense of
entitlement and more you are focused towards becoming
a more grateful person with respect to what
other people have to offer you, what other
people give to you, you will be more
likely to be grateful.
There's this wonderful article that I was reading
and I think I'll share this in the
description of this video on Aeon.com about
how gratitude, it gives rise to, it is
the road to all other moralities and virtues.
That if you have this sense of gratitude,
then what you are developing within yourself is
a self-discipline.
Because at base, the article says, human emotions
are prospective, they look towards the future, i
.e. what benefit, what good can they fend
for you, your emotions, in your future.
What gratitude does is it makes you go
back and focus on the repayment of debts,
of how people have favored you and how
you take it upon yourself to give them
back.
And so automatically it breaks that instinct and
that impulsivity and it leads for you to
become more disciplined with respect to not thinking
about what you can accumulate for yourself, rather
what you can sacrifice in order to repay
the debts that you owe.
And that discipline and that sacrifice, these are
huge virtues we're talking about.
And how did it all start?
You open that door to gratitude, right?
And so this brings us to another understanding,
a deeper understanding of gratitude itself, that it
is not just something that you say with
your tongue or just fool yourself into thinking
that I feel grateful.
No, it is something if you genuinely feel
it, then you will do it, then you
will act it.
So in acting out our gratitude towards Allah
would mean that we conform to how much,
to what He wants for us to be.
And we'll talk about that as we speak
about the phrase رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ, which is how
this ayah ends.
So this is something about gratitude and how
it offers so much more to us as
human beings in terms of developing, in terms
of growing, and how this gratitude towards Allah
engenders this gratitude towards His creation and how
that engenders self-sacrifice, how that engenders giving
a discipline, and how that negates the ever
dangerous tendency of that sense of entitlement, that
arrogance that always seeks conflict and is never
satisfied and is always finding faults in others
and picking up conflict and how the sense
of gratitude can help and how we will
see as we go on in Surah Baqarah,
Inshallah, how that sense of entitlement was the
disease that is being targeted and criticized of
the Bani Israel that we have to be
very, very cautious of as a community and
as individuals.
It was the disease that led for Iblis
to refuse to bow down before Adam alayhis
-salam.
We'll talk about all of those.
It all stems, it all comes in to
this small phrase of Alhamdulillah and how much
depth this carries spiritually as well as intellectually
with respect to our personal development.
We ask Allah to really make us people
of Alhamdulillah.
So what we talked about in the very,
very, very first video that we may be
saying Alhamdulillah repeatedly, but if we do not
understand what it entails in our practical life,
we may be living lives of arrogance, and
how are religious people so difficult to tolerate
for apparently irreligious people precisely because of this,
that they carry this holier-than-thou attitude,
this sense of entitlement on the basis of
their religiosity.
Whereas the very first phrase of Fatihah, Alhamdulillah,
should have been a cure for that religious
arrogance and should not have made people so
averse to religiosity on what they see the
apparently religious people carrying with them.
So we hope and we pray to Allah
ﷻ that we are not only able to
recite this and repeat this and understand this
in our prayer, that we're able to actually
live this in our lives and we become
those fountains of goodness that humanity and society
can benefit from.
Thank you so much for watching.
We'll be back tomorrow, inshaAllah, with the conclusion
of this ayah and talking about the understanding
of Rab and Alameen and how that relates
to the rest of this ayah.
Thank you so much for watching.
Wa-akhiru da'wana an alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen.