Yousuf Raza – Quran Daily Surah alFatiha Alhamdulillah2

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.