Gratitude in Hardship and in Ease

There is the account of a shaykh of his, once flying to Singapore. Tea and coffee were being served when, all of a sudden, turbulence began — turbulence such as had never been experienced before. Immediately the hostesses and the crew members fastened their own belts and called out, please sit down, please sit down. It grew so severe, he says, that the lights went off, the oxygen masks came down, and people were thrown about all over the cabin, some jumping up and striking their heads on the ceiling of the plane; everyone was screaming. The secularists seated in front, who had been disputing with him only shortly before, were now all worshipping, crying out: oh God, oh God, oh God, please, please, please, please.

It is very easy, when people are in a desperate situation. Allah (swt) gives a similar analogy elsewhere — not an aeroplane, but a ship: when the waves begin to treat the ship like a little walnut shell, so small against the roaring of the elements. What do human beings do then? Oh Allah, please forgive me; I make tawbah; when I go back, inshāʾAllāh, I will be the best Muslim, I promise You. Yūsuf Islam has told the same account of himself: at sea with his friends, all apparently about to drown, going through great difficulty, he promised God that he would believe in Him, that he would do what was right — and that is how he became a Muslim in the first place. But, as Allah (swt) describes it, once such people reach the land, back to safety, they forget about everything. This is one aspect of human nature.

The other aspect of human nature is this: when everything is going a person's way, everything is fine and dandy, everything is beautiful — sunshine, springtime, summertime, the music playing, young and handsome and good-looking and pretty, everything on auto-pilot, nothing to be done, no pain, no suffering — and when a person is rich and can buy whatever he wants, in this state, the majority of people on earth, Muslim or non-Muslim, forget Allah (swt). They do not recognise Him; they put Him out of mind entirely, and they do not make shukr to Allah (swt). They do not recognise the niʿmah; they recognise the pain and the suffering, but they cannot recognise the niʿmah.

So when things go easily, and shukr is made then, in that state — that is the greatest servant. Not when a person is prompted — hey brother, say alḥamdulillāh, make shukr, come on — repeated alḥamdulillāh, alḥamdulillāh, alḥamdulillāh, said only because it was asked for, is not true alḥamdulillāh. True alḥamdulillāh is said when no one is looking: over a glass of water; over a beautiful night's sleep, waking and saying alḥamdulillāh yā Rabbī; over having a bed to rest one's head on, a pillow to sleep on; over having children, over having a roof overhead — yā Rabbī shukr, yā Rabbī, said from the heart when nobody has asked for it. This is the hardest form, not the easy one.

When shukr is made in times of ease, in times of comfort, Allah (swt) pays a premium for that particular shukr. Yet many people, by nature, because of the nafs al-ammārah, the soul that inclines to evil, forget Allah (swt) and make little shukr in the first place.