If You Are Thankful

Certain verses deserve particular notice, and verse 7 may be taken first, before returning to verse 4:

This is often quoted: if you are thankful, We shall increase you; but if you deny, or prove ungrateful — for kufr is ingratitude, a failure to acknowledge one's creator and sustainer — then My punishment is severe.

What does shukr mean? It is not merely to say, I thank You, God. It means first that one recognises where a thing has come from, acknowledges it, and gives thanks for it; and then that one uses what one has been given in the proper way, and fulfils the rights attached to it. To use what Allah has given in disobedience to Him is to have failed in shukr. One might say, thank you, Allah, for all the riches you have given me — and then gamble them away in Las Vegas. That is a contradiction, and so is anything smaller of the same kind.

But the substance of it is that gratitude brings increase. That is, as it were, the way of Allah with His servants: give thanks, and He gives more. It is therefore in our own interest to consider Him and to thank Him sincerely, from the heart.