Pleasing Allah in Every Situation - Nouman Ali Khan - Animated
Allah (عَزَّ وَ جَلَّى) says,
QS. Al-Isra: 83 (...وَإِذَا أَنْعَمْنَا عَلَى الْإِنْسَانِ)
"When We shower favor on to the human being."
(أَعْرَضَ)
That the human beings ignores it,
deliberately ignores it.
The suggestion here is that
when human beings are given lots of gifts by Allah,
human beings start becoming deluded
into thinking somehow they deserve them,
or they are entitled to them,
or this is because of their own doing,
or their own accomplishments,
or their own capability.
So they completely ignore
the fact that these are favors.
They actually start thinking they own them,
or they're entitled to them in one way or the other.
(وَنَأَىٰ بِجَانِبِهِ)
"And he turns away to his side."
In other words, this kind of a...
Let me give you an English translation,
an American English translation of (وَنَأَىٰ بِجَانِبِهِ):
"Huh!"
That's (نَأَىٰ بِجَانِبِهِ).
When somebody says
Allah has given you a lot of favor, "Huh!"
That's literally captured in language.
So he huffs and puffs about
the things that Allah has given,
and dismisses the idea of this is somehow
a divine gift.
(وَإِذَا مَسَّهُ الشَّرُّ)
"And when harm touches him,"
(كَانَ يَئُوسًا)
"He becomes altogether depressed, full of sadness."
"Allah has done this to me."
"Why am I being put through this?"
"What did I do to deserve this?"
When good happens, "I deserved it."
And, "It was my doing."
But when bad happens,
"It wasn't my doing. It's Allah's doing. Allah did this to me."
(كَانَ يَئُوسًا)
This twisted mind of his.
What's really remarkable about
this ayah is actually a lesson in adab,
a lesson in etiquette in
how we not only think about Allah,
but even how we talk about Allah.
The way a person speaks is
a manifestation of how they think.
So when favor is mentioned, Allah says,
(وَإِذَا أَنْعَمْنَا عَلَى الْإِنْسَانِ)
This is the past tense.
(أَنْعَمْنَا) who's the doer?
(نحن), it's Allah, 'We' shower him.
(وَإِذَا مَسَّهُ الشَّرُّ)
When favor is mentioned then the doer,
the subject of the verb is Allah.
"When We shower him with favor."
"When harm hits him..."
Allah says, (هُوَ مَسَّ, مَسَّ)
and the outside doer, the fa'il is (الشَّرُّ).
In other words,
Allah did not associate Himself with harm.
So Allah did not say, "When We make harm touch him,"
or, "We afflict him with harm."
He didn't do that.
He didn't associate harm to Himself.
And this is actually teaching us something,
a very deep concept in our religion
about harm and benefit in this world.
At the end of the day, what's our belief?
Everything is from Allah.
When someone gets sick, it's from Allah.
When someone gets better, it's from Allah. That's our belief!
Nothing happens except for the will of Allah.
But...
that doesn't mean that we get to talk about like that.
Even though that's the reality,
there's supposed to be a certain level of respect.
Why is that?
And if it's truth, it's truth.
You should just be able to say it.
Why coated with formality?
This is also an important lesson.
Allah teaches us
in a way that is suitable for all human beings.
You see a mature student.
a mature believer,
they know that when good happens,
there is good in it.
And when that bad happens is also good in it.
And all of it is a test.
This is a mature believer.
But anyone short of being mature,
anyone that's not that mature in their faith,
then when bad happens, and you say, "It's from Allah."
How do they think of it?
Literally, as Allah did something bad,
and he means something bad by it.
Like they cannot process
anything more mature than that.
Right?
So Allah reveals language
that for someone who's deeply going to reflect
will also understand.
But somebody who just looks at it on the surface level
can still appreciate and not get the wrong conclusion.
"Harm touched him."
Allah did not say when harm, "Allah harmed him."
Allah didn't say it like that.
Because for the immature,
just listening to that he just gets messed up.
And He's actually correcting the immature by saying,
(وَإِذَا مَسَّهُ الشَّرُّ كَانَ يَئُوسًا)
"When harm touches him,
he becomes entirely depressed."
He becomes overwhelmed.
(يَئُوسًا) actually fa'ul.
This is from (يأس) is mubalaghah,
'extremely depressed'.
You know, there are some people
who are used to success.
They're used to just getting 100.
They're used to winning every race.
They're used to winning every game.
They're used to being number one in everything.
You know, they're used to getting their parents
to listen to everything they say, etc.
Then one time they don't get their way.
What happens to those kinds of people?
Those are the kinds of people in life
that have a really hard time dealing with failure,
or dealing with loss, or dealing with the challenge.
People that 'take the hits all the time',
like the fourth kid, or fifth kid,
or something in a family.
It's all good.
Or the youngest one.
Youngest kids,
like you know, I am afraid for my youngest one
because she can get away with pretty much anything.
You know because by the time
you get to the youngest age,
then you know
for some reason the policing of your parents
just I don't know where it goes.
Like I tell my mother and father
that about my youngest sister.
They were tough on us.
"But my youngest sister gets away with anything."
"Mom, what happened?"
"This was not policy with us."
"She's so little..."
"Not little!"
What happens with people? They get spoiled.
Favors can spoil someone.
And so when a little bit is taken away,
they become entirely depressed.
Now this lesson that Allah teaches us
about favor, harm touching you.
All of us in this dunya
have been given a limited number of (نعمة),
and a limited number of (شر).
On the one hand,
Allah has decided what our rizq is going to be our rizq.
Our provision includes our money,
but it also includes our friends,
our family is our rizq,
our knowledge is our rizq,
people who teach us is our rizq,
the people who learn from us are our rizq,
our children are our rizq.
Every good you have in your life is basically your rizq.
You don't have an unlimited amount of this stuff.
Where do you get the unlimited stuff?
You get that in Jannah.
Here there's a limited supply of what you're going to get.
It's written for you.
Then on top of that,
there’s a limited number of challenges
that you're going to face in this life.
Allah is not going to give you any more
or any less than what He's written for you.
That's it.
It's declared, this is what your lot in life is.
Now if you internalized that,
then your challenges and your opportunities
are not the same as my challenges
and my opportunities.
They're not the same.
And sometimes Allah opens a door of opportunity
but you refuse to walk through it.
You could have reaped a lot of reward from it,
but you chose to not walk through it.
And then you end up suffering,
and then you end up blaming Allah instead.