I have asked myself what emotion overtakes me at the first annual conference of The Usuli Institute. What emotion do I feel? In a word, it is a gratitude (shukr) to God. It is gratitude for the blessing of your presence with us. Gratitude for what God has enabled us, here at this conference, to do. Gratitude for the gift of love, the gift of care, and the gift of your presence with us here today. This is a very central point. For it is not just that I feel gratitude for this day, for The Usuli Institute, or for the gift of your presence with us. Above all, I feel gratitude toward God. Gratitude is what it is all about. God tells us in the Qur’an to declare that our worship, our supplications, indeed, our very life and death is for the sake of God, and that our challenge in life is to be nothing less than “the first of Muslims” (Q 6:162-3).
How can you be the “first of Muslims”? And what does this have to do with gratitude to God? Remember that God tells us in the Qur’an that the very point of our creation is to worship God (Q 51:56). But we come back to the point: what does that mean? How do we worship God, and how can it be the very point of our creation? If it is the point of our creation, then, a priori, it must be the very reason and cause for the existence of The Usuli Institute. It must be the purpose for my existence, for your existence, and for our meeting in this very conference here today. It must be the cause for everything we can do, and everything we have done, and everything that we will do, God willing, in the future. This is the very concept of worshiping God, which is intimately interconnected with gratitude toward God.
So, is this the reason we founded The Usuli Institute? Is this the reason for this very conference? Is this the reason for our very existence? Are we all here just to express gratitude to God? The answer, in short, is: absolutely, yes, it is. But how can that be? The Usuli Institute seems to do many other things than simply worshiping God in the traditional sense of worship. Well, this takes us back to the very idea of gratitude to God. Not just this, in fact, but it also takes us back to the very cause of the plight of Muslims in our modern world. It takes us to the very reason there is a genocide in Gaza. The very reason we see Muslims around the world suffering under dictatorships and genocidal regimes in a state of powerlessness. It all goes back to that core concept of thankfulness or gratitude toward God.
We can agree that gratitude is of three levels. The very first is to know that you are, in fact, receiving a blessing (ma‘rifat al-na‘ima). That very first level is the gift of consciousness and awareness. If you are unaware, nothing can proceed from that. Unawareness is a state of being lost. It is a lack of awareness, a state of confusion, a state of not knowing what you should know. And that leads to all types of negative consequences. It leads to alienation from the Divine and a state in which you do not really know why you exist or what the point of life it. At the institutional level, awareness is, indeed, the very first mission and reason for The Usuli Institute. It is not about me. It is not about you. It is about the Creator, and what the Creator gives and takes. This very first level, the gift of awareness and consciousness, is an awareness of what the blessing of life and the blessing of the intellect entails. It is an awareness of what our relationship should be to knowledge and plenitude. What our relationship toward the past, present, and future ought to be.
How aware are we of the past? How conscious are we of the present? To what extent are we indeed present in the present moment? For it is our relationship to the past, and our relationship to the present, that defines and determines the future. This very first level is not just a state; it is a mission. It is an educational mission. It is, indeed, what worship and gratitude toward the Divine means. If we put together all the time spent in prayer, how long would it be? Even if we exaggerate, would it be more than an hour? How, then, if worship is limited to ritualistic acts like prayer and fasting and charity, could it be the very purpose for our creation? As we will see, worship is not just ritual. It is a state of consciousness and intentionality so that everything we do is, in fact, a glorification and an expression of gratitude toward God. So that every endeavor, every engagement in life, becomes a form of worshiping God.
The second level of gratitude is for what dwells in the heart to then flow from the tongue. Whatever you express with your mouth is a verification of what dwells in the heart. If I thank you for being present here today, for example, but there is nothing bubbling in my heart, then that is not gratitude. For something to constitute gratitude, it must dwell in the heart. Whatever we express in our tongue must be a validation
and a reflection of what is in the heart. There is a big difference between those who say the word “Alhamdullilah” and mean it, and those who say it but the word does not necessarily reflect what bubbles in the heart.
So, the first mission is awareness. The second mission is to feel and teach what dwells in the heart, and what should dwell in the heart is your relationship to God. Not a selfish passion for the self. Not a self-centred desire for heaven. What should dwell in the heart is a love for God. But here is the thing: how can you love what you do not know? For that passion to dwell in the heart, for that love of the Divine, you must know the Divine. And that is fundamentally why The Usuli Institute exists. It is founded on the desire to help oneself and to help others know the Divine in such a way that what dwells in the heart is the love of God. And that love is then translated in the words of praise (hamd) that come out of one’s mouth.
We then come to the third level of gratitude. I submit to you that the third level is the very reason for the existence of The Usuli Institute. It is the justification for any Islamic work, any Islamic meeting, any Islamic anything. And the third level is that you translate what is expressed on the tongue into deeds.
How, you might ask, is that related to the genocide in Gaza? How could it be related to any grim reality that exists in our world, whether poverty, displacement, authoritarianism, or whatever misery and suffering we possibly see? To understand God’s blessings is to understand what God aspires for us and what God gave us as a means to achieve that aspiration.
Every blessing that God bestows upon you or me is given for a reason. Your ability to speak, your ability to think, your families, your knowledge, your job, your movement: every blessing that God bestowed upon you is tied to what God wants you to leverage this blessing toward. So yes, your tongue may have expressed gratitude, but the only way for the circle of gratitude to be complete is that you now understand your charging orders. And that is through action, perseverance, and movement. It is through telling God: "I understand that I exist for Your worship, and what it means to worship You is to be aware of the blessings You have given me. I know the point of these blessings is not to be selfish. I know, in order to translate the blessings of knowledge, health, or money that You have given me, I must serve the objectives and purposes that You have defined for me."
You need only the most superficial knowledge of the Qur'an to be aware of what God wants you to use your blessing for. To alleviate the oppression of your fellow Muslim brothers and sisters. To become a testament to justice. To establish justice and equity on earth. To take care of the wayfarer, the refugee, the orphan, and the needy. This is why the Prophet teaches us that whoever experiences plenitude from God will also experience something else. What does that mean? If God has given you the money, you will find the needy asking you. If God has given you knowledge, you will find the ignorant seeking you. If God has made you a doctor, you will find the ill seeking you. The Prophet then says that if you find yourself tiring of people's needs, if you find yourself irritated, annoyed, or, even worse, miserly, holding onto God’s blessings for your own selfish purposes, then just wait until God takes away God’s blessings. "Why are people bothering me? Why do they not take care of themselves? Why do they not go somewhere else with their problems?" Just wait. The Prophet also told us that he who does not know how to be grateful toward people cannot be grateful toward God.
What is the point here? The point is that a blessing is never an affirmation of egocentricity. Whatever blessing God has given you or me, it is never to affirm and to further feed our selfishness and egocentric selves. The blessing has a purpose, and the task is to understand what purpose that blessing should be leveraged toward in the service of other people. Whether it is the gift of knowledge, money, or health: you must first acknowledge that it is a gift in your consciousness; you must express that knowledge with your tongue; you must then translate all of that into action in the service of God’s purposes.
This, indeed, is the very reason for the existence of The Usuli Institute. And it is the very reason for my existence and for your existence.
Our gratitude toward God is not complete unless we come to the aid of our brothers and sisters and, indeed, to the aid of humanity at large. To put it bluntly, if you are a doctor who translates the blessing God has given you – your knowledge, qualifications, etc – into a means of egocentrism and selfishness, into an opportunity to get rich, making it all about yourself, then you show no gratitude toward God. You must acknowledge the gift. You must express gratitude for the gift by the tongue. And you must translate that gratitude into a program of action, service, helping others. Then, and only then, does gratitude truly begin. Only then is gratitude truly manifest and real.
To be in a state of worship is to teach humanity that God is the Merciful who loves mercy, the Compassionate who loves compassion, the Just who loves justice, and the Equitable who loves equity. The path of God is the path of knowledge, awareness, justice, and fairness. And any path that is at odds with justice, fairness, equity, mercy, and compassion cannot be the path of God.
This is the message of Islam. This is what Islam is about. This is what it means to take people from darkness into light. This is the very reason for the existence of The Usuli Institute. This is the very philosophy that animates us and the very reason for our existence. It is the reason of whatever we do in life.
But, as we all know, we Muslims have lost so much of our path in the modern age. We have forgotten what gratitude to God is about. We Muslims, in this age, have somehow turned our faith into a faith of mere rituals and performances, and these performances often have nothing to do with what goes on in our hearts or our subconscious. Is what dwells in our hearts consistent with the proper understanding of gratitude? Or is there a paradox and a contradiction between the inner state of our subconscious and what we outwardly affirm? Are we trying to convince ourselves that we are fine? A person at odds with their subconscious is a highly conflicted person. That person is in a disassociated state, a state of alienation and untruth.
We all know that if faith does not anchor you in truth, then it has done nothing. How is our subconscious, and how is its relation to gratitude? What dwells within, and is it consistent with what is expressed by our mouths and tongues? Do our actions, in fact, reflect our subconscious, and is our subconscious healthy?
The educational mission of The Usuli Institute is, indeed, a great one. There are so many dreams, so many hopes, so many aspirations for The Usuli Institute to educate and restore what has been lost. For The Usuli Institute to re-anchor authenticity, truth, and purity. But as you know, as I know, and as God knows, nothing is possible without the firm support of your brothers and sisters.