Whenever we are asked, “Are you Muslim?” we respond with “Alhamdulillah! Our religion is Islam” but unfortunately, we have forgotten the true meaning of ‘religion’ or ‘Deen’. We often reduce it down to a list of dos and don’ts; the true purpose of religion becomes lost in all this.
I. What is Deen?
Most people say that Deen means ‘religion’, but this is merely a translation. The daily recited Surah Al-Fatiha mentions Deen, but here it is usually translated as recompense, requital, etc. Therefore, Deen cannot just mean religion.
“A Thinking Person’s Guide to Islam” by Prince Ghazi bin Muhammed mentions that Deen means humility, restriction and obedience. It also stems from the word ‘Dayn’ which means debt. It is interesting that the terms religion and debt have the same root? What connection could they possibly have?
The typical answer we all rattle off is, “we are indebted to Allah Almighty because he gave us everything.” While the answer is true, it has not sunk into our hearts. Allah gifted us everything. Everything is a big statement, and we do not understand it.
We can summarize the gifts of Allah in three categories; Wujud, Dunya and Rizq.
The first category of gift is Wujud which means the body. Allah Almighty has not just created the soul. He also gave it a body to use in this plain of existence. It is versatile and functional. We constantly use it and benefit from it. We would not give up a single part of it. Nobody would want to lose their eyes, their hands or their legs. Some parts of the body may be dispensable in a medicinal sense, but nobody would like to break away any part of this harmonically working system. Every single hair in our eyebrows and eyelashes protect the eye. They all have their purpose; even if it’s just a minor one. They act like gears that work together to keep the body moving.
We wouldn’t give away the blessing of the body for any money in the world, yet Allah Almighty has given it to us completely free.
The second category is the Dunya which incorporates the world we live in. This body would be useless if it could not interact with a world. Allah Almighty has given us a world full of blessings where our body can exist and where we receive our ‘Rizq’. It is the field we work on to earn an even greater place – paradise.
The last category is Rizq. It usually translates into provision, but it is much more than that. Usually, one thinks of Rizq as money, food and success etc. It goes further than that. For all the provision the Almighty has destined for us, its path has been prepared as well. For it to come into existence, the whole universe must work together. The sun, the moon, the oceans etc all work together to bring our provision into existence – that is how important we are to Him.
II. What does Deen require us to do?
So we see Allah Almighty gives us Wujud, Dunya and Rizq. How does this translate into debt for us when we never asked for these things?
Let’s look at the following example:
Imagine a poor beggar on a street. A person comes by, picks this beggar up and brings him home. That person hires the beggar for a great job with a great salary and provides many benefits like a new car for him to travel and work with. Then he gives the beggar a house to live in and provides the means to rebuild his life – the beggar marries, has children and is happy. Now the one who employed him comes and asks him to do the work for which he was hired. Afterall, the man has given the beggar a comfortable life, work, family, home, food and more. Can the beggar deny that employer’s request in good conscious? Can he stand up and say, “I don’t owe you anything!”?
Allah Almighty is like that employer. He has given us the best car (the Wujud), a home to live in (the Dunya) and food and family to meet our needs (the Rizq). After receiving all these blessings when we never deserved them in the first place, how can we then ignore what we were hired for? We definitely cannot.
When Allah swt has given us so much, what do we owe him and how do we pay him back?
Usually if someone has a debt, they normally just give back what they borrowed. This does not work with Allah Almighty. He has given us wujud, dunya and rizq, but none of us can pay these back in kind. None of can create an eye, an apple or a hand out of nothing and give it to Allah Almighty. Even if we could repay him, we need to ask ourselves: How much is one of our eyes worth? What about two of them? What is the value of our heart and lungs? Our family? Our life? Priceless. We could work for a thousand lifetimes and not have enough to pay even a fraction of one life.
Additionally, we are not the same as our creator. Allah gifted us these when we were in dire need. Even if we could repay him, we would be giving to a creator who has no need.
If we can’t repay the creator materially, how else can we repay him?
When someone brings you a gift or does you a favour, the words ‘Thank you’ automatically come out of our mouths. Thank you is the smallest expression of our gratitude and yet it never goes unappreciated. It has no material value but means a lot in any relationship.
We can only repay Allah Almighty by expressing gratitude. We get so lost in the material world that we forget to repay our main debt which is a debt of the heart; appreciation for the Creator.
How do we express our appreciation to our Creator?
Allah Almighty says in the Qur’an:
يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ اعْبُدُوا رَبَّكُمُ الَّذِي خَلَقَكُمْ وَالَّذِينَ مِنْ قَبْلِكُمْ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَتَّقُونَ
“O humanity! Worship your Lord, Who created you and those before you, so that you may become mindful ˹of Him˺ .”
(Quran 2:21)
Imam Nursi describes in his Isharatul I’jaz that this debt between servant(abd) and creator(rabb) can only have worship as its base. The true form of gratitude is to follow Allah Almighty’s commands and leave what he has prohibited. The debt of gratitude can only be paid by worship.
We can split gratitude into three levels. Thinking good of the gifter, thanking him verbally and gifting something back. Each level is better than the one before, and the greater the gift we received, the more gratitude we (need to) show.
When someone invites us to a feast, we thank them. We even take along a gift and shower them with compliments. With Allah Almighty, this gains a new dimension. His invitations are continuous and great. He could have just created water and bread for us to eat, and it would have been sufficient. We only need a few things to survive. Instead, he created different kinds of fruits, vegetables, nuts and more for us to eat and enjoy. When he did not keep a low bar while gifting us, how could we keep a low bar when showing gratitude. He thought of us, talked to us through his actions and gifted us. Now it is up to us to think of him, to thank him with words and with actions through our obligatory and voluntary worship.
We should have a desire to repay our Creator for His gifts. We should ask ourselves how can we ever show enough gratitude for the countless blessings we continuously receive?
As human beings we are limited by our circumstances and our flaws. We forget our creator most of the time and are distracted by our worldly pursuits. Many of us struggle to perform our obligatory prayers, and all of us wish we could do more.
With the infamous hadith, “Actions are only (judged) by their intentions,” Imam Nursi gives us a more in-depth understanding. He mentions that a poor man was gifted many things by a rich king. As he prepared to go thank the king with his own small present, he noticed that there were other people who brought presents for the king as well. He started thinking about how his small present could compare to theirs. He was just as grateful as they were, but he could not afford more.
When he met the king, he said something very profound that reflects our situation shows us how we can actually show gratitude for the countless blessings:
“O my king! You deserve the best of gifts for your munificence and mercy, but I am a mere peasant. All I can give You to show my gratitude is this flower, but if I had the power, I would give you all of spring!”
We can never give back what we receive nor show enough gratitude, but that is not what Allah asks. Allah Almighty knows of our weaknesses and flaws.
All we can do is the little which is available to us. Our efforts are definitely insufficient, but luckily our Creator looks at our intentions and how much we try. It suffices to understand our weakness and inability to give Allah his due gratitude as long as we keep giving our best to appreciate him.
After all, we do not enter Jannah because we repaid our debt but because of His mercy.
(Photo by Michael Burrows)
Lokman Ayyoubi
This Article was submitted by Brother Lokman Ayyoubi, a contributor to the Lubab Academy Blog.