[Quranic Guidance]: Trust The Process | Mufti Abu Layth

i want to take a look at this verse just bring that back in surah ibrahim which is okay let me just bring that back for us and surah ibrahim which builds upon some of the questions that you've been asking and i think it's very important to to kind of try to um face and understand and expand and unwrap some of the meaning in this ayah

so verse seven from surah ibrahim nakum now here as you can see allah is you are being reminded that when your lord proclaimed if you are grateful i will surely increase increase you but if you deny um and the term kuffar is used [Music]

okay so you can see here and we'll come to the second uh verse in a moment that builds on this but just taking a look at and there's a bit of i think with the pasting a bit of the spelling uh has kind of the hamza has moved but it's white okay so somebody asked me that look how is it that allah is saying to if you are grateful i will give you but if you're not grateful i will punish you so why is allah saying that so okay

let's just take a look at this verse and you can use this as a kind of you can use what we take away from here as a kind of resource to to kind of lean in on whenever you're trying to understand other similar verses of the quran

allah is saying that okay if you are grateful you will be increased well in caferton right that if you are ungrateful in the other that the punishment or my punishment is severe so i said okay let's take a look at this from one perspective you one could say that all this is saying god is saying as the person questioned me that look if you are grateful i will give you if you are not i'm gonna punish you and let's say the punishment is in the

akhirah this is how allah doesn't say that in this verse he does not say that but that's one way somebody could be looking at this somebody could look at this verse or this this punishment that this fire that's going to come and so on in the afterlife okay but okay let's zero in a bit more you see first of all allah when he's saying it's about ingratitude ungratefulness contrasted with sugar because in arabic kuffar from one perspective can mean disbelief when contrasted with iman but when

contrasted with sugar it means to be ungrateful okay allah is saying that if you are grateful i will increase you and if you are ungrateful then the punishment is severe now let's unwrap that slightly so punishment what is that you see punishment when the term is used what it signifies is suffering because punishment is is it's a term with an objective for suffering

it's to be instrumentalized to attain suffering so okay let's go to the corollary which is suffering okay so the suffering is severe okay now let's switch it back to gratitude when a person is grateful one perspective is okay blessings like people are getting things like let's say a person is making more money in the and these things are wonderful or they're getting more uh amenities and luxuries and that's sure

that's wonderful but you can zero it in even further and the real because a lie is saying look i will increase you and you find that gratitude what it births and gives rise to is actually a state of bliss

you see you find people who are if we are to in some way certain studies they have measured people's well-being okay they call it subjective well-being or happiness if you want to call it that it's an elusive term used when when trying to study people but you can to some extent they have these things let's say they call them affectometers and they use different ways to measure a person's subjective well-being so people score now you will find let's say some of the most happiest blissful people

are not those who have the most of something they are people who have a deep gratitude for what they have let me expand on that slightly there was uh years back i went to a lecture by dr oliver sarks and he was showing his research amongst other professors and it was about happiness and what he had examined was taken different case studies and in this particular

scenario two people contrasting them from new york manhattan so he'd uh as a project he had spoken to and then got agreement from this multi-millionaire tycoon to kind of work with him as a little project just to kind of study his life for a week or so and um and just have access and he chose to contrast him with this new york cabbie uh who was i believe sudanese okay just some cab drive and he randomly chose him by the way and it's incredibly fascinating his finding

because he saw that this multi-millionaire who lived in this kind of penthouse in incredible penthouse suite in manhattan somewhere and he had all these amenities and luxuries and you know you name it he had it flashy clothes lavish lifestyle had these kind of occasional crazy sex manic parties and cocaine and all this kind of stuff and but this person was extremely paranoid and even even in his apartment in his suite he had all these cctv cameras and

he and he was often and he would offer tell the professor in this kind of short time they spent he would tell him that hmm you know there's certain people they're trying to to to do him over and this you know he's got to be weary because such and such person you know he's trying to come across as a friend but i know what he's really trying to get to and this person i know what he wants and it's there was no bliss in this person's life this person had you know an incredible amount of wealth luxuries amenities but facilities

and he could have bought whatever within reason but he seemed to actually be on the the opposite of being happy seem to be quite depressed if not clinically but then definitely depressed paranoid uh stressed out tense and he contrasts this with this cabbie driver who's also in the same vicinity he'd come over so many years ago he was you know just taxi driver had a few children a wife and he seemed so

happy and he'd always smile and he'd tell jokes and he would often say that you know as he meets people he picks them up with the hustle and bustle of new york and he would and he would really enjoy learning about the stories of people sometimes you know making a difference for them you could see people were sometimes sad sometimes happy sometimes somebody's got a new job sometimes somebody's you know on a date and they're so thrilled sometimes and in a way he had a glimpse into these a window into these people's lives and he would enjoy and you know sometimes he'd get tips and he wasn't he was just kind of

financially he was scraping by but he was so grateful that he'd seen a life of poverty before and he was so grateful to god you see bliss it's inherent kind of processor is gratitude la in chakartom

what is it that naturally grows with gratitude a state of bliss so you can say well okay what is the opposite of bliss it's a mental state of torment now either be the other you see one way to look at the azerb is while people are seeing i was this afterlife or fire or corporal uh you know corporeal like bodily punishments and that's not the worst kind of punishments we know

in the 20th 21st century the studies clearly reveal mental torture is the worst kind of torture you see you could have let's say you have a person who is enslaved he's beaten but he believes in a cause people will happily go to the gallows they will embrace death happily if so long as they believe in it you see you could enslave a person you could break them down but so long as

you don't break their mind they are still as free as a bird the moment the mind breaks down it down spirals it is caught in this turbulence this turmoil you see the more a person drifts away from gratitude whether they have everything in this world perceptibly ostensibly they they have a

nice car you know they they they've got nice clothes they've got somewhat of a flashy lifestyle in the it is inevitable whether they attribute this to god or not it's the mechanisms of this very existence as we know it that as you drift away from gratitude you will inevitably find yourself in a state of torment

you see that and you see and allah proclaiming this in the quran for us surah ibrahim verse 7 declaring it like a manifesto here is the key you've got it i will what will you increase in if you say allah you're grateful it's not the it doesn't have to be the goods it doesn't have to be the toys and the bank balance it's the state of bliss

that a person is increased in and if you refuse to do that to be grateful you inevitably will find yourself in these tormenting waters whether you think you've got everything or not you see like

you see so one way yeah people one way of looking at it is people could see this kind of oh well this is only talking about the afterlife or so on or physical tormentor and then you've got this whole kind of this array and you you come to this understanding that will actually and this is the beauty of the quran that when you look at it fresh eyes so actually you know this is actually just explained the secret to living right here

it's already been proclaimed that there is the secret you have to kind of trust i guess trust the process and i thought that that's so important that it comes back to how we see things see what you are you you have a relationship with the quran when you're reading you have a you see it say you reading it how you're seeing what's being said to you and i thought that second verse just to kind of follow from that sabila yes we've covered that previously that when

a person sets upon he takes or he or she takes that step the next step becomes easier allah will things will fall into place the path will unfold before you the process will become easier but one must trust the process so i thought i want to share that with you i hope inshallah light makes it gives you some clarity and some insight at those verses