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Allah Alhamdulillah Adam wanofali Allah rasolihil akram the sharafil ashami wanuril atam walkitabil mukam wakamali nabiwaladi Adam muharram wa ala atbarihi khairil many shahida wahay hadi. Muhammad, it's an honor to be here, and I pray that this khutbah is of some benefit to myself and to all of you. Today, inshallah, I hope to share some reflections on a concept that may be very familiar to all of us, if not most of us. And that's the concept of shukr, of gratitude that Allah mentions exhaustively in the Quran. In fact, the meanings of shukr, or gratitude is already embedded inside the word hamd when we recite the Fatiha, which is the most common thing common part of the Quran that a Muslim recites when we say alhamdulillah. The meanings of shukr are part of the meanings of hamd. Hamd is a. Shukr is a subset of hamd. Hamd is more than that. It includes praise also and includes a very particular kind of gratitude. But shukr is certainly a part of that. Shukr is something that you're maybe familiar with as something we have to do to Allah, showing gratitude to Allah, being grateful for Allah, and Allah will put that next to himself and both of our parents. Be grateful to me and be grateful to both of your parents. So this is a concept that occurs across the Quran. In fact, one of the most famous places in the Quran where a father is ensuring good upbringing for his son. The height of wisdom, Allah says, you know, right, that Allah gave Luqman wisdom. And the summary of all of the wisdom Allah gave Luqman was be grateful to Allah to understand that, you must become a grateful person to Allah. So you read every other wisdom that Luqman gave to his son. In Surat Luqman, From Ayah number 12 onwards, all of them go back to shukr. Every one of them is a manifestation of shukr. But the reason I wanted to dedicate today's khutbah to this concept is because we think of gratitude as something passive. We think of it as something good happened and we say alhamdulillah or we thank Allah, right? So we think of it as a reaction. Gratitude is actually a reaction to something that has happened. But the Quran is actually giving two sides of shukr. One of them we are familiar with. The other one that's mentioned also in Allah's book, we don't often talk about And I think it's important, especially given the times we live in, that we should highlight this dimension of the shukr of Allah. Also, I'll start by a dua that Allah mentions that a man reaching the age of 40, he makes a dua to Allah. 40 is an important age in Quran and in Arabic literature also because 40 is an age when a person has reached, in a sense, full maturity. If you look at it from a sociological perspective, many people are trying to find themselves in college or getting their, getting their bearings together early on in their 20s, right there. And if some of a young man gets married, you know, and they have a child in their 20s, they're just between fixing up their career, securing some savings, taking care of the baby, they're juggling all these things and they're kind of, it's a bumpy ride, right? And in 30s things start to settle down a little bit. You know, you start to figure out some things. And by 40 you have some level of clarity. Socially speaking, economically speaking, there's a, there's a settlement that happens in life, right? So now that in a sense, matters of life are settled, things are sort of put in place, now it's time to think about more important things. Now you're not distracted, right? So it's the same way that in the world of business you can have day to day tasks, right? Somebody opens up a restaurant, they gotta fix the countertop, they gotta fix the chair, they gotta fix the menu, the cook, this, that, the other, and they're just running all over the place, right? And when they're doing that, they're just trying to manage, they're just trying to run the thing before it falls apart. Maintain if you will, they're just working on maintenance. But when the restaurant, it's been a few years, it's established, it's settled, things are in place. Now you can think about growing the business. Now you can think about bigger things. Restaurant owners might even start thinking about retirement, right? I want to get out of this now, do other things with my life, et cetera, et cetera, right? So there's a turbulent time in one's life and then there's a settlement. And after settlement, you think your horizons get bigger. You can't even think about bigger things until things settle down somewhat, right? Then, until then you can't even imagine that scenario. So what Allah mentions, as is kind of that standard age of things have been settled, the kids have grown. They're grown enough that they're independent themselves. The ambitions I had in life, the Worries I had, many of them are now taken care of, right? So it's just now I need to. This is the last episode of my youth and I use the word youth knowingly. I know we're like, how is a 40 year old young? Well, you're young enough to stand straight up, you're not on a cane, right? You don't need assistance to go to the bathroom. Your body is fully functional, you're capable. In fact, in many ways you're more capable now, maybe if not physically, but you're more capable now socially, intellectually, psychologically, in terms of maturity, in terms of experience, you're more capable now than you ever were before. And you look back at your 20s and you say, man, I was so stupid, why did I do that? If I could just talk to my 25 year old self and just give him a good old slap, things would turn out different. You could do that, you could look back and say that, right? So now you're at a certain age now what does Allah say about that age? He says the person reaches 40 years, the mature believer reaches 40 years and he makes a dua. My master empower me was actually tawziya. Modern Arabic means to spread something, right? But means to actually empower someone, to enable someone, to give someone strength. To do what? To be grateful to the blessing you gave me. That's the dua you're making. I need to look, I need to become grateful now. So the question then is what is this gratitude? What's he talking about? What's this person talking about when he says. You find that the words in the Quran are never accidental. Allah speaks very deliberately and very precisely. So these words, this dua in its exact wording is again mentioned by Suleiman, is mentioned by Suleiman, none other than Suleiman. And he says in the story of the Hood Hood, he mentions these exact words. So the question is, why is Allah making me say hudua? And he's teaching me in my 40s to make a dua that he is echoing from thousands of years before the coming of the Quran on the tongue of a great prophet, Sulaiman. The thing you should note about both Suleiman and Dawud is that they are exceptional prophets. Why are they exceptional? Because most prophets in their careers were in a position of political, economic, social weakness and their enemies were in a position of power. That is the story of most of the prophets. Nuh is in a position of weakness. He's being mocked, he's being ridiculed, he's being attacked. And the people that are kuffar are in a position of power in the beginning of the seerah of the Prophet. Sallallahu alaihi wasallam. Our messenger is among the yatama actually, right? That's why he's being told, right? And he's in that position. And the people around him are, these are the riff raff of society around him. They're not the millionaires and the billionaires. You know, there's no Jeff Bezos next to the Prophet, there's no governor next to the Prophet. And even one influential person comes in like Umar bin Al Khattab or another hamza radiallahu ta'ala. It's a huge boost to Islam because the majority of those types of people are on the other side, right? Just it's kind of like nowadays when we feel Muslims feel socially weak, one celebrity becomes Muslim and we're like, oh my God, this is old, you know, do you know, he became, you know, who's Muslim, you know, and we have a collection of famous people that are Muslim. Like we got one. Oh, we got another one, right? Because. And that's. That itself is a demonstration of weakness, right? Like the other civilizations that are in a position of winning, they don't say, you know, who else is Christian? Let me show you. They won't do that, they won't do that, right? So it's a demonstration of our weakness. Anyway, the thing I wanted to get to is something about both Dawud and Suleiman. They are in a position of power and in that position of power, Allah, one place in the Quran in Surat Sabah describes some of what they were doing. So Allah says, he says, he tells Dawud, he tells his family, meaning Suleiman, his offspring. He tells him, I need you to work on creating precise sheets of metal. Sabagha in Arabic is to spread something like, right? Sabagh is to spread something. So you know, when you're working with metals you have to have very precise measurements. You can think nowadays of like car manufacturing and the parts have to be precisely cut and molded to exact measurements in engineering, right? Or in like parts of a plane or something like that. So Allah is giving him instructions. You have to be very precise in your engineering and make sure the links in the chain are all precisely measured. That's what Allah is telling him. He's giving him engineering precision is what Allah is giving him. And then he says, and then Allah tells them, I am watching over what you're doing. I'm watching over what you're doing. And then after that, Allah mentions the power Allah gave to Suleiman over the winds. But I'll go forward and tell you something remarkable. Allah says the jinns were working for Suleiman. They used to make work for him, creating for him weapons of war. So they used to build. You know, you could say they were doing the metal work and they were the blacksmiths. They were making the axes and the spears and the swords and all that kind of stuff. And the armor also filled large, you know, pots, you know, those large kettles that have molten metal inside them. Allah is describing the factory, actually in the Quran, where all of this work is going on. But here's why I brought all that up. I started this khutbah talking about gratitude being something passive, being something that you. Something good happens to you, and you show gratefulness to Allah. In fact, we even say something bad happens to you, find the good at it and be grateful to Allah. That's what we say. Allah then says to both to Dawud and his family, now Suleiman, the next generation, he says to them, he says, family of David, family of Dawud, do Shukr. It's in the same ayah where the factory was being described. Family of Dawud, do Shukr. Allah is not telling them to sit there and say Alhamdulillah. That's already understood. He's not telling them to say shukr. He's telling them to do shukr. So what in the world is doing shukr? When we think of do shukr, we say Alhamdulillah. We say something. But Allah is telling him to do something, not say something, to do something. And then he says, he ends by saying, and how few of my slaves tend to be well and grateful, like deeply grateful Shakur is Mubada so extremely grateful or truly grateful, how few turn out that way. In other words, gratitude to Allah is more than lip service. Gratitude to Allah is more than a reaction. Allah is inspiring both of these prophets to produce something, to take the resources that they have, melt them, make them into precise cuts, turn them into something else. Build and build and build. And that building, that act of building and developing, that act that is going to go far beyond their lifetimes. Because once they, you know, once a factory is built, the factory owner can die. The factory will keep going. Once the car manufacturer has designed the engine, once the engine has been designed, it will be enhancements to it. But the engine's already there. The car industry will go on. The inventor will not remain but the invention will remain. That's the history of the world. There's a reason we have the wheel. The guy who figured it out is not here, but we're all using it. Allah is telling both of these prophets whatever resources are at your disposal. When you make full use of them, when you make full use of them and they know everything they're building, everything they're amassing, they're doing it for a greater service. They're not doing it for themselves. Then this is actually shukra. That's actually you're doing shukr. So we have this passive concept of shukr, which is, hey, let's just say one of you in this community owns a small restaurant. Let's just say, I'll give you a restaurant. I'm in the restaurant mood, so I'll give you a restaurant example. This is a small restaurant you own, right? And you're like, it brings enough money, it pays the bill. Alhamdulillah. Somebody comes to you, says, hey, I think you can improve the quality of this place. I think you can expand it, I think you can brand it better. I think you can branch out. I think you can open up multiple chains. You can become a friend, you know, this can become 50 restaurants in five years. That can happen. You have the quality. You can. No, no, I just want to be grateful for what I have. Alhamdulillah, Allah has given enough. No, no, no. Don't bother me with these things. I don't want. Dunya. But imagine for a moment if there are 50 restaurants and then one day there are 500 restaurants and there are 5,000. Just imagine, just use your imagination a little bit. Think big. One day, when it's 5,000 or 50,000 restaurants, isn't that competing with McDonald's, isn't that funding going to help influence foreign policy? Isn't that going to influence how a campaign is going to run? A political campaign is going to run. Isn't that going to replace the need for standing outside of an embassy and yelling and screaming and them laughing, sitting inside? Is that not going to replace it? Is that when you're building something, if you're building it for yourself, if you want to build yourself a nicer house with a bigger restaurant, you're going to get a nicer car. It's still a car. It's still got an engine. It's still got a seat, it's still got a steering wheel. It's just a nicer steering wheel. It's just a little cushier seat. But you're still Sitting on it. You can't cut it open and feel the material inside. It's still the same. But if you have a vision to build something big and expand it. Now imagine just for that, take that one example for a moment of the restaurants. If somebody owned five, if a Muslim owned 5,000 restaurants, how much more Sadaqah are they able to give? How much more zakat are they giving? How many more people have halal jobs because of them? How many more people are now being influenced by an ethical business that is not involved in bribery, it's not involved in buying off politicians, it's not involved in, you know, usurping the infrastructure of a community? I was watching a recent exposing documentary on dollar generals in this country. Wherever they go, they destroy local businesses. There are actually food shortages in the United States where there's a dollar general because the local mom and pop shop that's trying to sell some vegetables can't survive anymore. So now people have to drive 15, 20 miles to buy basic fruits and vegetables because a dollar general exists. And now people are being malnourished in this country because of big business. Because of big business. Now imagine if Muslims understood that we are just the Muslims in the United States even for starters. We're in a country that is built on entrepreneurship. The entire thing is built on entrepreneurship. There's old money and there's new money. We all know that. And if we understood that this resource and this opportunity that Allah has given us, we have to put it to work to show shukr to Allah. We would be part of an economic engine, we would be part of a machine, we would be a machinery by ourselves that is difficult to mess with. Is difficult to mess with. This is something Allah taught us in the Quran. You can't just be grateful. You have to do grateful. You have to do grateful. And we have to develop that empowering mentality. If young people sitting here that are going to university. The east coast of the United States, where you guys live, the east coast is the, is the hub of universities in this country. There are more universities here than probably anywhere else in the world. The concentration of education here. But most people that are trying to get an education, yeah, I'm just trying to get a job, Just trying to get a. You're trying to make somebody else rich, which is great. Start off that way. I'm happy for you. Get a job, gain the experience, learn from people that know more than you. But if your entire aspirations end with you, yeah, by the time I'm this old, I want to have this, by the time I'm that old, I want to have this and I want to have these investments. You're not thinking bigger. Learn to think bigger. Learn to think with Shukr. And what does Allah do if you show gratitude? If we, you and I, become people of Shukr, not just by words, but by actions, what does Allah do? What is Allah's promise? If you can show gratitude, I promise you, I swear by it, I will enhance you and enhance you and continue to enhance you, continue to increase you. You and the stuff you own, you and your knowledge, you and your sincerity, you and your ibadah, you and your resources, all of it will continue to increase. It'll continue to expand. But understand, after all of that, as I conclude this, after all of that, you might say, oh, this was a khutbah. Like this might as well have been a Joel Olsteen talk. Because they're all about prosperity gospel. They just want people to become rich. Jesus wants you to get that new Mercedes. He wants you to open up that new restaurant because he wants good Christians to prosper, right? And it was like, this is the Muslim version of he wants good Christians to prosper. I want Muslims. No, I don't care about your prosperity. I'll be honest with you. This is not about your prosperity. This is about the ni'ma and the amana that Allah gave a human being, the ability that Allah gave a human being, the money that Allah gave a human being, the resources, the opportunity that Allah gave a human being to put that to 100% maximum use, to produce the most amount of benefit. To produce the most amount of benefit. And while doing all of that, not for a moment do you think, yo, you know what I did 5,000 restaurants. No, no, no. Shut up. No, you did nothing. I did nothing. You and I can't accomplish what Dhul Qarnayn accomplished to me, he should be studied very carefully, especially by youth when he goes and travels the world and establishes empire in different societies. At the end of it all, at the end of it all, what's his final statement? And some people confused conf say, oh, he might have been Alexander the Great. Let me help you with that confusion. He was not Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great thought Alexander was great. And Dhul Qurnayn at the end of his entire career, what does he say? Hada rahmatum. This. Everything I've been able to accomplish is Arahma from my Ram study. Alexander, you'll find he's really obsessed not with God, but with himself. That's not Alexander. But whoever he is, one thing we know, he accomplishes the most amazing things. And at the end of all of that, what does he say? This is Arahma from my Rabb. This is an act of loving mercy. After he engineers the wall that prevents Yajuj and Ma'juj from coming, he says, and as amazing as that accomplishment is to build such a dam with literally no time. Because the raiding army is coming literally with people that have no background in construction. And he's getting them to teaching them and building at the same time. So imagine the laboratory project is the final product. That's what he's doing. And after that incredible accomplishment, he says, and I know as much as this is impressive and this is Arahma from Allah, when its time comes, Allah will crush this to nothing also. So some of you might be nihilistic and you might have this, you know, fatalistic view. Fatalistic view of life. Like, why do you want me to build 5,000 restaurants and expand and own a university and start hospitals? Why do you want me to do that? It's all going to become nothing in the end. Allah will destroy everything. All the buildings will be crushed. Everything will be mud on Judgment day. Yeah, that's Judgment Day. That's not now. Now Allah said do this. Why is Allah making Dawud build a factory and putting the jinns to work? Why isn't he telling you? Why are you even bothering? Judgment day is coming. Just sit down and just do stukud in a corner. Why is he telling him to do it? Why is Dhul Qurnayn building a wall? He could just say, let him come. Judgment day is coming anyway. You'll be shaheed. It's okay. Why our mentality, sometimes our passive mentality. Don't do, don't build, don't expand, Khair. And because it's the more spiritual thing to do. Our spirituality goes against the spirituality of the Quran itself. We need a cleanse from our corrupted thinking, which we think is spiritual in nature. It's not. It's not. These are influences that are not from the book of Allah. These are other influences. Our book. Everything is in balance. Work really hard to build, knowing it's temporary. And when it comes and when it goes, that's in the hands of Allah. Like my own life. Just because I'm planning for the next 50 years doesn't mean I know I will live the next 50 years. I can plan for the next 50 years and be aware I could be dead in an hour or less. I could do both at the same time. That's what Allah expects. This is the mentality that Allah expects. And this is a mindset that can take any nation, any people, from a position of weakness to a position of great strength. From a position of great strength. The last thing I'll share with you today, because this is about really, it is about empowerment through gratitude. That's what the message of this khutbah is. I want to share one thing with you. Rasulullah of Allah compared the Ummah kajas. The entire Ummah was compared to one body. Now tell me, if a person is sick, one body is sick, right? And they have a stomach problem or they have a lot of allergies or whatever they have, or they're very weak. And you say, how do I improve this person? How do I improve them? And you say, you should eat healthy. Ah, what's the point? You should exercise. No, no. What's the point? Life is temporary. What are you going to do? The body is sick. But before the body is sick, you know what's sick? The person's mind. They're not willing to make any, take any steps to fix what's actually wrong. And once the mind is set, once the mind is in the right place, the person is still sick. They're still sick. But when their mentality and their emotions and their intentions and their motivation changes inside, then they still, if they die today, they die healthy because their mind and their heart is in the right place. Once their mind and heart is in the right place, it's not like tomorrow they'll be healthy, but Tomorrow they'll be 0.1% healthier, and the day after they'll be 0.2% healthier. And if they stay at it, they're going to see a 10% improvement in 10 years and a 20% improvement in 20. They'll see an improvement. They'll see things changing, won't they? Now think about the fact that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam compared the entire Ummah to a single body. We want change now. And anything you change in the body, immediately the body reacts to it. But any change you bring into your body, physically, emotionally, psychologically, socially, any change you bring that was planned and built and developed stays. It stays. And any change you try to bring simultaneously collapses. It's unnatural. With that mentality, when the Ummah, when especially the youth are frustrated, why are Muslims in a position of weakness? We are 20% or more of the population of the world. Why are we so silent? Why are we not heard? Why is it that we cried about philistine for 70 years. Nobody was listening. And one girl on TikTok from Wyoming, because she happens to be an American and she happens to be white, is crying about the atrocity. And all of a sudden it's a world issue. Oh, they're talking about it now. It matters. We were talking about it for a long time. Who's listening? Why are our voices so mute, so unworthy to be heard in the world? And you can be frustrated about that and cry about that and bang, podiums about that, but until we decide that, we acknowledge that we're in a position of sickness and weakness and. And it takes time and mindset to build yourself to a position of strength. If you're not strong enough to fight a bully and you're too skinny and they're two feet taller than you, and they're much bigger than you, then you better go train. It's gonna take a while, but you better be ready for that. You better build yourself up. And that's the mentality, socially, economically, spiritually, educationally, that the Muslim mind has to develop, that you are the seeds of, especially the young people sitting here. You're the seeds of that. And the elders that are sitting here, you especially like myself. Those of us that are above 40, we are now turning to Allah, saying, ya, Allah, empower me to be grateful. You know what that means? Just like Dawud Suleiman were putting money or putting resources into building weapons. These youth, investing in them, building them, you know, nurturing them, even employing them, teaching them investment, teaching them independence, giving them vision, that becomes your responsibility. That's your gratitude. That's what you have to share. May Allah make us a community where the elders benefit the youth and the youth benefit the elders. May Allah make us a community that is truly inspired by the principles of Shukr that Allah has taught us so beautifully in his book.