Name: Gratitude, Modernity and the Need for God in the Equation (Part 2)
Uploaded: 2022-07-18T16:53:47.000Z
Channel: Roohi Tahir
Description: Listen to Sr. Roohi Tahir as she discusses gratitude as an inherent aspect of human nature: the fitrah. Referencing the origin story, we can learn how shukr, gratitude, itself is a form of worshipping Allah. This session was part of the Yaqeen Academic Conference at the 2021 MAS-ICNA Convention in...

<p>Listen to Sr. Roohi Tahir as she discusses gratitude as an inherent aspect of human nature: the fitrah. Referencing the origin story, we can learn how shukr, gratitude, itself is a form of worshipping Allah.</p><p>This session was part of the Yaqeen Academic Conference at the 2021 MAS-ICNA Convention in Chicago, IL.</p>

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Gratitude, Modernity and the Need for God in the Equation (Part 1)

Gratitude, Modernity and the Need for God in the Equation (Part 2)

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 I seek refuge with Allah from the accursed Satan. In the name of Allah, and all praise is due to Allah, and to His Messenger, and to his family and companions.  I will try to keep points as concisely and as hopefully as connectively as I can.  Put it together as best I can so that you have a cohesive understanding of this paper, inshallah.  But I will be available for questions afterwards because of the shortage of time here.  So, an article I came across in the Atlantic some time back, titled, Gratitude Without God, had the following quote in it.  And I just want to start with that.  Gratitude is the animus of these secular rituals.  This was in the context of the Thanksgiving holiday.  So, gratitude is the animus of these secular rituals.  But the object of the gratitude is unclear.  If people aren't thanking God, who are they thanking?  You can thank your grandma for making delicious pie, but who do you thank for the general circumstances of your life?  So, I want to just take a moment here for you to really reflect on what your understanding of gratitude is.  To really think about, you know, what informs me in terms of the choices that I make in life.  And actually, it's perfect timing that this talk came right after the discussion that we just had on Ijma,  on the idea of really knowing and understanding what the truth is and what the knowledge of Ardeen is and that fog.  Because this quote, to me, gets to the crux of the objective of the paper.  We are talking about shukr, which is the Islamic concept of gratitude.  But there is such a disparity between what conventional understanding of gratitude is and what the concept of shukr is.  The obvious link that's missing is God, right?  And what you just heard, it actually speaks to a crisis.  A crisis and that fog that was described in the previous presentation.  And so, that's the objective here of the paper, is to really challenge ourselves.  Do I have the correct understanding?  And how do I behave in accordance with what's expected from me, from Allah, as a believer?  And we can see how far removed we are becoming from that as a society.  And I will contextualize that. I have three points to really get across in these few minutes.  The first one was this objective.  The second one is we need to look at what is shukr, right?  What is shukr in terms of its distinct factors?  First and foremost, that it is God-centric. It's not a secular concept.  It is nice, of course, to have that interaction and gratitude between us and other people.  But we will see that shukr is in fact a far deeper, more holistic concept that we really need to take a deeper dive into.  And then the third point, which is actually kind of the real takeaway that I want everyone here to be able to leave with,  in order for you to hopefully get interested enough to go back and actually read this paper once it's published, inshallah,  is to contextualize that to our lives today.  We hear these concepts, these Islamic concepts that are actually this particular issue of shukr, it is half of our faith.  Do we take it as half of our faith?  So let me, again, get moving to the part where we really get into the discussion of then what is shukr?  And suffice it to say for now, I'll come back to it, we'll talk about what that crisis is that I'm talking about  as we get into the difference between gratitude, as it's understood today, and how we behave in accordance with that,  and what shukr really is.  So, science, whether you talk to psychologists, whether you talk to social scientists out there,  people who are doing research, and there's a lot of references in the paper that I would encourage you to kind of get the details there.  They theorize about what gratitude really is and where it comes from.  Is it wired into our DNA?  Is it something that's part of our innate behavioral?  Is it something that humans evolved out of social need, that this is something that we evolved along with the lines of the theory of evolution?  And they all conclude, there's no agreement there on one definition of gratitude or where it originated.  But what they do come up with as sort of a collective end point is, well, we don't have enough information yet,  we're still researching the neurological connections and so forth, but we think it's an inherent component of human nature  that provides the glue that's necessary for humans to form meaningful relationships.  And I read that as I was researching this, and I said, you know what, that actually from an Islamic perspective, we can align with.  What is that? That's the fitrah.  Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala has naturally and innately given us, all of us, all human beings from birth, the recognition of what?  That he is our creator, he is our lord, our master, that we are born innately inclined towards worshipping him.  And we will see that shukr is actually the worship of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala.  And therefore shukr is, it is a human, innately human quality.  Now…

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