2.1 Gratitude: The Concept in Question

It is difficult to imagine arguing against the virtue of gratitude. My present concern here, however, has less to do with its worth and meaning, and more to do with what we do with gratitude. Put another way, how ought we express and practice gratitude in our lives? What does that look like and mean for Muslims? How is the Qur’ānic conception of shukr, typically translated as ‘gratitude’ or ‘thanks,’ understood in the realm of human-to-human affairs and how is that related to the human–divine dynamic? I explore here how gratitude or shukr figures within the realm of the social as a matter of praxis. In other words, I am examining gratitude or shukr as something that is engaged and outwardly practiced, and not only as an internal sense or feeling of appreciation. Before I pursue these lines of inquiry, however, some preliminary groundwork is required.

First of all, what does gratitude, the concept in question, mean for those of us operating in the Anglophone world? In his research on shukr, A. Kevin Reinhart draws several important distinctions with respect to gratitude’s English meaning.Footnote ¹ He distinguishes ‘gratitude’ from ‘thanks’ noting that gratitude ‘signifies an affective event,’ while thanks represents its ‘outward correlate,’ or the ‘expressing of one’s gratitude – primarily, it seems, to the person to whom one feels gratitude.’Footnote ² Gratitude, then, can be understood as an internal, emotive state that arises in a person in response to a kindness done to them, while ‘thanks’ marks the externalization of that internal state.

The difference between the private and the public is significant. While gratitude, in its English-language usage, may most properly be sequestered to the realm of the inner individual, thanksgiving cannot be divorced completely from gratitude because it is precisely in the realm of the public that the consequences of gratitude are experienced – its offering, its reception, and its witness. What good is gratitude as a virtue if it does not translate into the social realities in which we live? To give thanks relieves us of the sense of obligation that gratitude often carries. To receive thanks encourages us to continue to bestow benefactions as a benefactor. To witness thanks teaches us to seek out gratitudinal relationships so that social bonds might be strengthened and collective lives bettered. As human beings, we are always threading the space between the public and the private. This conventional and implicitly secular understanding of gratitude, however, is one absent of theology. I offer in response several Islamic perspectives aimed at critically reintroducing God into our conceptions of gratitude.

2.2 Islamic Perspectives

The Hanbalī religious scholar Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350) offers a concise, yet telling Islamic definition of shukr at the beginning of a devotional treatise entitled al-Wābil al-Ṣayyib min al-Kalim al-Ṭayyib (‘The Downpour of Rain from the Goodly Word’). He writes that shukr is ‘based on three supports: [1] inward recognition of the blessing; [2] outward mention and thanks for it; and [3] its use in a way that pleases the One to whom it truly belongs and who truly bestows it.’Footnote ³ In this tripartite definition, Ibn Qayyim identifies two familiar aspects of gratitude: (1) the acknowledgment felt within and (2) the outward expression of thanks. The third part, however, introduces several key points to our understanding of gratitude. Firstly, the benefaction should not be squandered, abused, or corrupted, but ought to be put to good use. The criterion for ‘good use,’ according to Ibn Qayyim, is that which ‘pleases the One to whom it truly belongs and who truly bestows it,’ by which he means God.

Secondly, the use of the benefaction need not be directed back at the benefactor, whether imagined to have been delivered by a human agent or granted directly from God, the ultimate Benefactor. After all, God in God’s self-sufficiency has no need of anything. Rather, what would please God is the exercise of one’s bestowed benefaction for the well-being or betterment of others. Thirdly, the entire benefaction–gratitude dynamic that humans experience is asserted to be linked unquestionably to God in an absolute sense. The Qur’ān makes this point clear: all benefactions issue from a single source, the Divine. Verse after verse of the Qur’ān proclaims this to be true: ‘And God has brought you forth from the wombs of your mothers when you knew nothing, and He gave you hearing and sight and hearts so that you might give thanks’ (Q. 16:78);Footnote ⁴ ‘Praise be to God, Maker of the heavens and the earth, who appoints the angels as messengers, of wings two, three, or four, increasing creation as He wills, Truly God is Powerful over all things’ (Q. 35:1); ‘God shall enrich you from His bounty, if He wills’ (Q. 9:28); ‘And God provides for whomsoever He wills without reckoning’ (Q. 2:212). Rather than a relational dynamic that emerges or is experienced within social affairs, benefaction and gratitude are fundamentally divine in origin and orientation. Revelation repeatedly asserts that God is the true and ultimate Benefactor for all of humankind, if not all of creation.

There is only one verse in the Qur’ān where gratitude is extended explicitly to another other than God, towards one’s parents: ‘And We have enjoined the human being concerning their parents – their mother carried them, weakness upon weakness, and their weaning was two years – give thanks to Me and to your parents. Unto Me is the journey’s end’ (Q. 31:14). And yet even in this scriptural instance, God bookends the verse. God precedes the reference to parents in deserving thanks and then appears again immediately after as a reminder that God is the destination to which all human beings return upon death. The gratitudinal relationship between Benefactor and beneficiary is ontologically determined. God is the both first and foremost and ultimate and last.

One’s existence is itself a benefaction and to exist is to be the recipient of a series of ongoing benefactions. As disclosed in sūrat al-Māʾida: ‘God does not desire to place a burden upon you, but He desires to purify you, and to complete His benefaction upon you so that you might give thanks. And remember God’s benefaction upon you, and His covenant by which He bound you, when you said, “We hear and we obey”’ (Q. 5:6–7). To be blessed by God, or to be the recipient of God’s benefaction, is a state of creation. Nevertheless, as temporally contingent beings, human creatures can never sufficiently repay the eternal and omnipotent Benefactor. As Abū Bakr al-Kalābādhī (d. 380/990 or 385/995) poignantly records in his handbook on Sufism, some spiritual masters would utter in supplication, ‘O God, You know that I am incapable of thanking You sufficiently, so [I pray that] You thank Yourself on my behalf.’Footnote ⁵

One last implication can be drawn from Ibn Qayyim’s definition of gratitude. If the will of God is the criterion for how one ought to use their benefactions, then the distinction between private and public, which was indispensable for secular definitions of gratitude, seems to lose much of its relevance in the Islamic calculus. A person does not need to announce to the community their gratitude. Indeed, it never need be uttered aloud at all. Even the most private of notions is known to God the Benefactor, the All-Aware. Every expression of gratitude, be it verbal, a physical act, an offering, or even a thought is known by God. Nothing escapes God’s ken.

Public and private are distinctions of the human creature. Our limited ability to both communicate and perceive what others think and feel necessitates the drawing of such lines. We are always negotiating the internal and external and as such gratitude can and does go awry. The external performance of thanks does not always match the internal feeling of gratitude. We can be overly effusive (the external exceeding the internal) to the point of appearing cloying or sycophantic to a benefactor. We can stumble and stutter and be overcome with anxieties and inadequacies (the internal exceeding the external) because we do not believe we can sufficiently express our gratitude or do enough to satisfy the internal sense of gratefulness that we harbor. And of course, the benefactor and beneficiary may judge the magnitude of the given benefaction differently. One person’s small favor may be seen as an insurmountably immense burden to bear or a great kindness granted may be insufficiently appreciated by its beneficiary. This continual struggle to navigate the Scylla and Charybdis of public and private is a concern that recedes, shrinks, or is displaced with the entrance of the Divine.

In the Islamic tradition, God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and, as some would argue, omnibenevolent. Nothing escapes God for God knows the inner inadequacies we feel, the intentions that inform our actions, and the genuineness (or disingenuousness) of our words, thoughts, and deeds. While human beings may continue to fail to uphold their end of the graditudinal relationship, God most certainly does not. The Divine knows the true measure and magnitude of human gratitude. Gratitude, then, is not an abstract socially negotiated concept, but a virtue that only becomes clear through revelation. It is intimately tied to faith and lies at the heart of human nature. Indeed, throughout the Qur’ān, gratitude or shukr appears as an integral part of the semantic sphere of faith or īmān. An act of faith necessarily carries with it an element of gratitude for the Divine.

2.3 Transmitted Expositions on Shukr in the Realm of the Social

With the Qur’ān affirming such an overwhelmingly strong re-centering of gratitude onto the Divine, it would seem difficult to determine how the interpersonal figures into the Islamic religious ethos. Yet it should be kept in mind that the emphatic stress in the Qur’ān on God’s primacy of place is unsurprising given the historical context into which the Qur’ānic revelation unfolded. The Prophet Muhammad and his nascent Muslim community were faced with a polytheistic society that had long strayed from the divinely determined moral foundations delivered and established by the prophets who had come before. The Prophet Muhammad was addressing a troubled community that had relegated Allah, the Creator, to a remote and marginal place within a confused and diffuse pantheon of false deities. The Qur’ān, then, was intent on foregrounding the absolute and singular significance and power of the one God in the lived realities of human beings.

Yet, as alluded to above, the first order claim of gratitude to God is nonetheless joined by admonishments and encouragement to second order relationships to which the human servant should attend. The care of parents is a concern repeatedly expressed in the Qur’ān as is the support of orphans, widows, the poor and destitute, and the persecuted faithful. While gratitude may not be invoked explicitly with regards to these social groups, their care and support derives from gratitude to God, namely through the usage of one’s benefactions for that which is pleasing to ‘the One to whom it truly belongs and who truly bestows it.’Footnote ⁶

While the theocentricity of gratitude would never be lost within the Islamic tradition, the prophetic discourse did address the giving of thanks to fellow humans. There is a well-attested prophetic tradition in particular that addresses gratitude to others: lā yashkuru Allāh man lā yashkuru al-nas. As the scholars have interpreted it, the report can be read validly in two different, but equally significant ways.Footnote ⁷ In one reading, the Prophet is declaring that, ‘Whoever does not thank other people does not thank God,’ implying that those who are not in the habit of recognizing the benefactions they receive from the people in their everyday lives, will fail to recognize the benefactions they receive from the Almighty. In other words, the practice of expressing gratitude in the realm of the social becomes a means of habituating oneself to expressing one’s gratitude back towards the ultimate source. If the Arabic case ending on God is changed, however, a second reading is possible. The prophetic saying then reads, ‘God does not accept the gratitude of one who is not grateful to other people.’ In this version, the emphasis is on the activity of God. Specifically, that expressions of gratitude to God that lack a complementary recognition of the benefactions received from those surrounding them, is an insufficient, if not deficient form of gratitude over all. God simply does not accept such an incomplete form of gratitude. In both readings, the intent is clear. The measure of one’s gratitude to God is intimately bound up with the measure of one’s gratitude to human others. Our relationship with God is inescapably mediated through our conduct in our communities. To be aloof of the social is unacceptable in the eyes of the Divine. Indeed, in another report that inverts the phrasing, the connection between the interpersonal and the Divine is further reinforced: ‘Those who are most grateful to God are also those who are most grateful to other people.’Footnote ⁸

Throughout the hadith collections other versions of this sentiment are expressed. In another early tradition the Prophet Muhammad states, ‘Speaking of God’s blessing is gratitude and ignoring it is ingratitude (kufr). The one who does not give thanks for a small blessing will not give thanks for a great blessing, and the one who does not give thanks to people will not give thanks to God. To be with a group is a blessing, to be alone is a punishment.’Footnote ⁹ Here the Prophet informs his community that expression of thanks should not be reserved for God alone but should be extended wherever appropriate within the social web of life. Furthermore, to seek sociality, ‘to be with a group’ is itself a benefaction from God, one worthy of thanks.

In the following generations there is a saying that reinforces Ibn Qayyim’s contention that benefactions should be used for good. Zāzān states, ‘The right of God over the human being who is enjoying His benefactions is that such a person should not use his benefactions in order to commit wrong.’Footnote ¹⁰ A deeper treatment is provided in a conversation related by the Medinan traditionist and pietist Abū Ḥāzim Salama b. Dīnār al-Makhzūmī al-Aʿraj (d. c.140/757):

In this exchange Abū Ḥāzim addresses how the different faculties and parts of the human person ought to be oriented with respect to gratitude. It is an admonition for the faithful person living in the world, to attune one’s sight and hearing to that which is good and wholesome, to err towards charity over avarice, to pursue religious knowledge, and to conform to the sexual mores established by the Qur’ān. The exposition on gratitude takes on the form of a religious rule of conduct.

2.4 Ṣūfī Expositions on Shukr in the Realm of the Social

While gratitude would be expanded upon by numerous discourses within Islam, I am interested in particular discussions raised by a spiritual tradition of Islam oriented towards mystical experience, Sufism. Within it, I would argue, are some key developments concerning the social dimensions of gratitude. First, we can identify therein what Atif Khalil has called the ‘embodiment of gratitude.’Footnote ¹² While gratitude may first and foremost be determined within the relationship between the Creator and the creature, it nevertheless finds expression in the world through human physicality. The embodiment of gratitude is found in the actions that humans commit with the bodies that they command. Furthermore, that expression of gratitude is not necessarily directed back to God the Benefactor but to others in creation. After all, the tradition would have us wield our benefactions well and it is creation, rather than the Creator, that is in most need (or at all). Secondly, I believe the Ṣūfī tradition is especially attentive to a particular power differential within society vis-à-vis gratitude, namely socio-economic difference. I am concerned here with what Sufism potentially says about gratitude and the poor.

Sufism, as a spiritual tradition, seeks to facilitate those of the faithful who seek a more intimate and direct experience of God. Seeking a deeper and richer relationship with the Divine, these spiritual aspirants commit themselves to a life of spiritual excellence – a life of devotion, austerity, and extensive self-reflection for the sake of personal and pious transformation. In order to advance towards this goal – to draw closer to God – the tradition deemed that the aspirant needed several things for success: commitment, discipline, and perhaps most importantly guidance from those who had come before. As a result, a powerful structural paradigm lies at the heart of the Ṣūfī tradition. A student needed a teacher. A disciple needed a master. A novice aspirant needed an experienced spiritual director. It was from this paradigmatic relationship of the seeker seeking both knowledge and instruction that the literature of Sufism emerged. Within that developing corpus, the concept of shukr was greatly elaborated upon. The graditudinal relationship first spelled out by the Qur’ān became a model for spiritual aspirants living in this world while seeking the goodly Hereafter.

An influential early mystic, Sahl b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Tustarī (d. 283/896), identified a consequential connection between the cultivation of proper conduct (adab) and the cultivation of gratitude. As he states, ‘Disregard of adab leads to disregard of respect (ḥurma), and disregard of respect leads to disregard of reverence (taʿẓīm), and neglect of reverence leads to neglect of gratitude (shukr). And when gratitude is neglected, loss of faith (īmān) is to be feared.’Footnote ¹³ Spiritual discipline, then, was not to be taken lightly because its dismissal could lead to a slippery slope where one risks losing sight of God and His many benefactions altogether. More than that, its opposite, ingratitude, amounted to faithlessness. Right decorum, then, ought to be vigilantly and rigorously maintained. The Ṣūfī tradition recognized an important connection between the conduct of one’s character and one’s inner disposition of gratitude to God.

As a virtue, gratitude would figure often as a subject of meditation and instruction in spiritual treatises as the works of Atif Khalil have amply demonstrated.Footnote ¹⁴ The Ṣūfī master and theologian al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) wrote about the spiritual conduct befitting of shukr both in his handbook on Sufism (al-Risāla) and his commentary on the divine names of God, Taḥbīr fī ʿilm al-tadhkīr (‘Refinement in the Science of Remembrance’). In both works he provides a typology for the embodiment of gratitude that echoes the thinking of earlier exponents like Abū Saʿīd al-Kharrāz (d. 286/899), al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī (d. c.295–310/907–923), and Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 386/996). In Taḥbīr fī ʿilm al-tadhkīr al-Qushayrī writes:

In this schema, al-Qushayrī lays out the different ways that gratitude ought to inflect the activity of the human self, much like Abū Ḥāzim above. One’s heart, tongue, and body ought to be oriented always towards the will of the Divine, while one’s wealth ought to be expended only towards that which is wholesome. In the same spirit, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya critiqued, ‘As for those who only pay lip service to gratitude, and do not give thanks with the rest of their faculties, they are like a man who has a garment and all he does with it is touch it, but he does not put it on: it will never protect him from heat, cold, snow or rain.’Footnote ¹⁶

In the Risāla, al-Qushayrī provides a variation of his typology, further adding a classification of grateful persons as well. He writes, ‘It is said that the learned express their gratitude by their words; the worshipers by their deeds; the mystics by their rectitude in every state or circumstance.’Footnote ¹⁷ A hint of social hierarchy emerges in this typology of expression. The everyday faithful have their acts of devotion – something that any able-bodied person can perform, while scholars have their texts and lessons – ostensibly attained through education and erudition. The mystics, however, named last seem the most distinctive. They express their gratitude through their steadfast maintenance of righteousness in whatever situation or hardship they may find themselves – a feat or ability only achievable through their spiritual mastery. They stand apart representing, for al-Qushayrī at least, the best embodiment of gratitude.

Examining Ṣūfī rules of conduct, more explicit concerns of social matters appear. For example, al-Qushayrī’s teacher, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021), composed a Ṣūfī treatise on religious chivalry, Kitāb al-Futuwwa, in which the rules of spiritual conduct are discussed at length. While gratitude does not appear as a theme of special focus within this text, the logic of the gratitudinal relationship undergirds the spiritual rule laid forth within. Every deed, disposition, and item of etiquette described by al-Sulamī operates with the understanding of God’s absolute and anchoring position in the Islamic worldview. A continual orientation to the Divine, out of faith and gratitude, structures the text.

Interestingly, much of al-Sulamī’s concern for interpersonal relations has to do with how the aspirant interacts with his spiritual brethren. There are discourses on the etiquette of eating and keeping company with one another, of hosting one another. He repeatedly advises his audience to support each other so that faith is mutually fostered. He calls upon them to be generous, hospitable, and forgiving to those around them in order to keep oneself humble and to keep one’s condition and experience in proper perspective. For example, al-Sulamī cites the famous mystic Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī (d. 261/874 or 264/877–878) as saying, ‘When your relationship with a friend is at its worst, your relationship will certainly improve if you approach him with good morals. When [God] bestows a benefaction upon you, be thankful to God because He alone inclines the hearts of others to you.’Footnote ¹⁸ The advice here is not to abandon a difficult relationship, but to persist with one’s best character for, then, surely it will improve. As al-Sulamī clarifies, what makes this possible is that one’s best character necessarily includes gratitude to God for God is the One who will facilitate the other person’s disposition becoming more favorable. While there are sections where it is clear that al-Sulamī is addressing broader social realities, his audience is clearly a particular community, a tightly knit circle of Ṣūfī aspirants living side-by-side with one another and in contradistinction with the rest of society.

Nonetheless, wider society had its place in these discourses. ʿUthmān b. Ḥakīm is quoted as saying, ‘Befriend one who is greater than you in religious matters and one who is lesser than you in worldly matters. For fellowship with one who is greater than you in religious matters will distance you from acts of obedience, while fellowship with one who is lesser than you in worldly matters will magnify in your eyes the blessings of God, exalted is He.’Footnote ¹⁹ In other words, seek the company of fellow spiritual aspirants when it comes to faith, because their excellence will compel you to do better. Yet when dealing with material worldly affairs, it is better to seek the company of the less fortunate for their difficulties will make you appreciate more fully what God has given you.

Elsewhere, the Ṣūfī writers elevate poverty to a spiritual aspiration. The early sage Ibrāhīm b. Adham (d. c.165/782) is recounted to have preached that righteousness is only attainable after overcoming six difficulties. With respect to the fifth one, he states, ‘you must shut the door of wealth and open the door of poverty.’Footnote ²⁰ In another anecdote the deceased spiritual master Maʿrūf al-Kharkī (d. 200/815–816) appears in a dream relating that God has pardoned him. When asked what it was he did to warrant this benefaction he replies that it was his ‘practice of poverty and love of the poor.’Footnote ²¹

This stated ‘love of the poor’ is a striking phrase. It seems resonant, at first pass, with ‘the preferential option for the poor’ understood by Christians as a principle of biblical scripture and a theological foundation for the liberation theologies that emerged out of Latin America in the 1970s.Footnote ²² I would argue that the preferential option for the poor underlies the Qur’ān as well, though such an argument lies beyond the bounds of the present piece. What the phrase meant for the premodern Ṣūfī tradition, however, takes a different direction.Footnote ²³ Returning to al-Sulamī, he writes the following about gratitude and poverty: ‘A part of spiritual chivalry is the necessity of living the rule of poverty in every state,’ then he cites Abū al-ʿAbbās b. ʿAṭāʾ as saying, ‘Only four things are suited for the table of the poor: The first is hunger, the second is poverty, the third is humiliation, and the fourth is gratitude.’Footnote ²⁴ Poverty is praised, but as a romanticized spiritual ideal. The destitution and condition of the poor becomes for the spiritual aspirant a model for practicing austerity, eschewing social status and privilege, renouncing materialism, and accepting its subsequent discomforts – while, at the same time, harboring gratitude in the face of such self-imposed adversities.

While the efficaciousness of this model might have well served many spiritual aspirants, the supposed ‘love of the poor’ remains in most cases under-articulated or only distantly realized, if at all. Rather, the focus in these early Ṣūfī discourses remains centered on the individual invested in advancing their spiritual well-being. The concern is not on alleviating the conditions and structures that oppress the poor nor even fostering an empathetic solidarity. Instead, the purpose of the idealization of poverty is to benefit the aspirant – to transform their disposition in such a way that they might draw closer to God. Likewise, the invocation of gratitude serves the same end. Gratitude here does not seem to address the realities faced by those with less than the aspirant. Rather those lesser than the aspirant become a foil for the aspirant’s self-realization and devotional augmentation.

The disparity between modern expectations and those of the authors of premodern Ṣūfī works lies with the genre. These spiritual discourses were composed, delivered, and written for eager spiritual seekers, not necessarily for the poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised of society. The concern of these sages and writers was for the disciples gathered immediately around them. They were assuaging and counseling a different set of concerns. The religious outlook was persistently inward-looking. This approach sought to cultivate a small, dedicated, and select community of seekers and aspirants united in their desire to draw closer to God through a similar array of means. It spoke to how individual spiritual aspirants could refine themselves in their struggle for spiritual excellence and proximity to God. Indeed, one might argue that parts of the Ṣūfī tradition accepted society as it was, in its lowness, the dunyā, as a temporary stage of existence that precedes the more enduring and potentially rewarding eternal Hereafter. Their texts, then, were not written for us now who seek to understand how gratitude and love of the poor might radically transform or destroy those social structures that oppress the underclass.

2.5 Shukr as Praxis

My critique is not meant to be dismissive of what has come before. I believe it critical to identify those threads of the tradition that possess constructive potential for developing a contemporary Muslim understanding of gratitude. Indeed, I would rather seek to adapt, reorient, and resurface what we bring from our past, rather than forget, overlook, or diminish it. I would argue, in fact, that we have identified several important, if not indispensable, principles concerning gratitude that arise from the Qur’ānic discourse, the prophetic example, the counsel of the earliest generations, and the wisdom of Ṣūfī sages. Namely:

1. (1) that all benefactions come from God, the Creator;

2. (2) that given the immense magnitude of these unceasing and unrepayable benefactions, we human beneficiaries ought to feel constant gratitude to our divine Benefactor;

3. (3) and considering the benefactions with which we are bestowed and we now bear, we ought to put them to right use – a use that accords with the will of God, the Benefactor – a use that revelation discloses to us as constituting the joining of faith and righteous deeds together, a use that is directed to fulfilling the repeated commandment to command the good and forbid evil, a use that sees to the care of the meek, the disadvantaged, and the poor, of creation, our communities, our families, and of ourselves.

With this particular matrix of gratitude in Islam laid forth as such, how ought we, then, rightly wield our gratitude? How might that wielding of gratitude be imagined within the structures of our present social realities? How ought our grateful agency accord with our most expansive understanding of gratitude within Islam? It is with these questions in mind, that I propose reformulating our conception of shukr with an eye to praxis. To invoke the thinking of the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, this is an attempt to bring together reflection and action in order ‘to transform the world.’Footnote ²⁵ In some respects, this is an extension of the ethical framework articulated within the classical Ṣūfī tradition, which centered the discourse on considerations of the human self (nafs) engaged in service to God. A framework of praxis, however, centers the discourse instead on considerations of the human other as the means of engaging the self in service to God.

The Qur’ānic formulation of shukr possesses an important subversive element with respect to the social. On an immediate level, shukr in the Qur’ān asserts the hierarchical superiority of God over humankind. Yet implicit to this Qur’ānic dynamic is a simultaneous theological leveling of other human hierarchies. Consider the hermeneutic developed by Sarra Tlili with respect to human–animal relationships in Islam in which she challenges the traditional understandings of taskhīr or ‘subjugation’ in the Qur’ān. Rather than demonstrating the superiority of humankind over animals, the term taskhīr actually asserts ‘God’s superiority to and dominion over His creation.’Footnote ²⁶ As the classical exegetes make clear, the agent who places one group, animals, at the service of another, human beings, is emphatically and unquestionably God. There may exist a hierarchy of serviceability in the animal–human domain, but all dominion and authority belong to God alone.Footnote ²⁷

Similarly, revelation asserts a similar logic for shukr in that all thanks and praise is due to God alone. Shukr in the Qur’ān, then, is not only an affirmation of God’s supremacy over humankind, but is at the same time a diminution, if not denigration, of claims to superiority by human beings. In asserting the primacy, if not singularity of the divine–human hierarchy, revelation is simultaneously destabilizing and disempowering human claims within socially constituted hierarchies. The only true benefactor is God. Consider the sage and theologian Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s (d. 505/1111) exposition on benefaction and gratitude:

Benefactions ascribed to others are ultimately indebted to the work of the Creator or not truly benefactions at all. Just as no power can truly lie with any creature outside of the penumbra of the Divine, so too can there be no benefaction outside of God’s will. States and regimes, as magnanimous as they try to present themselves, are not necessarily deserving of our thanks. Obedience, gratitude, and faith all ought to be directed to God alone and human claims to otherwise should be held in suspicion. Indeed, ideologies based on group particularisms, whether rooted in ethnicity, race, or national identity, should be problematized, especially when they transgress or impugn God’s claim to be the absolute source of all beneficence. This, I argue, is an important distinction raised by revelation because it frees one to dissent against those structures of inequality that continue to perpetuate and compound harm to entire communities of the marginalized, displaced, and disenfranchised.

A praxis-oriented theology, of course, must also entail an ethical framework of action. If gratitude to God is to be expressed via obedience, then acts of worship represent part of what revelation calls one to do. Yet the social dimensions of ritual acts should not be sublimated. Indeed, these embodied acts, prayer especially, are also forms of engagement with the world. Is not prayer an act of obedience and devotion to God as well as an act of protest against the iniquities of the world?Footnote ²⁹ Worshipers simultaneously answer their Creator and address the world with every prayer and prostration. Moreover, as Marion Katz has pointed out, theologians like al-Ghazālī and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1209) understood prayer as a form of ‘speech act.’Footnote ³⁰ Ritual performances like ṣalāt, while physically performed, also possessed a communicative dimension. The movements and gestures of prayer are a form of inscription that make legible our entreaties, praise, and thanks to the Divine. And so, like a tongue marshaled for gratitude, a prayer offered in gratitude is likewise simultaneously directed to God in thanks and praise as well as to the world in critique and challenge.

Acts of worship, however, are most certainly not the end of revelation’s disclosure with regards to how we ought to respond gratefully to God. The ‘acts of obedience’ that God asks us to offer to Him extend well beyond this. The roadmap, so to speak, for the divine–human gratitudinal relationship is not just delineated by acts of worship, but by a larger constellation of undertakings and commitments. Throughout the Qur’ān, gratitude is equated to faith and faith is continuously joined to righteousness. It is emphasized in the repeated injunction to enjoin the right and forbid the wrong (Q. 31:17 passim). It is personified and exemplified by the ethical paradigm of the prophets who are presented time and again as committed to overturning the prevailing social disorders of their respective times. The proper expression of gratitude, then, ought to encompass this array of ethical imperatives and activities as well.

2.6 Ingratitude as a Lens of Ethical Discernment

A hermeneutic of praxis can open up a powerful sub-text of righteous, social engagement. In order to provide a concrete example, a brief semantic aside is necessary. Thus far, our focus has been on shukr as ‘gratitude,’ a term which I have mentioned is semantically bound to that of īmān or ‘faith.’ As those familiar with Arabic well know, the language is replete with nuance and subtlety, complexity and polyvalency. Words in Arabic, more often than not, bear multiple meanings, many of which are complementary or mutually informative, as well as multiple antonyms of different registers. This is a linguistic feature upon which the Qur’ān keenly plays. If we are to wield gratitude, then, we ought to keep in mind that this concept of shukr is a double-edged one. We have at our disposal, when invoking it, both its meaning and its opposite, kufr or ‘ingratitude.’ Kufr is the antithesis of shukr, gratitude. At the same time, kufr also means disbelief or faithlessness, an ungrateful infidelity to God. As Qur’ān scholar Toshihiko Izutsu notes, kufr, in its simultaneous meaning of ingratitude and disbelief, reinforces the ‘firm conceptual link’ between gratitude and faith, shukr and īmān.Footnote ³¹ Throughout the Qur’ān there is a parallel discourse of ingratitude and disbelief alongside the discourse of gratitude and faith. Indeed, the sin of ‘disbelief’ could be read as ‘ingratitude’ with equal validity throughout the scripture. Both meanings hold. I call this feature double-edged, because implicit to the call for gratitude is a predilection for ingratitude that must be addressed. The theocentricity of shukr need not keep us focused solely on gratitude to God, but can equally direct us to a world filled with the absence of it – a world where kufr, as both disbelief and ingratitude, impinge and infringe upon the social seams of everyday experience.

It is with this double-edged dynamic in mind that I would have us consider, then, what ingratitude offers us for our responsibility to act in the realm of the social in the here and now. What does ingratitude, the other side of gratitude, offer us in response to the poor, the economically disadvantaged, and the socially disenfranchised? I conclude this chapter by examining one of the most prominent exemplars of disbelief and ingratitude mentioned in the Qur’ān, namely the figure of Firʿawn or the Pharaoh of Moses’ Egypt.

In the Qur’ān, Pharaoh is cast as an archetype of evil. Despite the efforts of the Prophet Moses to counsel him, Pharaoh refuses to renounce and reform his wicked ways. The evil of Pharaoh is typically understood as that of disbelief of the highest order. In sūrat al-Nāziʿāt the Qur’ān relates that Pharaoh turned his back on Moses and gathered his people in order to proclaim to them: ‘I am your lord most high!’ (Q. 79:24). His sin was to challenge the Divine and claim for himself divinity. Indeed, elsewhere his kufr is made more explicit: ‘O notables! I know of no other god for you other than myself’ (Q. 28:38). With this single phrase Pharaoh expresses both his disbelief in and ingratitude to God, his Creator and Benefactor.

While this reading of Pharaoh’s wickedness is clear I would argue that Pharaoh is not meant to solely personify evil on an individual level. He is simultaneously a Qur’ānic personification of systemic evil. The person of Pharaoh may operate at the pinnacle of power, but that power rests upon an array of social structures – a stratified array of systems and peoples designed to protect, maintain, and advance that power. This systemic evil cannot be laid at Pharaoh’s feet alone. It extends to his household, his court, and his society. Indeed, in the Qur’ān Pharaoh does not appear alone but at the head of an enslaving, hierarchical society. Obeying his commands and assenting to his vision are notables, secretaries, court magicians, soldiers, builders, engineers, and everyday Egyptians. To this evil belongs multiple levels of acquiescence and complicity. Systemic evil implicates them all. Ingratitude may be most evident in the agency of individuals, but it is rooted in the very structures of society itself. Pharaoh and his cautionary tale, then, are a scriptural indictment of the institutionalized evil and oppression built into social realities. It is not persons alone that oppose the prophets of the Qur’ān, but entire peoples. It is not individualized acts of personal malice that perpetuate poverty and disenfranchise social segments, but an institutionalized culture and carefully crafted political and economic order operating with cumulative historical force. The figure of Pharaoh may live only in the tales of the past, but evil of a Pharaonic-scale continues to enjoy multiple lives across present realities. This is perhaps why so many Ṣūfīs aspired to construct a faithful counter community in their respective contexts. This is why the Qur’ān and the Prophet Muhammad warned the faithful to extend gratitude not just to God, but to those around them through whom God works.

The Qur’ān’s representation of systemic evil, however, is not necessarily meant to drive the faithful towards misanthropy or world renunciation. Indeed, there is more to the narrative of Pharaoh than only the evils that he represents. Alongside him and his ingratitude are those who oppose him with rightly-oriented gratitude, like his own wife Āsiyā, his adopted son Moses, and Moses’ brother Aaron. The Qur’ān offers in response models of ethical action and commitment of prophetic import. For the sake of time I will only focus on Moses, whose treatment is the most extensive in the scripture. His significance, however, is not simply as a prophet tasked by God to call out a tyrant. Like the other prophets in the Qur’ān, Moses was addressing a wider community as well, Egyptians and Israelites alike. His message was both to the oppressor and the oppressed. Moreover, his opposition to Pharaoh reaches deeper when considering his past because Moses is no stranger to Pharaoh. He is his adopted son, raised within his family since infancy. For years Moses would enjoy the position and privilege of that house and his service within it only reinforced the disparities in power this Pharaonic society wrought. For all intents and purposes, he was complicit in the structural oppression wrought by this hierarchical, enslaving society. He was a part of this intricate order of systemic evil.

And yet, as the Qur’ān reveals, one can never be too far gone because God calls one who emerged from the very house of Pharaoh to stand up and call that same house to righteous account. Moses confronts the very man, his adoptive father, that social convention would say he ought to show his utmost gratitude, for it was in his house, under his provision, through his support, and with his permission that Moses grew and flourished into adulthood. It was within the household of Pharaoh that Moses received both love and care as a child. But, when faced with this supposed debt of gratitude, Moses does not waver from his prophetic course. Having encountered the Divine and having grounded his gratitude rightly to God he endeavors instead to reveal to this Pharaonic society the same truth delineated above, that faith and gratitude ultimately belong to God since all power and benefaction rests with the Divine alone.

And so, throughout the Qur’ānic text, Moses endeavors to speak truth to power – to a power from which he once benefited and enjoyed. He speaks not alone, but with the support of his brother Aaron. He speaks despite his own difficulty speaking. Moses speaks with gentle speech (Q. 20:44) in hopes that Pharaoh and his people will have a turn of heart rather than a hardened one. Moreover, we can imagine Moses using the blessings he received earlier in his life in order to further his prophetic cause. His noble upbringing and education would have granted him the attention of those he was seeking to address. His familiarity with the dominant culture and courtly life would have allowed him to better navigate and confront the political complexities and conventions of decorum with which he came head-to-head. His facility with the language would have made it easier for him to deliver God’s message with the gentlest of speech. Finally, the love, support, and sacrifices of his adoptive mother Āsiyā would have facilitated his access to the court of Pharaoh itself. These benefactions, bestowed by God through the deeds of those within the household of Pharaoh, were put to good use by this prophet. We can imagine too the gratitude that Moses would have continued to extend to those teachers, mentors, and caregivers who oversaw his upbringing, especially his adoptive mother, who herself ended up following his path. She too would direct her gratitude and faith to God as her husband’s hubris mounted.

Through figures like Moses and Āsiyā, the Qur’ān offers paradigms for those seeking to oppose repressive structures. There is a process of discernment in their lives, of determining where true gratitude and faith lie and recognizing the evil that ingratitude brings. Shukr, then, is not only an affirmation of God’s supremacy over humankind, but also a denigration of claims to superiority in humanly constructed hierarchies. Indeed, the fall of the house of Pharaoh in the Qur’ān is a cautionary tale of the consequences of widespread ingratitude and faithlessness. Let both persons and peoples be aware.

Recall as well that earlier prevailing principle of shukr, specifically that God is the only true Benefactor. Benefactions experienced from others must be interpreted as ultimately granted by the Divine. Just as no power can truly lie with any creature outside of God’s omnipotence, so too can no benefaction be truly bestowed outside of God’s will. States and regimes, despite what support, security, and provision they claim to provide, are in fact not true benefactors in an absolute sense. Rather, more often than not they are the perpetrators of systemic harm and wrong as was the house of Pharaoh. The societies to which we belong, then, are not owed our gratitude by necessity. This, I argue, is an important distinction raised by revelation because it frees one to dissent against those structures of inequality that continue to perpetuate and compound harm to entire communities of the marginalized, displaced, and disenfranchised.

What these societies are owed, instead, is our faithful commitment to righteous and responsible action. As Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya so carefully distilled above, we are obliged to take the benefactions that we have received from on high and use them ‘in a way that pleases the One to whom it truly belongs and who truly bestows it’ for those down on low.Footnote ³² We are called to do as the Prophet Moses did. We are called to embrace his prophetic spirit and speak truth to power even when we have been long complicit with that power. We ought to engage and confront our societies in accord with the vision of justice and goodness disclosed by the Divine. Like the aspirants of Sufism, we ought to embody this understanding of gratitude, but not in a manner that is spiritually utilitarian or idealized. Rather, the gratitude we embody ought to set us in lived solidarity with the poor and in active pursuit of how we might transform or overturn those structural conditions that beset us all. Though we may live figuratively in the house of Pharaoh, we are not obliged to abide by the rules of that house. As the mystic Ḥamḍūn al-Qaṣṣār (d. 271/884–885) said, ‘Gratitude for [God’s] beneficence is when you consider yourself to be an uninvited guest.’Footnote ³³