‹What Would Allah Do with Your Punishment If You Are Grateful and Believe?›: What Befalls the Believers Is Discipline, Not Vengeance

Occasion: Transcription of a Fajr khatira delivered on 15 April 2026 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

The verses recited to us today are treasures of knowledge and information, but we pause at the last of what was recited to us, in the saying of the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, the Exalted: ﴿مَّا يَفْعَلُ ٱللَّهُ بِعَذَابِكُمْ إِن شَكَرْتُمْ وَءَامَنتُمْ ۚ وَكَانَ ٱللَّهُ شَاكِرًا عَلِيمًا﴾ (What would Allah do with your punishment if you are grateful and believe? And Allah is ever Appreciative, All-Knowing).^[1]

What does Allah, glory be to Him, gain from punishing you if you are of the people of faith and gratitude? What returns to Him if He punishes any of the people? What will come to Him from that? Ask in the utmost simplicity: what does a father do with his children? How he cares for them and attends to them and sacrifices for them and gives them his whole life? Then after a while the child raises his head in front of his father, and is arrogant toward him and insolent and offensive, for example. So how can such a child be treated?

Without doubt he needs to be treated with harshness, with severity, with discipline. And yet the father says: What do I gain from punishing him? For the matter does not go beyond the stage of discipline. And when we reach the stage of discipline alone, everything that happens to the people of faith is within the framework of discipline. So no calamity ever comes to the servant that he thinks is vengeance from the Lord of the worlds against him; our Lord does not take vengeance on His believing, grateful servant, glory be to Him, the Exalted. ﴿مَّا يَفْعَلُ ٱللَّهُ بِعَذَابِكُمْ إِن شَكَرْتُمْ وَءَامَنتُمْ﴾ (What would Allah do with your punishment if you are grateful and believe?), and we are only at the level of discipline.

And our Lord, glory be to Him, teaches us in the Noble Qur'an that ﴿كُلُّ نَفْسٍۭ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ رَهِينَةٌ﴾ (every soul, for what it has earned, is held in pledge),^[2] so what is done to you of what you are tried with or recompensed for, you are rewarded for it or recompensed. On that basis, if you deal with Allah with the eye of the worshipper, our Lord, glory be to Him, deals with you with the eye of care; and if you deal with Allah with the eye of the one who is disciplined, He deals with you with the same… I do not want to say "fatherhood," Allah is exalted above that with great exaltation, but in the like of what a father does. And our Lord, Mighty and Majestic, when He created us, told us that He creates what He wills and chooses; so as He creates humans, He creates for them their conditions, and creates for them the circumstances and environments and the people who live around them.

So live with Allah, Blessed and Exalted, with the tongue of the believer who is well-mannered before the King, glory be to Him, exalted on high, and He will encompass you with His mercy, be gentle with you, flood you with His pardon, and you will find comfort in His remembrance, glory be to Him, exalted on high. I ask Allah, Blessed and Exalted, to fill our lives with blessing, and that we not be tried with conceit in ourselves. May Allah the Exalted make us and you steadfast, and preserve our faith, and entrust to us of faith that with which we meet Him on the Day of Resurrection.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: An-Nisāʾ: 147. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: Al-Muddaththir: 38.