The Blessing of Security, Well-Being and Daily Bread

Occasion: Transcription of a Fajr khatira delivered on 6 November 2025 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

O Allah, we ask You for the good of this day, the good of what is in it and the good of what comes after it, and we seek refuge in You from the evil of this day, the evil of what is in it and the evil of what comes after it. Set right for us our religion, our worldly life and our Hereafter, and prepare for us right guidance in our affair; preserve for us the well-being of our hearts and make our souls secure; keep us safe from trials, those of them that are apparent and those that are hidden; restore to us our faith complete and undiminished; and grant us steadfastness upon guidance, and take us by the forelocks to what pleases You, O Lord.

From time to time we need to remember the blessings of Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, upon us. The blessings of our Lord, glory and exaltation be to Him, are many, yet some of them we confine to the realm of what we see with our eyes or touch with our hands. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ, in his project of building the Muslim mind, teaches us another way of assessing situations and matters and of considering the value of the blessing that our Lord, glory and exaltation be to Him, bestows upon us. He tells us in the well-known ḥadīth: «مَنْ أَصْبَحَ مِنْكُمْ آمِنًا فِي سِرْبِهِ، مُعَافًى فِي جَسَدِهِ، عِنْدَهُ قُوتُ يَوْمِهِ، فَكَأَنَّمَا حِيزَتْ لَهُ الدُّنْيَا بِحَذَافِيرِهَا» ("Whoever among you wakes up secure in his home, healthy in his body, with the sustenance of his day, it is as though the whole world had been gathered for him")^[1]. We will pause at a few simple points in this ḥadīth.

What Is the Value of These Blessings?

The first point: what is the value of these blessings in our lives? People who look at these things as guaranteed and permanently settled do not pay attention to them at all. Every morning you wake up, you get out of your bed, you rise to your ablution, and you head to the mosque in a perfectly normal way, until it has become a routine for you: that you move, this is something normal. And what is abnormal for us is to say: I have a headache, or my foot hurts, or I have a problem with my stomach; so this has become the problem, and has become the thing that befalls us as an exception, which is contrary to the original state. For the original state is that health is a blessing acquired from the Lord of the worlds, glory and exaltation be to Him; it comes from Allah's generosity and from continually drawing His blessing upon us through ever more gratitude in our lives.

And naturally each of us has the sustenance of his day and of his week, and perhaps of his month and perhaps more than that. So if the balances in the banks run low, or the blessing disappears in some way, we become irritable and unsettled, thinking that there is an exception in life, as though we had considered that the normal reality should be nothing but this.

The Blessing of Security

And the other matter: that there is someone who frightens you. You wake up in the morning and are surprised, for example, that your car is open, or as though you forgot to lock it at night; do you get that upset? No, it is fine, you look and make sure that nothing was taken, and the matter is over, because you feel the blessing of security in a natural way.

What the Prophet ﷺ laid down is the basics of life without which one cannot move. And we can imagine a person who is afraid, terrified, with someone tracking him, wanted (I do not want to say wanted by justice, but wanted by the police, for example, in some way, whether there is justice in that or injustice); but imagine that someone is being followed and watched and is wanted for his own person; what is the state of this human being? How can he sleep? How can he eat? How can he think? How can he look around to see whether anyone is following him or not? He walks neither in a straight road nor in a crooked one; his routes are always unusual, not like other people's; he takes shortcuts here and there and tries to escape in some way. What is the psychology of this person? This is the one who is always afraid.

The Order of the Ḥadīth and Its Coherence

The Prophet ﷺ says: «من أصبح آمنًا في سربه» ("Whoever wakes up secure in his home"), and what comes after it? «معافًى في جسده» ("healthy in his body"). So what follows from what? The words of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, are not random, and I am completely against that idea; even the scholars who arranged the ḥadīths of the Prophet ﷺ in their books did not arrange them randomly. We always used to notice the coherence between the ḥadīths, for example in Imam al-Nawawī's «Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn»: why did he include this ḥadīth after that ḥadīth? Not to collect a group of ḥadīths for you and put them here and be done; there are other similar ḥadīths in other chapters, and yet he chose this place.

And the point is: what is the link between «آمنًا في سربه» ("secure in his home") and «معافًى في جسده» ("healthy in his body")? Well-being is not achieved except with security, so if security is absent, well-being is absent, without dispute. And how is that? We agreed that the one who is pursued in any way, on any charge, whether unjustly or justly, cannot eat well, nor rest, nor sleep; his mind does not take in a sufficient amount, his stomach does not absorb, his body does not rest, he is always tossing and turning, so his well-being is always in disturbance.

Then the Prophet ﷺ says: «عنده قوت يومه» ("with the sustenance of his day"). And the sick person cannot properly bring provision to himself or to his dependants, and therefore his house is empty.

Peace of Mind

Let us evaluate once more how you can weigh all the wealth of the world against peace of mind; that you are at ease psychologically, reassured and calm. Put a number of millions before it: for how much do you buy peace of mind? Imagine that some scholars, when they define happiness, say: happiness, in the sum of the matter, is the absence of worry; two words and that is all. You have no worry pressing on your nerves so that you are forced to think about it for a long time, and you do not feel wronged or cheated or despised or inferior, or that your right has been usurped; you say: praise be to Allah, fine. And worry has its kinds, categories and levels, but the sum of the matter is this: what is happiness in the eyes of the wise? The absence of worry, and your conscience at ease and calm. Then, after that, that you see in yourself the ability to breathe, to move, to see people, to hear whoever calls you, to eat a morsel that you desire while looking at it with admiration: what a wonder, the food is lovely today! To feel this is in itself a blessing. Then you have a little that does not make your mind transgress, nor occupy your thought, nor make you content with a worldly life instead of the Hereafter, nor lead your soul astray from the remembrance of Allah, blessed and exalted; that is a blessing.

Let us say again in brief: we are in blessings that cannot be counted or enumerated, by Allah besides Whom there is no god. I always remember this ḥadīth when I am stuck on the road, on a long journey for example or waiting for a plane before Fajr, so I picture my state in my bed on a normal, ordinary day and compare the two states, and I say: praise be to Allah for staying and for travelling; praise be to Allah that He gave us a day in our beds and a day on the road; praise be to Allah Who placed stability, reassurance and calm in our souls; praise be to Allah Who made us know Him; praise be to Allah Who made us turn to Him for refuge; praise be to Allah Who made our hearts flee for refuge to His courtyards, glory and exaltation be to Him, and to His good pleasure.

We Make Life Bitter for Ourselves with Our Own Hands

Very many blessings, and we make life bitter for ourselves with our own hands; when we cloud the peace of the home merely because of a word that came out from here, or an action that came from the mother of the children in some way, or from one of the children. We create problems between ourselves and those around us when we track their conditions, follow their traces, observe their words, make a mountain out of a molehill and make a problem out of nothing. We make life bitter for ourselves when a person is healthy and with his own hand and by his own choice takes a cigarette, putting poison into his body and filling that body with this danger. We are the ones who make the problems in our lives. Imagine when you match this with the saying of the Lord of the worlds, glory and exaltation be to Him: ﴿ظَهَرَ الْفَسَادُ فِي الْبَرِّ وَالْبَحْرِ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ أَيْدِي النَّاسِ﴾ ("Corruption has appeared on land and sea because of what the hands of people have earned")^[2]; you can match this with the appearance of corruption within the body and the mind and beyond that, because of what the hands of people have earned.

O Allah, set right our state of mind, O Allah, set right our state of mind, O Allah, set right our state of mind, and prepare for us right guidance in our affair, O Lord of the worlds. O Allah, make us firm with the firm word in the life of this world and in the Hereafter, and on the day when the witnesses will stand. May Allah, the Exalted, be pleased with you and make you pleased.

We ask Allah to keep our people in Gaza steadfast, to be gentle with them, to have mercy on their weakness and to bring their affair to a good end. O Allah, feed them in their hunger, O Allah, quench their thirst and clothe their unclad, O Allah, make them firm and strengthen their hearts, O Lord of the worlds.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: The ḥadīth is well known, reported by al-Tirmidhī and Ibn Mājah from the ḥadīth of ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Miḥṣan al-Khaṭmī, may Allah be pleased with him; the speaker cited it with this meaning and referred to its arrangement in al-Nawawī's «Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn». ^[2]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Rūm (verse 41).