The Importance of Sujood Ash-Shukr

By Tooba Yasser, Director of Editing

It is human nature to take our blessings for granted and do not realize their importance until it is too late. Therefore, it is important for us to practice good habits and to show thanks for all that we have been given, whether it is something specific or generic. There are also worse offenses that you can do than being unappreciative. Those include only ever returning to Allah (SWT) when something bad happens or only ever coming to Him to request more. Possibly the worst is if you attribute all of our successes and blessings as a product of your hard work or someone other than Our Creator because how can you thank someone else for everything that He has given to you?

To continue, if you were to have a friend who would only ever ask you for favors without ever thanking you or giving you any favors in return, you would think of ways to make them realize their errors or leave them altogether. This would just be a friend being ungrateful to another human, but how can you be ungrateful to the One who has given you everything? He provides without ever asking for a thanks, but it does not mean that you should take advantage of the Almighty’s kindness and mercy. He provides to Muslims and nonmuslims, rich or poor, old or young.

Furthermore, to avoid being a selfish servant of Allah who only ever reverts to Him in order to ask for more, build good habits to remember Allah not only when things go wrong, but during the good times as well. Don’t wait until tragedy in order to remember Allah (SWT). Perform Sujood Ash-Shukr regularly for small triumphs in your life whether that is a difficult test or a challenging soccer game. If you don’t have enough time to do Sujood Ash-Shukr, do a verbal duaa that’s sole purpose is to thank Allah and not to ask for more things or to complain.

If you show you are appreciative of what others do for you, they are more likely to do more for you to make you happy, therefore as Muslims, we should not consider thanking Allah (SWT) for our blessings as optional. It is quite simple to perform Sujood Ash-Shukr and it can be done without wudu although it is better to have wudu. The first step would be to make your niyah, or intention, in your heart or verbally. Next, go into sujood and read what you would normally such as Subhana Rabiul Ala. This can suffice since you have already made your Niyah for what you are thanking Allah (SWT) for, but you can take this time in sujood to read more and more dua’as and really have a conversation with Allah (SWT).

To sum up, we ask Allah (SWT) to help us to be more appreciative of our blessings and to perform Sujood Ash-Shukr routinely. We ask Allah (SWT) to forgive us for not being appreciative of his blessing and not thanking Him enough in the past. We can’t ever possibly thank Allah (SWT) for every single blessing since we can’t even count it, but we ask the Almighty to accept our efforts to thank Him. Most importantly, we ask Allah (SWT) to help us to build good habits that we can carry on for years to come.