From Ingratitude to Murder of the Messengers

وَإِذ قُلتُم يا موسىٰ لَن نَصبِرَ عَلىٰ طَعامٍ واحِدٍ فَادعُ لَنا رَبَّكَ يُخرِج لَنا مِمّا تُنبِتُ الأَرضُ مِن بَقلِها وَقِثّائِها وَفومِها وَعَدَسِها وَبَصَلِها ۖ قالَ أَتَستَبدِلونَ الَّذي هُوَ أَدنىٰ بِالَّذي هُوَ خَيرٌ ۚ اهبِطوا مِصرًا فَإِنَّ لَكُم ما سَأَلتُم ۗ وَضُرِبَت عَلَيهِمُ الذِّلَّةُ وَالمَسكَنَةُ وَباءوا بِغَضَبٍ مِنَ اللَّهِ ۗ ذٰلِكَ بِأَنَّهُم كانوا يَكفُرونَ بِآياتِ اللَّهِ وَيَقتُلونَ النَّبِيّينَ بِغَيرِ الحَقِّ ۗ ذٰلِكَ بِما عَصَوا وَكانوا يَعتَدونَ

"And [recall] when you said, "O Moses, we can never endure one [kind of] food. So call upon your Lord to bring forth for us from the earth its green herbs and its cucumbers and its garlic and its lentils and its onions." [Moses] said, "Would you exchange what is better for what is less? Go into [any] settlement and indeed, you will have what you have asked." And they were covered with humiliation and poverty and returned with anger from Allāh [upon them]. That was because they [repeatedly] disbelieved in the signs of Allāh and killed the prophets without right. That was because they disobeyed and were [habitually] transgressing. " (Quran 2:61)

I was listening to a student's recitation of this verse during the tasmi' class this morning when i thought, just look at how ungrateful the Children of Israel were. They were gifted with heavenly food namely the Manna and Salwa (a type of honey and bird) which Allah sent down upon them daily. Yet they were unhappy and wanted more variety, so they called upon Musa to ask Allah to bring forth from the earth all the various kinds of earthly foods. They were willing to trade heavenly food for something earthly just because the latter had more variety and seemed better in their eyes.

It is interesting how Allah then says they drew upon themselves the wrath of Allah, and ended up in misery because they denied His Signs and killed the prophets without right, for they were a people who always trangressed. Wait a second. The verse began with how they were ungrateful towards Allah for the heavenly food He gifted them and sought to replace it with lesser earthly food just because it was 'less boring', but at the end of the verse, suddenly Allah says they killed the prophets without right. How are these two related? The essence of ingratitude is the want for all things to follow one's own will, and perhaps the gravest manifestation of that attitude is murder of the Messengers of God who came to ask humanity to humble itself before God, to challenge such an arrogant attitude.

On a more figurative level, perhaps the verse can be applied to those of us who prefer to follow certain ideologies or philosophies which are man made and hence earthly, exchanging our heavenly gift of Islam with them. Or to follow newly invented matters by the people, which not infrequently replace the sunnah acts taught to us by our Messenger SAW. In such cases, we too are murdering our Prophet because we seek to replace his sunnah with bid'ah (like insisting on reading Ya seen instead of al-Kahf on Friday night). It is not physical murder, but it is murder nonetheless.

May Allah save us from the arrogance of wanting all things to be in accordance with our will, for how dare we have such arrogance when we are but His servants. May He help us to be grateful for all His blessings, physical and spiritual, so we do not seek to replace His heavenly gifts, namely the Quran and the sunnah, with earthly, man-made ideologies and newly invented matters which are inherently lesser and inevitably lead to loss. Ameen.