Thanksgiving Prayer
In Allah’s All-Embracing Love Which is for Every One
Peace to your hearts dear sisters dear brothers.
May this national holiday of gratitude for Allah’s Infinite Bounty be honored with ever-renewed gratefulness rising from our hearts. May this appointed day also be honored with the conscience that Divine Bounty belongs to all peoples and all beings, not to just a few. May we develop the courage as a Nation to admit that the origins of this day of Thanksgiving are stained with the blood of the Native Peoples and the loss of their lands and their cultures. May we have the honesty and awareness to see that this terrible injustice is continuing. It has never stopped. We see it in Standing Rock, North Dakota among the Sioux Nations. We see it on all the reservations, which are the result of broken treaties with the original occupants of this land. We see it all over the world where a dominating group enters onto someone else’s land, takes it by force and subjugates the resident people, stealing their property and using them as servants and slaves. If the peoples are recalcitrant to join the dominant society in this way they are then killed or ostracized to smaller and smaller pieces of land considered of no worth. Until they do have worth, and then these too are taken.
On this day of Thanksgiving may we pray for the elevation and illumination of the human soul.
May we pray to love each other and honor each other as we are, as Allah the Great Creator has fashioned us in all the beautiful colors and forms and perspectives.
May we pray on this day for ourselves and others to become kind and to treat each other with kindness and fairness. May we no longer speak harshly of anyone or to anyone.
May we pray on this day for the Native Americans. May we pray that our society make reparation, both spiritual and material, to their descendants - reparation such as honoring the treaties our government made with their ancestors, not continuing to take their lands and resources, and extending to them the honor we give to ourselves. May we listen to their grievances and hear their wisdom.
May we pray on this day for all those our society has enslaved to increase its material wealth, all the millions of people brought from Africa and Ireland and elsewhere to the Americas.
May the modern day servants and slaves of corporations be also freed and restored to full human dignity.
We pray that we be given eyes that truly see and ears that truly hear.
We pray to be given hearts that feel compassion.
We pray to be given hands that reach out to help and arms that embrace.
We pray to have feet that walk in goodness and beauty.
May they walk gently on the earth who is a mother to us.
We pray that we wipe away the tears and sing the songs of healing.
We pray to walk on the mystic Way of return with all peoples.
We pray to be filled with the light of Unity.
We pray to spread spiritual joy.
We pray to become true human beings.
Alhamdulillah! Alhamdulillah! Alhamdulillah O Lord of all the worlds and Lover of all the hearts! We thank You with ever-renewed gratitude!
Ya Effendi! Ya Nur! Ya Amina Taslima! Ya Nureddin Jerrahi!
Ya Munammad! Ya Fatima! O All Prophets and Messengers and Mothers!
Ya Nurun ala Nur!
Fariha Nur Ashki Jerrahi
Please remember to invite each other to your feast.