Ingratitude for a Blessing

It is ingratitude for a blessing to forbid it to yourself when Allah has made it permissible.

Like the one who forbids himself a kind of food, such as dairy or bread, without medical advice from a trustworthy, reliable doctor, and he has no food allergy or anything at all; rather, he just follows social media fads without logic or reason.

Like the one who forbade eggplant, tomatoes, onions, watermelon, and all fruit -except berries and cherries- and forbade bread, rice, meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy -a self-appointed doctor- Man, what have you left!? What do you even eat?

Food that does no harm to the body, that you have no problem with, you are not on a diet, and no doctor advised you about it: why do you forbid it!?

Dr. Mustafa Abu Saad mentioned -in a podcast episode- that this generation faces three major phenomena and challenges in this age:

1- Atheism 2- and sexual deviance 3- and malnutrition disorders.

He attributes the last problem to the emergence of a generation of doctors who forbid everything! Don't eat this, or that, or this one, or, or,,,

(Say, "Have you seen what Allah has sent down to you of provision of which you have made [some] lawful and [some] unlawful?" Say, "Has Allah permitted you [to do so], or do you invent [something] about Allah?" And what will be the supposition of those who invent falsehood about Allah on the Day of Resurrection? Indeed, Allah is full of bounty to the people, but most of them are not grateful)

Ibn Kathir (may Allah have mercy on him) said:

"And His saying: {Indeed, Allah is full of bounty to the people) …it may mean that He is full of bounty to the people in what He has made permissible for them of the benefits He created in this world, and He has not forbidden them anything except what is harmful to them in their worldly life or their religion. (but most of them are not grateful) rather, they forbid what Allah has bestowed upon them,

and they make things narrow for themselves, making some things lawful and some unlawful."

And Muhammad al-Maqdisi mentioned a statement of Taqi al-Din: "As for abstaining from doing permissible things altogether, like one who abstains from eating meat, or eating bread, or drinking water … and thinks that this is part of recommended asceticism, then this person is ignorant and misguided up to where he mentioned that Allah commanded eating from the good things and being grateful to Him"

And the rule says: Whoever is harmed by honey, it is forbidden to him: meaning, if honey is harmful to this person's body, let him deprive himself of it until he recovers. But these people forbid things without harm, logic, reason, or justification!

If only they forbade one or two things; rather, they forbid everything except a little!

Like the practice of the Jahiliyyah, for they used to forbid kinds of food with no basis in the Sharia, reason, cause, medicine, or harm, such as their forbidding the slaughter and eating of a she-camel if she gave birth to a series of females in a row, and forbidding milk to their women, and strange things that today we see, but in a new and different way, in the name of science and medicine!

— Shoroog Almehmadi