One Creator Deserves Thanks Alone
The Factory We All Live In
Is it hard to comprehend?
That the human and the animal, the bird over the field and the machine in the laboratory, the world you can see and the world you cannot — that all of it came from One?
It is not hard to comprehend. A child comprehends it before the world teaches him to forget it.
What is hard is the forgetting. We were given everything, and the Giver asked for one thing — and that one thing is the thing we withhold.
He asked for thanks.
I. The Factory
Say you built a factory.
You raised the building with your own wealth. You set the machines in their rows. You opened the gates in the morning and let the light and the air come in. The soil under the floor is yours, the hands at the benches are hands you hired and fed, and every finished thing that rolls out of the door carries your mark, because without you there is no factory at all.
And say you are not a hard master. You do not ask for the workers’ homes, or their children, or their lives. You ask for one thing only.
Thanks.
Just thanks.
Now say the thanks never comes. Worse — say a worker takes your soil from your own yard, shapes it with the hands you pay, in the hours you give him, and sets the figure on a shelf in the corner of your factory — and bows to it. He thanks the figure for his bread. He asks the figure for rain.
Tell me honestly: is the owner wrong to grieve? Is he wrong to honor the worker who remembered him, and to hold to account the one who bowed to the shelf?
No one calls that owner unjust. We call him patient — perhaps too patient.
Now lift your eyes. The factory is the earth. The machines are the seasons. The soil is the soil He made, and the hands are the hands He formed in the womb, and the breath in the worker’s chest is a breath He lends and recalls. Everything belongs to Him the way nothing ever belonged to any owner of any factory — completely, and from the beginning.
And the only thing He asks is what the owner asked.
Thanks.
And the owner did more than ask for thanks. He left his own door open. Whatever you need, he said, come to my office and ask me. Ask me directly, at any hour. And he appointed managers, one after another, generation after generation, to walk the floor and speak his word to the workers — how the factory was meant to run, and what he promised those who ran it well. The managers were faithful men. They came, they delivered the owner’s word exactly as it was given, and they went — for managers are mortal, and the building outlives them all. Only the Owner remains. And his door never closed.
Yet watch what the workers do. A need rises in a man’s heart, and instead of walking to the open door, he queues at the manager’s desk — a desk whose keeper went home long ago. He thanks the manager for his bread. He thanks the foreman for the rain. He thanks everyone in the building, up and down every floor — everyone except the One who built the building, who pays for its light, who left his door open and said: ask Me.
“And when My servants ask you concerning Me — indeed I am near. I respond to the call of the caller when he calls upon Me.” (Qur’an 2:186)
“So remember Me; I will remember you. Be grateful to Me, and do not deny Me.” (Qur’an 2:152)
II. Where the Parable Must Bow
But here the parable reaches its limit, and honesty requires us to say so: every likeness limps when it walks toward Him.
A man is wounded by ingratitude because a man can be diminished. Allah cannot be diminished. Our thanks add nothing to Him, and our denial takes nothing from Him. He does not wait for our gratitude the way the owner waits at the factory gate. He is not fed by it. He is not kept by it.
“And Moses said: If you disbelieve — you and all who are on the earth, together — Allah is indeed Self-Sufficient, Praiseworthy.” (Qur’an 14:8)
“Whoever gives thanks gives thanks only for the good of his own soul. And whoever is ungrateful — truly Allah is Self-Sufficient, Praiseworthy.” (Qur’an 31:12)
Understand this, and the whole matter turns the right way up. Thanks is not a tax the Creator collects. It is medicine the creature swallows. The grateful man is not paying a debt he could ever settle; he is remembering who he is — a receiver, standing in a factory he did not build, breathing air he did not make. Gratitude is the moment the worker looks up from the bench and tells the truth.
And the truth is the beginning of worship.
III. The Idol Made From His Soil
Now weigh the other side of the scale.
A man does not merely forget to give thanks. He goes further. He takes the soil — the soil the One created — and with his own two hands he shapes it, paints it, raises it on a shelf, and says: you are my god.
The hands are His. The soil is His. The strength in the fingers and the life in the body are His. And the thanks travel downward, to the thing the hands made, instead of upward, to the One who made the hands.
Centuries before our age of machines, a young man stood before his people and their carved gods and asked the question that has never been answered:
“Do you worship what you yourselves carve, when Allah created you and that which you do?” (Qur’an 37:95–96)
The idol cannot hear the thanks it receives. It cannot create, cannot sustain, cannot forgive, cannot give back one single breath. It is the only god in the room who has done nothing for anyone — and it is the only one being thanked.
Is that balance? Is that Mizan?
No. That is the scale turned upside down: the Giver forgotten, the gift worshipped, the made thing seated in the Maker’s place.
IV. The Reckoning Is Not Cruelty
So is the Creator unjust if He rewards the one who thanks Him alone, without partner — and holds to account the one who was given everything and bowed to the shelf?
We do not call the factory owner unjust for less. And the Owner of the heavens and the earth announced His way openly, in advance, so no one could claim surprise:
“If you are grateful, I will surely increase you. But if you deny, indeed, My punishment is severe.” (Qur’an 14:7)
Increase for the grateful. Account for the denier. That is not cruelty; that is the moral shape of reality itself. A world where thanks and betrayal weigh the same is not a merciful world — it is a meaningless one. The Mizan exists because things truly weigh differently. Gratitude is heavy. Ingratitude is heavy too, on the other pan.
He gave everything. He asked for thanks. The door of thanks stands open every hour of every life. No one will be able to say the price was too high.
V. One — Seen and Unseen
Say it plainly, the way it was revealed:
“Say: He is Allah, the One.” (Qur’an 112:1)
One Creator for the man and for the animal in the field, who never doubted where its provision comes from. One for the empires that rose and the empires in their graves. One for the world seen, and One for the world unseen — for the angels we cannot count and the souls in the Barzakh we cannot visit. And in our own strange century: one Creator even for the machine, for the machine did not make itself, nor did the minds that made it make themselves. Every maker beneath Him is himself a made thing.
We were made. That is the whole foundation. And the One who made us has kept this world turning through ages beyond our counting while generations came, and bowed, or refused to bow, and went.
He deserves thanks. He deserves worship — alone, without partner, without idol, without the shelf in the corner of His own factory.
The Thanks That Remains
So the question returns to each of us, quiet as a factory at dawn, before the machines start:
“Then which of the favors of your Lord will you deny?” (Qur’an 55:13)
Every soul reading this will one day lie in the Barzakh, where no factory runs and no shelf stands, and the only wealth that crosses over is a heart that learned, while it still had breath, to say thanks to the right One.
Mizan before Hadid. Book before hammer. And before both — a tongue that remembers, and a knee that bows to the Maker, not the made.
Be the voice.
— A. Rahim Sheher-Mulk
Sources & notes
Qur’an 2:152; 2:186; 14:7; 14:8; 31:12; 37:95–96 (the words of Ibrahim, peace be upon him, to his people); 55:13; 112:1. Translations are close renderings of the received meanings.
The factory is a parable of gratitude and ownership, offered as reflection. Section II marks its limit openly: Allah is Self-Sufficient and is not diminished by ingratitude nor increased by thanks (14:8; 31:12); gratitude benefits the soul of the one who gives it.
This is a witness of gratitude and Tawhid, published as an article of reflection. It predicts nothing, and nothing in it is frozen.