after every prayer: ‘O Allah, help me to remember You, to thank You, and to worship You well.’ (1)

By “remembrance” the Prophet did not mean the tongue alone; it is both the remembrance of the heart and of the tongue. Remembering Him involves mentioning His names and attributes, recalling His commands and prohibitions, and remembering Him through His own speech. This necessarily entails knowing Him, believing in Him and in the perfection of His attributes and the majesty of His qualities, and praising Him with every form of laudation—and none of that can be perfected except through monotheism.

True remembrance therefore contains all of this and, in addition, calls to mind His favors, His blessings, and His beneficence toward His creation.

Gratitude, for its part, is to stand before Him in obedience and to draw near to Him with every act He loves, both outward and inward.

These two matters constitute the sum of the religion: remembrance of Him requires knowledge of Him, and gratitude to Him entails obedience to Him.

They are also the very purpose for which jinn and humankind, the heavens and the earth were created; for their sake reward and punishment were established; for them the scriptures were sent down and the messengers dispatched. They are the truth by which the heavens and the earth and whatever lies between them were brought into being. Their opposite is falsehood and frivolity, from which He is supremely exalted and sanctified; it is merely the conjecture of His enemies about Him.

Allah the Exalted said: “We did not create the sky and the earth and what lies between them without purpose; that is the notion of those who disbelieve.” ⦗Ṣād: 27⦘.