Practice and Sincerity

Knowledge on its own accomplishes nothing; it has to be implemented, put into practice — this is the second leg, ʿamal. Whoever fails to practise what has been learned is a munāfiq, a hypocrite, saying one thing and doing another; and the practice itself has to rest on that knowledge and not on culture — not "this is the Lebanese way," or the Egyptian way, the Turkish way, the Pakistani way. Islam is one Islam; the Qurʾān is one Qurʾān; the Sunnah is one Sunnah; there is no other way, and anything claiming to be another way is merely an extension of the nafs or of a particular culture, not true Islam.

The third leg is ikhlāṣ, complete sincerity in everything done. A string of prayer beads, a tasbīḥ or masbaḥah, is held together by the single thread running through it; without that thread the beads are nothing but loose, separate pieces. Ikhlāṣ is that thread, the common factor joining ʿilm and ʿamal. Allah (swt) never accepts a deed unless it is accompanied by ikhlāṣ — that is, unless it is done wholly, a hundred per cent, for His sake alone.

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) is reported to have said, as related in Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī^**, that the first three groups of people to be judged on the Day of Judgement, out of the whole ummah of Muḥammad (peace be upon him), are not murderers or those guilty of the gravest sins, but three others altogether. The first is a shahīd, a man who went out to the battlefront, fought in defence of Islam, and died there — his head struck off, or pierced through by arrows in the fashion of earlier times. He is brought before Allah (swt), who reminds him of every favour shown to him in life and asks what he did in return, with sincerity. "I died for You," he says. "I gave my life; my head was struck from my body." Allah (swt) answers that this is not true: He knows what was truly in that man's heart — that he went to war wishing to be called a hero, wishing never to be named a coward, wishing to be remembered as a legend, the one who killed thousands of others. And this he received in full: a statue was raised to him in the city centre, and poets wrote of him. What he asked for in his heart, he was given. "You did nothing for Me." The command follows: let the angels take him into Jahannam — the martyr cast into the Fire before anyone else, subḥānAllāh, despite the well-known maqām, the standing, of a shahīd, whose sins are forgiven before the first drop of his blood touches the ground, and who is given the finest place in Jannah. And yet here Allah (swt) says plainly: he has lied, and continues to lie; he never did this for Him; he had no ikhlāṣ.

The second is a wealthy man. Some people study for two or three degrees and can scarcely pay the rent, their tuition or their children's; others cannot even sign a cheque properly, and yet everything they touch turns, as it were, to gold — money coming out of their very ears, subḥānAllāh. Such a man is reminded by Allah (swt) of the distinct wealth given to him while others around him went without food, and is asked what he did with it. He answers that he gave generously — ṣadaqah, charity, schools founded, orphanages built, universities established and named after himself, widows and the poor provided for constantly. Allah (swt) tells him this too is a lie: he wanted a reputation for generosity, so that nobody would call him stingy or tight-fisted, and so he paid for it — and he received exactly that. After his death he was remembered fondly as a father figure, a benefactor, who married off sons and daughters and paid for their education; he already had his reward, in full, in this world. "You have nothing with Me." He too is sent into Jahannam.

The third is a man of learning, one of the ʿulamāʾ. Allah (swt) reminds him of the superior intellect given to him, the capacity to learn, memorise and explain what others could not, until he became a scholar of the first rank in his own land. Asked what he did with it, he answers that he taught many, many students, wrote many, many books, ran schools and madāris and taught them the Qurʾān, taught them Islam, taught them this and that and more besides. Allah (swt) tells him the same: he wanted people to say he was a learned man, to stand up for him when he entered a room, to show him respect, to concede arguments to him for the pleasure of winning them, to be remembered as a scholar without equal in his own land — in Akkār, in Ṭarābulus — the shaykh of shuyūkh, a shaykh above every other shaykh. "You have nothing with Me, because none of it was ever done purely for Me." He too is sent into the Fire. Knowledge is only good when it is joined to practice, and practice is only good when the knowledge behind it is carried out with pure ikhlāṣ.

This is why, when someone reverts to Islam or returns to it, and has learned the creed — āmantu billāhi wa malāʾikatihi, "I believe in Allah and His angels," and the whole of it — and how to pray, the scholars insist on teaching two further things straightaway, matters not even set out as such in the books of fiqh: ikhlāṣ itself, and the danger of riyāʾ, ostentation — doing things to impress others, wearing the hijab to look good in front of friends, or acting so as to be thought well of by a particular teacher, rather than doing everything wholly for the sake of Allah (swt).