The Heart Is What Is Weighed

Allah (swt) commands a life of obedience to Islam at every stage and under all circumstances, wishing that whenever a person's own moment of departure from this world comes, it comes in a state of submission to Him — fearing Him as He deserves to be feared, honouring His law, obeying, loving and following His religion exactly as it should be followed. But none of this can come about, however devout a family a person is born into — even where parents themselves were scholars, even where, in an earlier age, a father was himself a prophet, as with Nūḥ (peace be upon him) and his son — without personal effort: what others do, even one's own parents, settles nothing, because this is one's own life and nobody else's; they do not live it, only the person living it does. Every person carries a single spirit, a single rūḥ, a single inner self, that Allah (swt) continually examines — how the nafs submits to Him, how the qalb, the heart, submits to Him — not looking, as a hadith relates, at outward forms — not at shapes, at colour, at race, at background, at perfume, at a haircut, at the length of a pair of trousers, at the colour of a hijab — but at the heart, scanning it, so to speak, for whether it obeys Him and submits to Him or not; and the only sign of that submission, the only sign this belief is real, is ʿamal, deeds. A claim to inward purity unaccompanied by any change of outward conduct changes nothing: it may be washed with Jif, with Ajax, with Morning Fresh, three times a day, and the claim will still not hold, because obedience is the only evidence a heart's condition ever gives.

There is the case of someone who once objected that, being no more than "a little Muslim," not even a speck of dirt within the whole universe, it seemed unreasonable that Allah (swt) should consign such a person to Jahannam forever merely for sinning, or even for unbelief. The answer is, first, that this is simply Allah's own law; and second, that the very words of the objection already answer it — Allah (swt) asks only that a person worship Him, know Him, live decently and choose, at every stage of life, in His favour, until the very last breath. A claim of purity of heart — "I think no ill of anyone, I hold those close to me in respect" — settles nothing on its own. Someone who instead relies on Allah's mercy, His being al-Ghafūr al-Raḥīm, while giving Him no such obedience, is taking a considerable risk: a fifty-fifty chance, at best. Allah (swt) may well forgive such a person on account of that mercy, dying though they did with nothing more than belief to their name; but consider the position of someone else, who lived strictly by the book to the very limit of personal capacity, who forwent every desire, every shahwah, and obeyed Allah (swt) however hard that proved, rising for Fajr, keeping the five daily prayers, holding to every ḥalāl and avoiding every ḥarām — and who then, on the Day of Judgement, watches Allah (swt) reward the one who never obeyed, who disobeyed deliberately and persistently, purely on the strength of that same hope of mercy. Would that person not object: "I laboured for You all my life, I loved You — and this one, this mongrel who never obeyed You even once, receives the very same reward?" This will not happen; the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) is reported to have said as much.

Consider, in the same vein, a student who has not completed a single piece of homework nor attended school with any regularity through the whole of a final year, yet who is confident of a place in medicine on the strength of nothing more than being fondly regarded by "my love, Miss Julia" — the school principal, who is thought to love this student as much as the student loves her, and who will surely see to the highest marks on that account alone. Whoever believes this way is, as the saying goes, a few cents short of a dollar — persisting in that belief changes nothing about how foolish it is. Trusting that Allah (swt) will simply hand over Paradise and His good pleasure on the Day of Judgement, without His commandments having been taken seriously, without genuine, applied effort, is exactly this kind of foolishness. Allah (swt) commands:

Believers, it commands, are to protect themselves and their families from a Fire whose fuel is people and stones alike.