The Second Groove: A Heart Kept Clean

The second is that a person should always try his utmost to keep his heart, his inner heart, cleansed of the forbidden and of its diseases. One of the Companions relates that the first bidʿah that appeared in the Ummah of Muḥammad (peace be upon him) — bidʿah in its lexical meaning, something new, not in its religious meaning — was the discovery of a plant, perhaps aloe vera, Allah knows, from which people made soap. It was the Muslims, incidentally, who invented soap. As soon as they discovered it, Muslims became obsessed, day and night, with their outer cleanliness: they constantly washed their clothing, constantly washed everything, because al-ṭuhūru shaṭr al-īmān — cleanliness is half of faith. They became so obsessed with their outward cleanliness that with this soap they washed, and washed, and washed, and made sure that everything was spotlessly clean on the outside. And yet, the Companion says, in the time of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) we were clean — for if a person is in a state of impurity, najis, he cannot pray; purity from the minor and the major impurity, ṭahārah min al-ḥadath al-aṣghar wa al-akbar, is required — we used to take care of ourselves. But we were far more worried about the cleanliness of our hearts. When we came into the presence of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) we were as if sitting on eggshells, so worried were we: do I have envy, ḥasad, in my heart? Do I have pride, kibr, in my heart? Do I have greed, ṭamaʿ, in my heart? Do I have love of this world, ḥubb al-dunyā, in my heart? The unseen: people cannot judge it. When they look at a person they cannot tell whether he has envy or not, whether he has hypocrisy, nifāq, in his heart or not. But Allah constantly can: inna Allāha lā yanẓuru ilā ajsāmikum wa lā ṣuwarikum wa lākin yanẓuru ilā qulūbikum wa aʿmālikum — Allah (swt) does not look at your outer forms; He looks only at the condition of your hearts. He scans the heart constantly. Qalbun salīm.

So the second groove of the key to Paradise is that the heart has to be clean. A person needs to work on his heart, to cleanse himself of the diseases of the commanding self, al-nafs al-ammārah — twelve of them, a number most people do not even know. He needs to cleanse himself before he can even move up to the next level of being a muʾmin. How the cleansing is done is a different matter altogether; but dhikrullāh is where it starts.