الحمد لله رب العالمين والصلاة والسلام على سيد المرسلين وعلى آله وأصحابه أجمعين
Brothers and sisters! If we examine the trials and tribulations all over the world, we’ll find that they are rooted in human hearts. The desire to exploit, the urge to dominate, the excessive love of wealth, power and status, hypocrisy, jealousy, needless interfering in other people’s lives, indulging in gossip, rumor mongering, backbiting, and all such maladies are manifestations of diseases found nowhere but in the heart. Every criminal, every miser, every abuser, every boastful, arrogant and hateful person does what he or she does because of a diseased heart.
So if you want to change the world, do not begin by rectifying the outward. Instead change the condition of the inward. In the Qur’an, one of the descriptions of the Day of Judgment is:
يَوْمَ لَا يَنْفَعُ مَالٌ وَلَا بَنُونَ () إِلَّا مَنْ أَتَى اللَّهَ بِقَلْبٍ سَلِيمٍ
“The day when neither wealth nor children will benefit anyone; except for someone who comes to Allah with a sound heart.” (ash-Suh’ara, 26:88-89)
The sound heart is understood to be free of diseases of the heart. This heart is actually the spiritual heart and not the physical organ per se, although in Islamic tradition the spiritual heart is centered in the physical.
In nearly every culture in the world, people use metaphors that directly or indirectly allude to the heart. For example, we call certain types of people “hard-hearted,” usually because they show no mercy or kindness. And there are those who are “warm-hearted” because they are kind and merciful. When someone’s words or actions penetrate our souls and affect us profoundly, we say that this person “touched my heart” or “touched the core of my being.” The Arabic equivalent for the English word core is known as lubb, which also refers to the heart, as well as the intellect and the essence of something. When people fall in love, they speak of “stealing one’s heart.” “He stole my heart.” “She stole my heart.” There are many other metaphors involving the human heart, owing to its centrality in life.
It is crucially important to be aware of the spiritual diseases of the heart. This understanding is at the essence of Islamic teachings. The Qur’an defines three types of people: al-Mu’minun (the believers), al-Kafirun (the disbelievers), and al-Munafiqun (the hypocrites). The believers are described as people whose hearts are alive and full of light, while the disbelievers are in darkness.
أَوَمَنْ كَانَ مَيْتًا فَأَحْيَيْنَاهُ وَجَعَلْنَا لَهُ نُورًا يَمْشِي بِهِ فِي النَّاسِ كَمَنْ مَثَلُهُ فِي الظُّلُمَاتِ لَيْسَ بِخَارِجٍ مِنْهَا كَذَلِكَ زُيِّنَ لِلْكَافِرِينَ مَا كَانُوا يَعْمَلُونَ
“Can he who was dead, to whom We gave life, and a light whereby he could walk among people be like him who is in utter darkness from which he can never emerge? Thus the deeds of those who deny the truth have been made fair-seeming to them.” (al-An’am, 6:122)
According to the commentators of the Qur’an, “the one who was dead” refers to having a dead heart, which God revived with the light of guidance. Also the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) said, “The difference between the one who remembers God and one who does not is like the difference between the living and the dead.” In essence, the believer is someone whose heart is alive, while the disbeliever is someone whose heart is spiritually dead. The hypocrite, however, is somebody whose heart is diseased.
The heart, as we know, is centered slightly to the left of our bodies. The tawaf or circumambulating the Ka’bah is performed in counterclockwise fashion, with the left side of the worshipper facing the House—with the heart inclined towards it to remind us of God and His presence in the life of humanity.
The physical heart, which houses the spiritual heart, beats about 100,000 times a day, pumping two gallons of blood per minute and over 100 gallons per hour. If one were to attempt to carry 100 gallons of water whose density is lighter than blood from one place to another, it would be an exhaustive task. Yet the human heart does this every hour of every day for an entire lifetime without rest.
We now know that the heart starts beating before the brain is fully fashioned. The dominant theory states that the central nervous system is what controls the entire human being, with the brain at its center. Yet we also know that the nervous system does not initiate the beat of the heart, but that is actually self-initiated, or, as we would say, initiated by God.
According to traditional Islamic thought, it is the heart and not the brain that is viewed as the center of our being. The Qur’an, for example, speaks of disobedient people who have hearts “with which they do not understand” (al-A’raf, 7:179).
لَهُمْ قُلُوبٌ لَا يَفْقَهُونَ بِهَا
Also the Qur’an mentions people who mocked the Prophet (SAW) and were entirely insincere in listening to his message, so God “placed over their hearts a covering that they may not understand it” (al-An’am, 6:25).
وَجَعَلْنَا عَلَى قُلُوبِهِمْ أَكِنَّةً أَنْ يَفْقَهُوهُ
So we understand from this that the center of the intellect, the center of human consciousness and conscience, is actually the heart and not the brain. Our beloved prophet (SAW) spoke of the heart as a repository of knowledge and a vessel sensitive to the deeds of the body. He said, for example, that wrongdoing irritates the heart. So the heart actually perceives wrong action. What is sin? It has been clearly defined in a hadith that says,
الْبِرُّ حُسْنُ الْخُلُقِ وَالإِثْمُ مَا حَاكَ فِي صَدْرِكَ وَكَرِهْتَ أَنْ يَطَّلِعَ عَلَيْهِ النَّاسُ
“Piety is having good manners, and sin is that which causes discomfort within your soul and you do not like people to know it.”
It has been wisely said in the book ‘Crime and Punishment’ that the crime itself is the punishment for the criminal because human beings ultimately have to live with the painful consequences of their deeds.
Now, the word kufr means to cover something up. As it relates to our discussion, the problems we see in our society come down to covering up or suppressing the symptoms of its troubles. The agents used to do this include alcohol, drugs, sexual experimentation, power grabs, wealth, arrogance, pursuit of fame, and the like. These enable people to submerge themselves into a state of heedlessness concerning their essential nature. Heedlessness starves the heart, robs it of its spiritual nourishment. One enters into a state of unawareness—of God and of humanity’s ultimate destination: the infinite world of the hereafter.
When people are completely immersed in the material world, believing that the world is all that matters and all that exists and that they are not accountable for their actions, they affect a spiritual death of their hearts. However, before the heart dies, it shows symptoms of affliction. These afflictions are the spiritual diseases of the heart, to which we shall allude to insha’Allah in our future talks.
أَقُولُ قَوْلِي هَذَا وَأَسْتَغْفِرُ اللَّهَ لِي وَلَكُمْ وَلِسَائِرِ المُسْلِمينَ وَالمُسْلِمَاتْ فَاسْتَغْفِرُوهْ إِنَّهُ هُوَ الْغَفُورُ الرَّحِيمُ
