In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful, and praise be to Allah who is forgiving and generous, who guides us to what is good and also gives us ways to correct what we have done wrong. And peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah, who was deeply concerned about what happened to people and who told us to make things easy for people and not to make them difficult, and who told us to cheer people up, and not to put them off.
وَ سَارِعُوا إِلىَ مَغْفِرَةٍ مِن رَبِّكُم وَ جَنَّةٍ عَرضُهَا السَّمَاوَتِ وَ الأَرْض أُعِدَّتْ لِلْمُتَقِين. الَّذِيْنَ يُنْفِقُونَ فِي السَّرَآءِ وَالضَّرَآءِ وَالكَاظِمِيْنَ الغَيْظَ والعَافِيْنَ عَن النَّاسِ وَالله يُحِبُّ المُحْسِنِينَ. الذَّيِنَ إِذَا فَعَلُوا فَاحِشَةً أَو ظَلَمُوا أَنْفُسِهِم ذَكَرُوا الله فَاسْتَغْفَرُوا لِذُنوُبِهِم وَ مَن يَغْفر الذُنُوبَ إِلاَ الله وَ لَم يٍصِرُّوا عَلَى مَا فَعَلُوا وَ هُم يَعْلَمُونَ.
And rush to forgiveness from your Lord, and a Garden whose extent is that of the heavens and the earth, prepared for the Mutaqeen (those who take care to protect themselves). (3:133)
Those who spend in secret and openly, and who repress their anger and overlook people’s faults and Allah loves those who act beautifully. (3:134)
Those who if they do some obscenity, or wrong themselves, remember Allah and seek forgiveness for themselves – and who forgives sins except for Allah, and who do not persist doing the same thing while they know it is wrong. (3:135)
I chose these ayaat today because they define what is a mutaqi (mutaqeen is the plural and taqwa is the noun). Ayat is one verse of Qur’an (it also means sign or wonder); ayaat with two ‘a’s is the plural, and means verses.
This is a very important concept in the Qur’an used over 60 times, and it was used at the end of the ayaat that we looked at yesterday. The Qur’an, right at the beginning of the second surah, defines itself as “guidance for the mutaqeen” So who are they? The mutaqeen have taqwa. This is sometimes translated as fear of God, and sometimes as piety, but the best definition of it can be found in the hadith below:
Abu Salih reported: A man said to Abu Huraira, may Allah be pleased with him, “What is God-fearing mindfulness? (taqwa)” Abu Huraira said, “Have you ever taken a thorny path?” The man said yes. Abu Huraira said, “What did you do?” The man said, “If I saw thorns, I would avoid them, pass over them, or stop short of them.” Abu Huraira said, “That is God-fearing mindfulness.”
Source: al-Zuhd al-Kabīr 963
عَنْ أَبِي صَالِحٍ قَالَ قَالَ رَجُلٌ لِأَبِي هُرَيْرَةَ رضي الله عنه مَا التَّقْوَى قَالَ أَخَذْتَ طَرِيقًا ذَا شَوْكٍ قَالَ نَعَمْ قَالَ فَكَيْفَ صَنَعْتَ قَالَ إِذَا رَأَيْتَ الشَّوْكَ عَدَلْتُ عَنْهُ أَوْ جَاوَزْتُهُ أَوْ قَصُرْتُ عَنْهُ قَالَ ذَاكَ التَّقْوَى
This hadith is a type of analogy or extended metaphor where the path is the path to Allah, or the journey of life, and the thorns are those occurrences and incidents and happenings that cause us to do bad things.
I like the way this translator has called it God-fearing mindfulness. Muslims are told to remember Allah as much as possible, because remembrance of Allah helps keep us from doing bad things. Most of the time, people do bad things when they are not really aware of what they are doing, and the word for this in Arabic is غفلةghafla (heedlessness). Perhaps they are acting on impulse or reacting to somebody else without thinking. Allah wants us to increase our mindfulness of him. It is the only thing in the Qur’an that he tells us to do a lot in the 3:4:
يَاأَيُّها الذَّيِنَ ءَامَنُوا اذْكُرُوا الله ذِكْرًا كَثِيْرًا
O ye who believe! Remember Allah with much remembrance.
Allah also tells us in the Qur’an that it is the greatest thing we can do.
اتْلُ مَا أُوحِيَ إِلَيْكَ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَأَقِمِ الصَّلَاةَ إِنَّ الصَّلَاةَ تَنْهَى عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالْمُنْكَرِ وَلَذِكْرُ اللَّهِ أَكْبَرُ وَاللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ مَا تَصْنَعُونَ) العنكبوت/ 45
Recite what was revealed to you of the Qur’an and establish salaat, Indeed Salaat (ritual prayer) stops obscenity and what is detestable and the remembrance of Allah is greater, and Allah is aware of what you are doing.
Mindfulness is a popular therapy for anxiety, with origins in Buddhism, although it has been taken out of its exclusive religious context in the service of modern psychology. The idea is that a person who is overwhelmed by their feelings can ground themselves and bring themselves back out of their thoughts into the present moment by practices such as using their senses to notice what is around them. The Muslim idea of dhikr is definitely a form of mindfulness, but it invites you to call to awareness the Ultimate Reality that is behind the reality surrounding you. Qur’an, salaat, reflection, dua, are all ways of remembering Allah.
And this type of remembrance is the big concept that gave rise to the rituals of dhikr gatherings and using prayer beads, and reciting the names of Allah etc. In response to the complaint that such rituals are often done without presence of heart, the great scholar of Islam Al Ghazali writes in his IHya that the person hearing this criticism has three choices. The first is to join his heart with his dhikr, which is like someone who sees a chance of promotion at work and goes for it. The second is to give up dhikr, and this is like someone who leaves his job, thinking it is not good, but ends up taking a worse one, and the third person is like one who says that although his job is not perfect, it is the best he can do, and keeps doing it.
We can see that in the third verse, Allah praises those who if they do something wrong, remember Him, and then ask forgiveness.
Allah warns us in the Qur’an in the 59:19 not to forget him:
وَ لاَ تَكُوْنُوا كَالذَّيِنَ نَسُوا الله فَأَنْسَاهُم أَنْفُسَهُم أُلائِكِ هُم الفَاسِقُون
And do not be like those who forgot Allah so He made them forget themselves, those are they who do bad things.
The Qur’an tells us to have taqwa An Arab might say “Itaq-illah” Have fear of Allah, but the Qur’an also tells us to defend ourselves from hell fire as well. The second aayat makes clear that when we do bad things, we are really just harming ourseslves. Normally we think of doing something bad as harming others, and as a corollary, we tend too think that we benefit in some way from sin, but the Qur’an challenge us to think about it the other way round, because whenever it mentions an object attached to the verb for those who wrong/harm/oppress (zhalamu), the object is always anfusahum – themselves, or their very souls. The word nafs means self and the soul. Psychology, in Arabic is called ‘ilm un-nafs’ the science of the self/soul. Anfus is the plural of nafs. When we do bad things, when we wrong anything in creation, we are really hurting ourselves. This hadith about taqwa meaning protecting oneself from harm is a graphic illustration of this.
So what should we do when we harm ourselves, after remembering Allah? Ask forgiveness. This is the same as unhooking ourselves from the thorns, mending the rips in our clothes, washing our scratches, pulling out the thorns, and dabbing ourselves with savlon or germolene.
When the Qur’an tells us to spend in good times and in bad times, then this counterbalances the human tendency to stop spending when income shrinks. The Qur’an praises those who spend in bad times too. The Prophet’s wife, Ayesha, once gave away one grape in charity, and the women who were with her questioned the value of what she did. She said, “but think how many atoms there are in that grape!” She may have been thinking about the Qur’anic ayat which says,
Surely Allah does not do injustice to the weight of an atom, and if it is a good deed He multiplies it and gives from Himself a great reward. (surah 4:40)
The prophet said, defend yourself against the hell fire even with half a date. No matter how small a thing you can give, it is still worth giving it.
This talk of food and giving reminds me of the beautiful story of the mosque in Turkey with a very unusual name: “As if I had eaten it.” Its founder, used to walk about the markets and if he saw something he fancied like sweets or fruits, he would take the price he would have paid for it, but instead of buying the treat, he would put the money to one side, and say, “it is as if I have eaten it.” After twenty years, he had accumulated a sizeable sum, and he used it to build this mosque.
https://ilmfeed.com/the-tale-of-the-as-if-i-have-eaten-mosque/
When Allah praises in the second ayat, those who repress their anger, He is referring to those people who feel really strong anger but squash it down and refuse to let it out. I really find this advice helpful because I have quite a hot temper and I used to read different advice when I was younger, and I noticed that some people think you should let it all out eg by hitting a cushion and that suppressing emotions is harmful, but this advice for Muslims from Allah is that suppressing anger is not harmful. Personally, whenever I have let emotions out, I have always just ended up with a headache, a feeling of exhaustion and big regrets, plus some apologising to do. It is not anger itself that is wrong (anger is a force for self-preservation and an emotion that it is hard to be free of, and sometimes it can be a good thing), but what is wrong is acting when angry.
The Arabs, even before Islam, loved the virtue of Hilm, which is hard to translate into English as we do not have an exact equivalent, (the closest word is forbearance). Someone with Hilm is incredibly patient and never expresses anger. Hilm gives the name Halim and Halima, and it is also related to the ideas of maturity of thinking and also being idealistic (a dreamer), so it is a big word.
The early Muslims used to try to never make a decision on anything when they were angry. The most famous example of this is the story of Ali, may Allah be pleased with him, who was the Prophet’s son-in-law and the fourth Caliph (ruler after the Prophet). One time he was in the middle of a battle and he was about to kill his enemy when that man spat in his face. So Ali drew his sword back and let the man go. So the man was astonished. He asked him why he had let him go, and Ali said that before he had spat at him, he was going to kill him in the way of Allah, so that the Message of the Qur’an could be spread and not wiped out by the opposition of the disbelievers, but after that guy had spat at him, Ali had become angry, and he did not want to kill him for any personal reason but in the way of Allah. So that was why he had not killed him. At this, the other guy accepted Islam on the spot. It is said that Muslim judges would apply this when making a ruling. If they became angry, they would wait until their anger had gone before giving a verdict.
