The Book of Assistance with Imam Khalid Latif | Session 3

The Book of Assistance — Session 3: Intention (Niyyah)

For those who are joining in, we'll wait just a minute or two to let people trickle in, inshallah.

I hope everyone's doing well, having a good week, inshallah. Ramadan is going well. Today we're going to be looking at the next chapter which is on niyyah.

We finished with the chapter on certitude, yaqeen, and we'll move into the second chapter and then we'll see. The third chapter is on muraqabah that we're hoping to get through as well. Okay, so let's get started, inshallah.

بِسْمِ اللهِ وَالْحَمْدُ لِلهِ وَالصَّلَاةُ وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَى رَسُولِ اللهِ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ وَمَنْ وَالَاهُ

All praise is due to Allah. We thank Him, we praise Him, we glorify Him. We beseech Him to send His choicest salutations upon His most beloved ﷺ and upon all those who choose to tread in his path until the last day.

Reviewing the Framework

For those who are joining us for the first time or perhaps might not remember, just as a refresher — we're looking at a text called The Book of Assistance. It's written by a sheikh named Imam al-Haddad, one of the great spiritual masters of our religion.

We're looking at a book on Islamic spirituality, but in our tradition we do not separate religion from spirituality the way that might happen more contemporarily within society today. That spirituality is seen as something that is separate from organized religion or structured religion. In Islam, religion needs spirituality. You cannot have ritual purely at an external level without internalized elements to it.

The relationship between the inward and the outward is most critical. And where spirituality enables us, as it increases, to be a mechanism through which we process everything that the world around us surrounds us with. And our consumption of it enables us to then draw a sense of meaning and a sense of purpose, inshallah, so that we have growth. We deepen in our perspective. We recognize more in terms of how we understand things. And within that, we deepen in our relationship with ourselves and in turn our relationship with Allah.

Last week we were looking at the chapter that was on certitude, yaqeen. What we had done was say that yaqeen — certitude — became the destination. So if this line is the starting point and we have at the end of it a destination, this destination is what we call yaqeen or certitude, certainty.

What Imam al-Haddad is doing for us here is creating an opportunity for us to think about the spiritual path in a very individualized way. That you're not in a sphere where the first chapter is about where you start off from, but the first chapter is about where it is that you're heading. Because it assumes that all of us are not starting in the same place. All of us are starting in different places. And so we need to be in a sphere of understanding that we will have unique trajectories.

Our life experiences will be different. We're not going to all look the same in how we move towards spiritual increase. And where he says the goal is yaqeen — may Allah make us from the people of certitude — we now have an idea of where we're going in this roadmap. And the map in and of itself is going to look different from person to person. Because of our unique life experiences, our strengths or non-strengths, where we grow up, how we grow up, who we grow up around — there's not uniformity in any way in the sense of what some of these things might be manifest as. But conceptually, the ideas are still things that we want to start to bear a deep interaction with.

Chapter Two: Intention (Niyyah)

What we have now in this next chapter is not again a step necessarily that's a practical step. But Imam al-Haddad is showing to us where we move forward from certitude. So chapter number two brings us to a place where many of us have likely had conversations on this concept — what we call intention, niyyah.

And what intention, what niyyah, does for us is that where you are now — whether you find yourself in a place where your starting point is here and you are trying to get to yaqeen, your starting point is here and you are trying to get to your goal — you still haven't necessarily taken a step per se. But what Imam al-Haddad is saying is: regardless of what your step is, you want to now move into this direction of this second component, what we call niyyah, intention, so that you can think more deeply about the journey that's ahead of you.

The idea being that your roadmap still hasn't been about direct movement yet externally, because what your niyyah, what your intention does, is that before you do what you are intending to do, you are affirming for yourself why you're about to do what you are going to do. You know what the destination is and you are aligning for yourself a pathway to get to that destination. May Allah make us people of Jannah and grant us an abode in our ultimate destination, in the highest level of His paradise, Jannat al-Firdaws.

And so what intention does is that it creates for you now an opportunity to know and reflect about what the step is you're about to take before you take it. It has a deliberate mode of action to it. In and of itself you can define it as a step, but it's not the physical step that you're taking. You're not moving externally — it's an inward movement.

Imam al-Haddad's Words on Intention

And so if we look at the chapter and how he starts, Imam al-Haddad says:

"You must, oh my brother, improve the soundness and sincerity of your intentions, examine them, reflect well before embarking on your actions. For intentions are the basis of deeds. According to them, your deeds will either be good or ugly, sound or unsound."

And then he cites the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ:

"Deeds are only according to intentions, and every man has only what he intended."
(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 1; Sahih Muslim, Book 33, Hadith 4692)

Imam al-Haddad here is telling us that intentions are the whole point of everything. And when he's telling us to improve upon them — the soundness, the sincerity — to examine them, reflect well before you move forward on your actions, this is what it is. To think about where it is that you are going before you actually seek to go there. That you have a presence of knowing why you're going to do what it is that you're going to do before you do it.

You can't gain in spiritual increase — to find meaning, purpose, understanding, comprehension, depth, beauty, excellence, ihsan — if what you're doing is being done mechanically or unconsciously.

Acts That Require Consciousness vs. Acts of Mercy

We want to understand because there are distinct elements categorically to the types of actions that we undertake. There are certain actions that we undertake that we are blessed — it's a mercy from Allah — that we do not have to have, subhanAllah, a presence every single time we are exerting an act of that kind in order to actually undertake the act. Can you imagine if you had to be fully present and make a conscious intention every time you blinked an eye? I'm blinking now, I'm blinking now, I'm blinking now. Or every time you took a breath — now I'm going to breathe, now I'm going to breathe, now I'm going to breathe.

May Allah make it easy for people who, subhanAllah, are not able to breathe on their own, who need to have apparatus and ventilators to help them. There are many people in the world who are dealing with that at this moment because of COVID-19. May Allah grant them a complete healing and shifa.

There are some people who literally don't have the muscles in their eyes, or they don't even have eyelashes that serve the purpose of protecting their eyes, or without the blink there's not a capacity to clean the eye organically. There are certain things that it's a rahmah that we do not have to think about them every single time that we engage in them before the act actually happens.

Here now, there's a distinction being made that the intentions in and of themselves are then not necessarily attached to every single act that one will carry out in the course of their daily routines. It's the acts that are being done with consciousness. And with that consciousness, you want to have an attachment of a presence to what it is that you're doing.

This means that we need to wrestle with why we do what we do and to reflect deeply upon why we do what we do. Because this fundamentally is going to dictate whether we do the things that we actually do or not. Will we move forward on them?

The Prophetic Model: Du'a Before Every Action

You see in the prophetic tradition that the Prophet ﷺ pretty much has a du'a before everything. Before the Prophet eats, there's a du'a. Before the Prophet sleeps, there's a du'a. When he wakes up, there's a du'a. He goes into the bathroom, there's a du'a. He comes out of the bathroom, there's a du'a. He drinks water, there's a du'a. He drinks zamzam water, there's a du'a. There's du'a when you're setting forth on a travel, there's du'a when you return back from travel, there's du'a when you break your fast, there's du'a when you start your fast, there's du'a at the conclusion of the Adhan. For pretty much most actions that you can think of, there are du'as that the Prophet ﷺ is making prior to the action being undertaken.

There's benefit and blessing in learning those du'as. But principally what we draw from this is that the Prophet ﷺ in making those du'as also knows why he's about to do what he's going to do before he does it. That there's a consciousness of what's coming ahead.

"Oh Allah, bless for us what You have given to us and provided for us in our rizq, and protect us from the punishment of the Fire." This is a du'a before we enter into eating our food. The Prophet is aware before he starts to eat. He knows what it is that is about to happen and he's attaching Allah to it. He's rendering consciousness to it, awareness. This creates a certain blessing, a certain mindfulness, a presence. He's more acutely aware.

That also becomes preventative then from actions that we know we are not doing for the right reason. Because could you in the name of Allah hit a child? Could you in the name of Allah curse at somebody or be racist, God forbid? Could you in the name of Allah gossip, backbite, lie, cheat? May Allah protect us from these things. But the affirmed du'a of the Prophet ﷺ sets for him, prior to doing any of these acts, an awareness and a mindfulness of: this is why I'm going to do what it is that I'm about to do. Should I be doing it or should I not be doing it? Is it something that should come from me or is it something that I should leave behind?

And so when we are extrapolating purpose, we are extrapolating meaning from this thing of intention — niyyah — we want to put for ourselves an idea that this is essentially about why we do what we do before we do it. What is the purpose of it?

Why Do We Do What We Do?

When Imam al-Haddad is saying to us that you want to improve the soundness and sincerity of your intentions, examine them, reflect well before embarking on your actions — for intentions are the basis of deeds — this is one of the variables through which we can assess what it is that our intention might be. That we sit down and we start to reflect within the framework of what he's saying here on: well, why am I doing it in any way, shape, or form to begin with? What is my purpose? And the goal is to do it in advance, to try to do it before the action is undertaken. But if you are not able to do it prior to, then you do it at least after the fact. Then why was I doing what I was doing? What was my intention? What was the purpose?

Doing Things Because Others Do Them

One of the things that becomes quite common in the basis of us doing what we're doing is we see other people doing the same thing. A lot of people will go to eat at a restaurant. There's two restaurants, they do the same exact thing, they serve the same food. And this one has people eating at it, this one does not. Even though most people could eat faster at the one that's emptier, they'll still opt to go to the one where more people are — because they're basing their decision off of what other people are doing.

Abu Lahab, when he is in front of the Prophet ﷺ — the Prophet ﷺ has gathered everybody towards him in the middle of the day to invite them to Islam as a religion. He says: "Would you believe me if I told you behind this cliff there is an army waiting to attack you?" And they all say yes, we would believe you. They know him as just being the trustworthy one. They know him as being al-Ameen. They know him as being the one who does not dishonor promises, oaths, these kinds of things. And so when they say yes, we would believe you, he says then know this — I have been sent as a messenger of God. If you were to follow me in what it is that I warn you of, you will have good in this world and in the next. And if not, then that will be for Allah to then judge you accordingly.

And the people — they're thinking, they're reflecting, they're in a space of consciousness. And then Abu Lahab says these words: تَبًّا لَكَ، أَلِهَذَا جَمَعْتَنَا؟ — "May you be perished, this is why you've gathered us?" — meaning you took us away from the market, the place of our business, for this. And then he walks away, and then everybody walks away because he walks away. It's called a herd mentality. And a lot of us simply do what we do because others do it also.

This is not a good or a bad, but as you're trying to break down why you do what you do, you want to think about it. Because our teachers tell us: Islam is not a birthright. You can't be born into Islam. You have to accept Islam and embrace Islam and believe in Islam for yourself. And so where we do things sometimes without knowing why we do what we do — it just gets passed on to us generationally.

The Prophet Ibrahim, peace be upon him, has this conversation with his people — why do you worship the things that you're worshiping? And pretty much they say: because that's what people did before us, we're following in their actions, we're doing what they do.

I used to have a doctoral student in psychology who worked for me, and she told me of an interesting situation where she learned about cooking a leg of lamb from her mother. One of the things she noticed was that her mother would cut off a good piece of the lamb leg — and it didn't make sense to her why, in the way that they cooked it, that's how they cooked it. And so one day the doctoral student asked her mother: why do you do this when you cook this? And the mother said: I don't know, that's just how your grandmother used to do it. And then she called her grandmother, and her grandmother said that when we first came to this country, we didn't have that much money. And the stove and oven that we bought was so small that we couldn't fit the entire lamb leg into it when we were cooking it. So we had to cut off part of it so that we could cook as much of it as we could.

Now when the mother was cooking, she had a much bigger stove and oven, but she still cut off what she learned to. And the granddaughter — the doctoral student, doing her PhD in psychology, that intellectually capable — she too had an oven that could fit not just the entirety of a lamb leg but the whole leg plus another leg, and she was still cutting it off. And the reason why she was doing it was because that's how she saw other people do it.

You can pray the way someone else prays, and fast the way someone else fasts. You can dress the way someone else dresses. But you can't intend something based off of somebody else's intention. You can't believe something based off of somebody else's belief. Intention comes from within. You have to affirm for yourself why you are doing what you are doing. You have to say: this is what's coming from me. And even where your tongue might tell you one thing, you dig deep into your heart. You dig deep within yourself, and you start to reflect on: where is it coming from? Why do I do the things that I do in the manner in which I do them?

Ours is not a deen that tells us to be separate from the congregation and the community, but it does tell us that we have individualized components to what it is that we do. And it's not going to be necessarily enough of a reason that you did something because somebody else was doing the same thing. Because if they're leading you towards something that's wrong, God forbid, they are accountable for it — but you're still accountable for what you're accountable for at the end of the day. Allah gave you consciousness. He gave you intellect. He gave you aqal. He gave you the ability to be present. You've got to stop running around and sometimes just breathe and relax.

The Role of Habit

We also become creatures of habit. Habit is not a good or a bad — it's just a thing. And within the framework of habit, we consciously at times don't always ask this question of why we do what we do to refine and understand and then deepen in our understanding. Habits are not things that are consciously performed, but they are things that can be consciously deconstructed or constructed. You can build positive social habits, and your social habit formation can in and of itself be something that is rooted with presence.

So beyond just doing what everybody else does, you start to think about why you do the things that you do. And so let's talk a little bit about habits for a moment because they also play a role in this thing of niyyah. There are fundamental parts to a habit. A habit has three components to it: you have what's called the trigger or the cause, you have then the act itself, and then at the end of it you have the craving or the reward.

Now what most people try to do is they try to be in a sphere where they focus purely on the act. Don't do a haram. Don't drink. Don't smoke. Don't curse. Don't do all of these things — which you should not do, may Allah protect us from it. But what they don't see is in these other components where there's a necessity to think about things. Because if the act is being unconsciously done, to just simply say "I'm going to turn it off and I'm not going to do it" can be an approach. But to render more concretely an ability to think about how you stop it completely, you want to think about — well, what is the act actually seeking to fulfill? And what is it that is causing the act to actually come into existence in the first place?

So: why do I go to those websites that I'm not supposed to? Why do I watch those things I should not watch? Why do I get so angry? Why do I eat these things that I know I should not be eating? Why do I get lazy or procrastinate? Why is my charity, my prayer, not something more regular? It breaks down into this fundamental understanding of why you do what you do.

And there's complexity to it. Say I realized that I needed to lose weight for health reasons. And so I take a look at my eating habits for the course of the day. And I find out that in the middle of the day, I am eating cookies every day of the week in the middle of the afternoon when I'm at work. Now the most obvious thing your mind will take you to is that you're eating the cookies because of the cookies. But that might not be why. And that's where the reflection has to come in — where you start to think about what is the act yielding for you, and what is the cause of it.

So for example: I see in the course of the day, two o'clock, three o'clock, I'm eating these highly sugared processed things. And the manner in which I'm doing it is I get up from my office, I take a walk to a co-worker's office, and I eat the cookies in her office. So the cookies might be a product of me just needing a break from my desk. I get up from the desk and I go for a walk. Maybe that's just it. If it's about food, and I start to feel hungry, then I replace the cookies with some carrots or apples or something more healthy. I might be in a sphere where it has nothing to do with food or getting up from my desk — I might just enjoy talking to my co-worker, who I want to have a conversation with — which is an entirely different experience. But all of them are not the same thing. They all have different causes. And they all have different cravings that are being satisfied at the end.

And where you can then think out how you manipulate those three components, it doesn't have to be the simple action that you know you should not be doing to then gain what comes at the end. But you can change the action because your focus is now not on the act, but on what it is that you're trying to crave and satisfy at the end of it — or you start to think about what is the cause of it, what is the trigger of it.

We become habitual in our behavior. We bite our nails, we scratch our faces, we doze off in the midst of things — so many things can be habits. You want to be present in the formation of good habits. And you want to be present in the deconstruction of bad habits. And you start to think about how your consciousness is impacted by all of them.

And so in your intention, and knowing why you do what you do, you start to look at some of these phases: Am I doing things just because everybody else does it that way? Am I in a space where most of what I do is just routine, and it's habitual?

The creation of these things can be things that we bear presence in. So you write down — what are some of the things I want to build as a routine for me? I want to start reading Quran more every day. Then I start to think about the distinct elements, the distinct times. When do I have the opportunity to build a consistent relationship with it?

So much of why we do what we do is a product of the time constraints around us, the things that are taking place, that it doesn't even allow for us to bear consciousness. We get swayed here and there and here and there. This is why desire is called hawa, because it has the same terminology as the wind — if you speak Urdu or Hindi, hawa, it's the wind. You can just sway with it. It pulls you in all directions. And your thoughts are not you thinking presently, but every time somebody tells you to think about something, you react emotionally. The media tells you of another conflict, another war, another shooting, another this, another that — in the moment it's the most important thing that draws all your attention. But then two days later, you're thinking about something else. That's not necessarily you engaging in a conscious mode of reaction. It's your emotions that are responding and reacting. But it's taking away from the depth of your presence.

Unpacking the Hadith on Intentions

As you get into where Imam al-Haddad is telling us to move, where he's saying that you want to be in a space where you are examining and reflecting well — for intentions are the basis of deeds — let's look a little bit more at the hadith that is being discussed here, that many of us know.

"Verily, deeds are only by their intentions, and every man shall have only what he intended."
(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 1; Sahih Muslim, Book 33, Hadith 4692)

The word innamal is denoting for us both emphasis and exclusivity. That indeed actions are by their intentions — it's showing to us an overt emphasis. Verily, indeed, whatever kind of language you want to utilize — "know this." And the exclusivity of it is such that it's telling us that all actions are but by their intentions. That relationship is there. The general principle is such that these actions are but by their intentions.

The Word A'mal

We can look then at the word a'mal. The word a'mal is the plural of the word amal, which means acts. But it's now a distinct kind of act. Because an amal is not the same as a fi'l. The distinction in the amal is that it's an act that's done with consciousness. You're present in it. You're not doing it mindlessly. You're doing it mindfully. That's why it's being paired with intention in this hadith. Because for you to have intention in an act, you need to be present in the act. You have to have one in order to have the other.

So the a'mal that the hadith is referring to, in and of itself already denotes that we're looking at actions that we have consciousness in. And there's different opinions on what people will say that these acts can embody. But within the framework of our conversation on intention today, you want to think about it as a broad categorization. Because those actions are not just things that happen from your limbs and your body, but your speech, what you do that you are obligated to do, prohibitions, recommendations — you have this blanket kind of understanding that every action that stems from you is one that you want to, as purposefully as you can, root in relationship to its intention.

The Ba in Binniyyat

The ba that comes in front of niyyat has a few different purposes to it. First, there is the ba of sababiyya — what we call causation. That this ba is essentially saying that actions are because of their intentions, they're caused by their intentions. Second, you have a ba of musahaba — accompaniment, like the word sahaba — that this action is accompanied by its intention. And then the last ba we can understand it to be is a ba of isti'ana — used in the frame like the way that we say:

"You alone do we worship and Your help do we seek." So that ba — the ba of isti'ana — is a ba of help, a ba of being an aid. Actions are done with the help of intentions. And there's not necessarily any one of these that becomes more or less in the frame of it — you can have causality, you can have accompaniment, but there's a relationship nonetheless.

Principles of Intention

The word niyyah, intention, is the crux, the critical aspect of it. It's about what you are intending, what it is that's your objective, what it is that's your goal. Intentions in and of themselves are things that luminaries in our religious history and tradition have said — the place of intention is not on one's tongue, but it's in your heart. You have to be able to manifest it consciously in this place within you. The Prophet ﷺ says it's the thing that governs everything that we do.

Imam al-Haddad continues:

"You must therefore utter no word, do no action, and decide no matter without the intention of drawing near thereby to Allah and seeking the reward He has assigned through His beneficence and grace to the intended act. And know that drawing nearer to Him can only be done through the obligatory and supererogatory devotions that He has indicated through His Messenger ﷺ. A sincere intention may change the merely licit into the devotional, for means are judged according to their ends."

For example, one may eat to get the strength to perform devotion. But the idea is that the presence of an intention that has ikhlas to it can change something into it being not just about physical gain, but can now turn it into what becomes ibadah. That eating food in and of itself is not bad — it's good. But you can eat food saying: I'm eating food to give me strength so that I can pray more. The distinction is that it moves beyond being just a physical experience and it now brings in elements of the metaphysical.

And that will require at times thinking deeply about why you do some of the things that you do in the ways that you do them. If you're doing them well, then you continue to do it for that reason. And if you're not doing it well, then you start to think about why you'd want to do it differently. And if you don't know why you're doing it, you start to attach meaning to it that renders more virtue.

And you don't want to be paranoid with this or to be unnecessarily meticulous, because certain things — again — you're not going to bring intention to. You're not going to bring intention to the blinking of your eyes and things that you do unconsciously as a mercy from God.

Behavior Must Align With Intention

"It is a condition of the sincere intention that behavior does not belie it. For instance, a man who seeks knowledge claiming that his intention is to practice and teach it will be proved insincere if, when he becomes able to, he does not do so. Or a man who pursues the world and claims that he is doing so only that he may be independent of other people and be able to give charity to the needy and to help his relatives will be proved ineffectual in his intention should he not do so when he is able."

And so this attaches itself to another hadith — indeed, actions are by their endings. That you get to a space where if you say that I am intending to pursue law school to then change the world and be a civil rights hero, but you then attain a law degree and work as a corporate lawyer — you're allowed to change your perspectives on things, but you know that the intention was not fulfilled because you didn't do what it was that you said you were going to do with it. It's easy to make claims. But to carry forth on a righteous niyyah necessitates consistency, discipline, commitment, and a willingness to engage in a broader sense of self-care that allows for you to not get exhausted or burnt out or tired. But you yourself are an evidence — in your reflection — on whether you are actually doing things for the reasons that you say you are doing them or not.

Intentions Do Not Excuse Sins

"Intentions do not affect sins, just as purification does not affect that which is by its very nature impure. A man who goes along with another who is slandering a Muslim, then pretends that he only wanted to humor him, is himself a slanderer. Anyone who refrains from enjoining the good and forbidding the evil and pretends that he only did so to protect himself against the culprit is his partner in evildoing. A malicious intention attached to a good deed spoils it and renders it malicious. Likewise, when someone performs good deeds for the sake of wealth and prestige…"

Meaning: it doesn't matter what your intention is — if you're doing something wrong, you're doing it wrong. The action goes hand in hand with the intention. The action and the intention both have to be sound. And there's complexity to this at the end of the day.

The examples that the Sheikh uses — the person who slanders, the person who harms — you might not be doing it for what they're doing, but because they were doing it and you were going along with it, you're just as bad as they are. And you could say: well, I wasn't doing it for the same reason. It doesn't matter. You're still doing it.

Multiple Intentions in a Single Act

"Know that many intentions can attach to a single act and that each of them will attract its full reward. An example of this in devotional activities is when someone reads the Qur'an intending to commune with Allah — which thing he will indeed do — but also to extract from it different kinds of knowledge, for the Qur'an is the very mine of knowledge, and to profit those who listen or just happen to hear, or any other good intention. And an example in licit matters is to eat with the intention of obeying the command of your Lord in His saying: 'Oh you who believe, eat of the good things which We have provided you and give thanks to God.' Intend by doing so to acquire strength for devotion and to put yourself in a situation where you must thank your Lord, for He says: 'Eat of your Lord's provision and thank Him.' You can apply these two examples in an analogous fashion to all other devotional and licit activities, and always do your best to increase your good intentions."

What he is referring to here is a principle: in a single act you can have multiple intentions. And based off of the hadith — إِنَّمَا الْأَعْمَالُ بِالنِّيَّاتِ — actions are by their intentions — you don't get for an act that has multiple intentions just one reward from one act. But if you have five intentions in the doing of one good deed, then you get a reward for every intention that you have. So it's five intentions rewarded.

The Book of Intentions

There's a book called The Book of Intentions, written by al-Habib Muhammad ibn Alawi. When you go through it, it essentially is breaking down numerous different things that one can do as an act that you can then apply multiple intentions to. The intentions for going to the masjid, the intentions for sitting in the masjid and remaining in it, the intentions for visiting your brothers and sisters, the intentions for invoking salah and salam upon the Prophet ﷺ, the intentions for riding in a vehicle, the intentions for shaking hands, entering a library, drinking, traveling, buying a vehicle, visiting the sick — there are so many different things.

To give you an example, the Sheikh says that among the fundamentals and principles that one must take into account and act upon is the establishing of all actions upon the mastering of intentions — to have sincerity with your innermost thoughts and to enter into acts of obedience purified from all blemishes that seek to corrupt such acts. The source of this is the saying of the Prophet ﷺ:

"Verily, actions are only according to intentions and every man shall have according to what he has intended."
(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 1; Sahih Muslim, Book 33, Hadith 4692)

So the actions of the hearts are the intentions, and from them issue all outward acts. The foundations are the actions of the hearts and the branches are the acts of the limbs. If the foundations are firmly established then the branches will be firm, and if the foundations — which are the intentions — are neglected, the outward acts will waver. This applies to all religious and worldly actions. If you want success and fulfillment in your affairs then perfect your objectives whether small or great: firstly by reflecting deeply upon them, and secondly by apportioning to each one what it deserves of your aspiration. After that, surrender them to Allah and seek refuge in Him for their completion and success. By doing so, actions are purified and all desires are made sound.

Intentions for Going to the Masjid

When we get, for example, to the chapter on the intentions for going to the masjid, the Sheikh says: "Intend in the first intention to visit the Majestic One in His house" — because the masjid is the house of Allah. In your second intention, "intend by these actions to make a pact with your Lord so as to be among those who are noble and granted intercession." And he outlines eight intentions just for going to the masjid.

And then when sitting in the masjid, the Sheikh says:

The first intention: to perform the prayer in congregation with muhafaza. The second: to follow the Prophet ﷺ, as he has said Allah has prescribed to your prophet ways of guidance and these prayers are part of them. The third: to increase the gatherings of Muslims and to partake in the great virtue of being counted among them. The fourth: to be steadfast and to wait for successive prayers. The fifth: to intend to protect your hearing, sight, tongue, and limbs from what Allah has forbidden. The sixth: to engage in spiritual retreat — i'tikaf. The seventh: to intend to listen to sacred knowledge. The eighth: to intend to meet a brother or sister for the sake of Allah. The ninth: to intend to anticipate the mercy that descends from Allah and to be included amongst those who are enveloped by it — as the Prophet ﷺ says:

"No company gathers for the remembrance of Allah but they are covered in mercy and surrounded by angels."
(Sahih Muslim, Book 48, Hadith 2700)

The tenth: to intend to leave disobedience out of your haya of Allah. The eleventh: to escape having the punishment of Allah descend upon you. The twelfth: to meet your brothers in Allah, to visit them for His sake and gaze upon them while in His house.

That's just in sitting in the masjid — twelve different intentions that you can actualize and articulate. And the principle is that for every intention you gain ajr. You gain a reward from them. You become more present in your reflection so it's not stale. Why am I doing what I'm doing? What are the reasons as to why I should do this? What are the different things that I can gain from it so I'm more present?

It's not a deen that's about the quantifying of things, but the qualifying of things. Not how much you do in comparison to how you do what it is that you do — and you bear presence in this. And this is what Imam al-Haddad is saying in the second chapter: you know your destination, yaqeen — certitude, that's what you want. Chapter two is on niyyah, intention, so that before you start journeying in the physical sense you are inwardly saying: why am I about to do what it is that I am going to do? Why am I moving in this direction? Is this helping me to get to my objective, my intention? And what are the different things that I can bring along with it in terms of gain, in terms of what it is that I'm trying to acquire?

The Two Meanings of Intention

The word intention can have two meanings. The first is to aim — what made you decide, do, or say something. Taken in this sense, the intention is usually better than the act when the act is good, and worse when the act is evil. The Prophet ﷺ has said:

"The intention of a believer is better than his action."
(al-Tabarani, al-Mu'jam al-Kabir; al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman)

Notice how he specifically mentioned the believer. The second meaning is your decision and determination to act. Taken in this sense it is not better than the act. A man when he decides to do something can only be in one of three situations:

One — he decides and acts. Two — he decides but fails to act while able to. Three — he determines upon something which he is for the time being unable to do and says, "were I able, I would do such and such a thing."

The way to evaluate these situations can be clearly found in that which Ibn Abbas has transmitted, that the Messenger of God ﷺ said:

"Allah has written good and evil deeds then rendered them clear. Anyone who intends a good deed but does not perform it, Allah records it as one full good deed. Should he intend and then perform it, Allah records it as ten good deeds up to 700-fold and to yet more multiplications. If he intends an evil deed and does not do it, Allah records it as one full good deed. If he intends it and then does it, Allah records it as one evil deed."
(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 6491; Sahih Muslim, Book 1, Hadith 233)

He receives the same as the one who acts, whether this be for or against him. The evidence for this is the Prophet's ﷺ saying:

"People are of four kinds. A man to whom God has given knowledge and wealth and who uses his knowledge to manage his wealth. Another who says: 'Were God to give me just as He has given so-and-so, I would act like him.' Their rewards are equal. And a man to whom God has given wealth but no knowledge, who mishandles his wealth through ignorance, while another says: 'Were God to give me as He has given so-and-so, I would act like him.' Their burdens of sin are equal."
(Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2325; Ibn Majah, Hadith 4228)

Closing Reflections

So what we want to take from this, especially in these days and nights of Ramadan, is that you want to be more present in your actions. It doesn't take a lot to be Muslim. There are literally instances where the Prophet ﷺ speaks to his companions — he tells Mu'adh ibn Jabal what to do and gives him a whole bunch of things. The very next hadith in the book has a Bedouin come to the Prophet ﷺ and say: tell me what this religion is about. The Prophet ﷺ tells him the five pillars. He says: I'm not doing anything other than this, and then he walks away. And the Prophet ﷺ says to the companions who are standing around: if he does it, then he's a person of Jannah.

You want to dig deep on the inner components of what you do and to reflect upon it. The key component to this is going to be what we call vulnerability. Vulnerability is different from honesty — because you're not lying to yourself. It's hard to make yourself vulnerable though, especially in religious spaces, because a lot of people are judgmental. They're questioning your intention to the extent that you don't even want to question your intention. Everybody is telling you why you do what you do and doesn't leave room for you to understand. Forgive them. Let them go. Dig deep and spend time with your heart to understand: you don't want to be the one that judges somebody else, and you want to do muhasabah of yourself — take yourself into account to assure that you are increasing and improving and gaining and growing in what it is that inwardly and outwardly you offer.

It can become easy to just be rote and regurgitate and be mechanical, and then you don't really feel presence. Most of you could probably run through your wudu super fast. To pray in a way that likens you to the rooster pecking at the ground, or the camel that the Prophet said to not mimic or embody, means that you've got to be fast enough and mechanical enough for it to go at that speed. And it can become easy to just have forms, but you want to have inner components to those forms — and that's where the gift of niyyah is such a blessing for us. Our ability to render consciousness, to be present, to ask why am I doing what it is that I'm doing.

If you find things that you should not be doing, then don't do them. And if you justify somehow the doing of wrong by manipulating it with an intention — don't do it, it's still wrong. Then you find new ways to get it done. Study your habits. Study what it is that you can improve upon. Be in a sphere where you are spending time learning more about you.

Final Reminders

We're into the last ten nights of Ramadan — may Allah make it a means of blessing and increase for us. You don't want to lose opportunity on these nights, but be patient with yourself and spend time in whatever moments you can to gain from the barakah of it. If you are in a place of isolation and solitude, then be in a place of isolation and solitude that renders meaning for you — and turn it into solitude, not loneliness.

You don't want to enter out of Ramadan in a state where you immediately start feeding into your nafs. I say this as your brother with deep love for you: if you have to pray your Eid prayers at home for the betterment of the entire common good, then don't push things that will somehow create difficulty just because you have a deep desire to celebrate the holiday in the way that you would always celebrate it. And I can't tell you what it's like in the rest of the country, but I can tell you that Shaytan is very good at what he does — may Allah protect us from his whispers. If he gets us to reorient where we're vulnerable and has us, from the minute Ramadan ends, start to think about ourselves through the nafs — "don't worry about other people, just go pray your prayer, you're not sick, open the doors to the masjid, go and have the public gatherings" — if the medical experts are saying not to do it, then you should not do it. You don't want to push at the expense of people's lives.

Don't leave Ramadan and immediately jump into a decision motivated by the nafs. Gather in your homes, dress up, be festive, talk to people over Zoom and Skype and everything else that you need to. But you don't want your own complacency to be the reason why somebody else then has to feel harm.

And within that — you can still celebrate the holiday in your home, and you engage your local scholars, your local community, to see what fiqh opinions they're adopting, what fatawa they're crafting given the pandemic that we're in, and then just respect them enough to follow their opinion and their perspective. You don't want to cause headaches for people or be a source of harm and detriment for people.

And so I want to just remind you all: we are benefiting from the Miftah Institute through this program. Where you can, please help them by becoming a sustainer. These people at the Miftah Institute — they're doing really amazing things in the form of increasing us in our religious knowledge, providing atmospheres that enable us to connect back to the Quran, the hadith, the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ, to remind us who our teacher is ﷺ, and to embody it at a time when the world really needs the prophetic example and mode of existence. I believe the sunnah is a direct antidote to the supremacy that plagues the world today — the sunnah calls us to real beauty and goodness, while supremacy calls us to an idolization of the self — modern-day shirk. May Allah protect us from it.

Make sure that this Ramadan does not end without you being a supporter of the good works that the Miftah Institute is doing, inshallah. With the intention — multiple intentions — you support your brother and his work, you also create an intention that your gift will help to create learning opportunities for others, that you are empowering a generation of leaders, scholars, activists, Muslims. Your intention is to help people get closer to God. In the simple gift, the donation, the contribution, the ajr is multiplied many fold for you, because you deepen in affirming all of the reasons why you are giving it, and then there will be immense barakah in it, and every dollar will be life-changing in its impact because it will carry real blessing within it.

May Allah guide each and every one of us and protect us. May He bless us with knowledge that benefits us. May He bless us with the tawfiq to understand and implement that knowledge into our daily lives. May He guide and bless us all. اللهُ تَعَالَى أَعْلَم.

Thank you all so much for spending this time with me. I hope it was beneficial, inshallah, and look forward to seeing you again next week.