Sh.Ammar Alshukry

The Four Inroads to the Heart

Allah tells the believing men and the believing women to lower their gaze and to guard their private parts, and He says it is pure for them. The scholars have long defined that the gaze is the first inroad of Shaitan — it is the arrow of Shaitan, it is a poison dart from Shaitan through which a heart is diseased.

The First Inroad: The Gaze

The Prophet ﷺ once — in a hadith that is reported in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim — came and found the companions sitting outside. You can imagine they didn't have a lot of places for public spaces. They didn't have a lot of places to go. You were either in the masjid or you were in your home. But where do you meet if you don't want to be in your home and you don't want to be in the masjid? They used to sit on the street.

And the Prophet ﷺ said to them: "Beware of sitting in the street. Beware of being out and about in the public sphere." And so the companions said, "O Messenger of Allah, we have no place to gather other than the street. We have to sit here. We have nowhere else to be." And so the Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 2465; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 2121)

"If you must, then give the street its right." And they said, وَمَا حَقُّهُ يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ؟ — "What is the right of the street, O Messenger of Allah?"

He said, the first thing he said is غَضُّ الْبَصَرِ — lowering the gaze. It's no problem to leave your house, but when you leave your house, give that public sphere its right. And the first is to lower your gaze.

And then he says, وَكَفُّ الْأَذَى — that a person protect people from their harm. If I'm going to be out in the world, let me protect people from my harm. How many times have you gone to a restaurant, you're on the bus, you're in a public space, and you hear people cursing and being loud and being obnoxious? That's أَذَى — that's harm. People playing their music really loud — that's harm. The Prophet ﷺ said: protect people from your harm.

And then he says, وَرَدُّ السَّلَامِ — that you respond to people's salam. When people initiate peace. And many of you have experienced this: when you're out in the Muslim world and you're walking in the street at night, or you're walking by a group of people, and it's a tense moment — it might be a menacing group — and you say to them, السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ, and then they respond and they say, وَعَلَيْكُمُ السَّلَامُ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ. And all of a sudden that angst is dissipated because they responded to your salam. The Prophet ﷺ calls that a right of the street.

And number four, he says, الْأَمْرُ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَالنَّهْيُ عَنِ الْمُنْكَرِ — that you command good and that you forbid evil, that if you see something that's wrong, that you challenge it.

And by the way, we don't go out as much as we used to, but all four of these things apply to being online — that you lower your gaze, that you protect people from your harm. I can't tell you how many times I've experienced this, and I'm sure you've experienced this as well, where one of your friends shared something — an image or something like that — and you wish that they didn't share it because it showed up on your newsfeed, it showed up on your timeline. That's أَذَى — that's harm that they brought to you. Protect people from your harm. Protect people from your vulgarity. Protect people from your shortcomings. And number three, the response of the salam. And number four is commanding good and forbidding evil.

But the point here is the lowering of the gaze. Imam Ahmad mentions and reports a hadith of the Prophet ﷺ in al-Musnad:

(Musnad Ahmad, Hadith 22810)

"The glance is one of the poisoned arrows of Iblis. Whoever lowers his gaze from a woman's beauty for Allah, Allah will instill a sweetness in his heart until he meets Him."

The second inroad — Ibn al-Qayyim says that one of the harms of looking is that it generates sorrow, sighs, and grief. The slave sees what he cannot attain nor abstain from. And this is utter torture — to see what you can't refrain from and at the same time you're not able to attain. A guy is looking and looking and looking, or a woman is looking, and they're looking at standards of beauty that they're never going to marry, they're never going to have, they're never going to have access to. Even they themselves are fake. And this person is simply torturing themselves — neither are they going to attain that standard of beauty, even if they were to marry that same individual, that person does not look like that at every moment every day. So that person is torturing themselves, and at the same time they're not able to actually refrain.

The Second Inroad: What You Hear

The second inroad of the heart is what you hear — what you listen to. Art is very, very disarming. If you were to sit a person down and say, "I want to tell you the story of a murderer, a serial killer, someone who is the most wicked individual in society," you might say, "I don't want to hear that story. I'm not interested in being a friend of this person. I'm not interested in knowing this person. I'm not interested in talking to this person. I'm not interested in being involved with them at all." But if it's packaged in a beautiful series on TV and it's presented artistically, people find themselves very, very inclined. People listen to music with lyrics of people that they wouldn't interact with in real life, and they find themselves attached to these personalities because of the disarming nature of art. It's incredibly powerful.

At the same time, we're being told to protect our hearts from these images, to protect ourselves from these words that may have an effect on a person's soul. There is that question of whether art imitates life or life imitates art. Undoubtedly, wherever a person falls in that question, undoubtedly art normalizes fahsha and munkar. It normalizes for a person things that they normally wouldn't be appealed to.

And so if a person is always listening to lyrics about zina, if a person is always listening to lyrics about drugs, if a person is always listening to what people promote in these songs, then these things are simply being more normalized for a person again and again and again. They don't have the resistance to it that a person would normally have with the fitra. And so it's something to be guarded. It affects my heart. It is hard for me to say that I have a heart that is devoted to the worship of Allah with that purity if I'm always feeding it input that is impure. How am I going to present a heart to Allah that is pure if the nourishment that it is receiving is always that which is coming from evil and coming from vile? Maybe not always, but much of the time — it is something to be aware of.

The Third Inroad: Your Thoughts

The third inroad to the heart that the scholars mention is — even before the tongue — a person's thoughts. Ibn al-Qayyim has a very powerful statement. He says:

"Guard the fleeting thought. Because if you don't do that, it will become a desire. And then guard the desire, because if you don't do that, it will become an intention. And then fight it off then — guard it when it becomes an intention, because if you don't do that, it will become an action. And then fight it then, because if you don't do that, it will become a habit. And then it will be very, very hard for you to overcome."

But every habit started off as a passing thought, as a fleeting thought, at one point in time. And so it's easier for a person to hold themselves accountable for their fleeting thoughts — that they not endure or involve themselves in fantasy. A person may think, "If I'm just fantasizing about something, it's not going to affect me. It's not harming me. I'm not actually doing it." But you are held accountable even for what you allow yourself to fantasize about. Allah says:

"Except those who come to Allah with a pure heart." If a person is fantasizing all the time about haram, if a person is allowing themselves to indulge in these fantasies — how is that a heart that's serene? How is that a heart that is free from deficiency? How is that a heart that is pure?

And so guarding these thoughts — Ibn al-Qayyim mentions that a person's thoughts — and he was one of the most prolific scholars in Islamic history, so you can imagine this is a guy who didn't waste any of his time — but he mentions a person's thoughts should revolve around four things. So this is very, very high level, but he says a person's thoughts should just revolve around these four things. That's it. Your entire life, just these four things:

Number one: how to secure benefit for yourself in the dunya — exams, school, work, family, being productive in any of these spheres. Number two: how to secure benefit for yourself in the hereafter. Number three: how to repel harm for yourself in the dunya — "I'm worried about my health, I'm working on this, I'm working on that, I'm working on strategies to protect myself" — whatever it is, your assets, whatever it is, I'm working to protect myself from harm in this dunya. And number four: thinking about how to protect yourself from harm in the hereafter. These four categories — this is the world of a person who is living a productive life.

And so if a person is thinking about things that aren't bringing them benefit in the dunya or the hereafter — and Umar ibn al-Khattab said, "I hate to see a person who is working neither for the dunya nor working for the hereafter" — so guarding a person's thoughts is essential.

The Fourth Inroad: The Tongue

And the last is that a person guard their statements — guarding a person's statements, what you say. And what you say has an effect on what you do. And that's why there's so much attention to this idea of affirmations — what you affirm and what you say about yourself, because it affects your potential, it affects what you do. Every morning you make these affirmations, you make these adhkar, and you say:

You're making du'a to Allah. You're affirming servitude to Allah. You're putting yourself in the position of servitude to Allah. In any case, what a person says affects what they believe. And so a person pays attention to what they say.

The Prophet ﷺ, in many ahadith that talk about the tongue, said to Mu'adh ibn Jabal:

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2616; Ibn Majah, Hadith 3973 — graded Sahih)

"Is there anything that puts people into the hellfire except for the harvest of their tongues?"

And the Prophet ﷺ said: "Whoever guards these two things, I guarantee for them paradise" — the first is what is between their jaws, and the second is what is between their thighs. If you can guard your tongue and your chastity, the Prophet ﷺ confirms and guarantees paradise for that type of a person.

Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, may Allah be pleased with him, he would hold on to his tongue and say, "This tongue is what destroyed me." And if that's what Abu Bakr is saying about himself, this tongue is considered to be a weapon of mass destruction for a person themselves, because there's so much harm that comes from the tongue.

The Prophet ﷺ said: a person makes a statement — لَا يُلْقِي لَهَا بَالًا — he doesn't even think about it. It's a comment that he makes, it's a tweet that he sends, it's a statement that he writes, whatever it is, it's in a chat somewhere — and it is from that which angers Allah, and they're not even paying attention to it, they're not even thinking of it as a sin — and because of it he enters into the hellfire. And he says a word that pleases Allah, and again لَا يُلْقِي لَهَا بَالًا — he doesn't even consider it to be anything, it's a good deed. He smiled at someone, or she said a beautiful word, she made a comment — they're not considering it to be one of their great deeds — but because of it, that tongue, they enter into paradise.

And so a person guarding their tongue — being careful of what they say, being careful of what they verbalize, being careful of what they manifest, being careful of what they speak about, being careful about who they harm with this tongue — all of these are inroads to the heart.

The Tongue as a Serving Spoon of the Heart

Yahya ibn Mu'adh said: "The hearts are like kettles that boil with their contents, and the tongues are their serving spoons. Look to what a man says when he speaks, for his tongue will surely serve you with what his heart contains — whether sweet, sour, fresh, salty, or otherwise."

The heart is the kettle and the tongue is the serving spoon. If a person speaks goodness all the time, then inshallah it's an indication of the heart being pure. And if a person's heart is not pure, then you can see it in the fleeting words of the tongue. And this is one of the descriptions that Allah uses for al-Munafiqeen — that they always have something that indicates the corruption of their heart in the words that they say.

Summary: The Four Inroads

In any case, these are four inroads to the heart that a person must always protect:

The first is the gaze. The second is a person's hearing — what they're listening to. Pay attention to that, realizing that it affects their hearts. Number three is the thoughts that they allow to pass through their minds. Ibn al-Qayyim has a beautiful description — he says that a fleeting thought is like a hitchhiker on the road. If you drive by, they won't harm you. But if you allow them into your car, he says, it will bewitch you with their words. You're allowing for conversation and you're allowing it to grow. So just leave them on the side of the road and continue your drive. Protect that fleeting thought. And number four are the statements of the tongue.

We ask Allah to allow us to hear the speech and to follow the best of it.

وَصَلَّى اللَّهُ وَسَلَّمَ عَلَى سَيِّدِنَا مُحَمَّدٍ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ وَسَلَّمَ تَسْلِيمًا كَثِيرًا