signs, symptoms and cures of the spiritual diseases of the heart
Almost universally, religious traditions have stressed the importance of the condition of the heart. In the Muslim scripture, the Day of Judgment is described as, "a day in which neither wealth nor children shall be of any benefit [to anyone], except one who comes to God with a sound heart (QUR'AN, 26:88–89)." The sound heart is understood to be free of character defects and spiritual blemishes. 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. […]
The Prophet of Islam ﷺ 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. In fact, when people do terrible things, the core of their humanity is injured. Fyodor Dostoyevsky expresses brilliantly in Crime and Punishment that the crime itself is the punishment because human beings ultimately have to live with the painful consequences of their deeds. When someone commits a crime, he does so first against his own heart, which then affects the whole human being. The person enters a state of spiritual agitation and often tries to suppress it. The root meaning of the work kufr (disbelief) is to cover something up. As it relates to this 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 and deviance, 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. People work very hard to cut themselves off from their hearts and the natural feelings found there. The pressures to do this are very strong in our modern culture.
One of the major drawbacks of being severed from the heart is that the more one is severed, the sicker the heart becomes, for the heart needs nourishment. Heedlessness starves the heart, robs it of its spiritual manna. One enters into a state of unawareness—a debilitating lack of awareness of God and an acute neglect of humanity's ultimate destination: the infinite world of the Hereafter. When one peers into the limitless world through remembrance of God and increases in beneficial knowledge, one's concerns become more focused on the infinite world, not the finite one that is disappearing and ephemeral. When people are completely immersed in the material world, believing that this 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. Before the heart dies, however, it shows symptoms of affliction. These afflictions are spiritual diseases of the heart (the center of our being)—the topic of this book.
In Islamic tradition, these diseases fall under two categories. The first is known as shubuhat or obfuscations. These are diseases that relate to impaired or inappropriate understanding. For instance, if somebody is fearful that God will not provide for him or her, this is considered a disease of the heart because a sound heart has knowledge and trust, not doubt and anxiety […]
The second category of disease concerns the base desires of the self and is called shahawat. This relates to our desires exceeding their natural state, as when people live merely to satisfy these urges and are led by them. Islam provides the method by which our hearts can become sound and safe again. This method has been the subject of brilliant and insightful scholarship for centuries in the Islamic tradition. One can say that Islam in essence is a program to restore purity and calm to the heart through the remembrance of God.
This present text is based on the poem known as Matharat al-Qulub (literally, Purification of the Hearts), which offers the means by which purification can be achieved. It is a treatise on the "alchemy of the hearts," namely, a manual on how to transform the heart. It was written by a great scholar and saint, Shaykh Muhammad Mawlud al-Ya'qubi al-Musawi Al-Muratani. As his name indicates, he was from Mauritania in West Africa. He was a master of all the Islamic sciences, including the inward sciences of the heart. He stated that he wrote this poem because he observed the prevalence of diseased hearts. He saw students of religion spending their time learning abstract sciences that people were not really in need of, to the neglect of those sciences that pertain to what people are accountable for in the next life, namely, the spiritual condition of the heart. In one of his most cited statements, the Prophet ﷺ said, "Actions are based upon intentions." All deeds are thus valued according to the intentions behind them, and intentions emanate from the heart. So every action a person intends or performs is rooted in the heart.
If we examine the trials and tribulations, wars and other conflicts, every act of injustice all over earth, we'll find they all rooted in human hearts. Covetousness, the desire to aggress and exploit, the longing to pilfer natural resources, the inordinate love of wealth and position, and other maladies are manifestations of diseases found nowhere but in the heart. Every criminal, miser, abuser, scoffer, embezzler, and hateful person does what he or she does because of a diseased heart. If hearts were sound, these actions would no longer be a reality. So if we want to change our world, we do not begin by rectifying the outward. Instead, we must change the condition of our inward. Everything we see happening outside of us is in reality coming from the unseen world within. It is from the unseen world that the phenomenal world emerges, and it is from the unseen realm of our hearts that all actions spring.
The well-known civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. said that in order for people to condemn injustice, they must go through four stages. The first stage is that people must ascertain that indeed injustices are being perpetrated. In this case, it was injustices against African Americans in the United States. The second stage is to negotiate, that is, approach the oppressor and demand justice. If the oppressor refuses, King said that the third stage is self-purification, which starts with the question: "Are we ourselves wrongdoers?" Are we ourselves oppressors?" The fourth stage, then, is to take action after true self-examination, after removing one's own wrongs before demanding justice from others […]
[…] Impure people oppress, and the pure-hearted not only forgive their oppressors, but elevate them in status and character. In order to purify ourselves, we must begin to recognize this truth. This is what this book is all about—a book of self-purification and a manual of liberation. If we work on our hearts, if we actually implement what is suggested here, we'll begin to see changes in our lives, our condition, our society, and even within our own family dynamics. It is a blessing that we have this science of purification, a blessing that this teaching exists in the world today. What remains is for us to take these teachings seriously.
[…] But just like medicinal prescriptions, the physician cannot force you to take it. The knowledgeable scholars of spiritual purification have given us the treatment, as they have gleaned it from the teachings of the Qur'an and the exemplary model of the Prophet ﷺ. The teachings are available. They are clear, and they work. It is then up to us to learn and apply them to ourselves and share them with others.
HAMZA YUSUF