26. HIDDEN DEEDS MANIFEST OUTWARDLY
The sincerity (ikhlas) and worship (‘ibadah) of a person in privacy (khalwa) manifests upon him outwardly.
Many are the believers who are mindful of Allah in private, so they abandon desirable things out of fear of falling into Allah’s Punishment; hoping (raja) in His reward or out of deep glorification (ijlat) to Him. When they do this, it is as if they have thrown a fragrant stick of Indian incense on an ember, which makes everyone smell its good smell without knowing where it came from.
The more he perseveres in abandoning that he desires, the more beloved he becomes— and the more he keeps pushing back the thing he is abandoning, the stronger is the fragrance. To this effect, the eyes of people glorify him and their tongues praise him, all the while not knowing why! They are in fact, unable to describe him because they are unable to comprehend his reality.
The scent of such people sometimes lasts and continues till after their death depending on the strength of the smell of scent. Some of them are remembered for a while after their death but afterwards they are forgotten, and some people are mentioned for a hundred of years after their death before they too are forgotten and their graves are not even recognised; others become icons whose name and memory lasts forever.
Yet those who fear people and do not mind Allah in privacy, their lowly rank will be according to the sins committed in private. Their ugly smell thus will exude as per the sins committed, causing the hearts of people to distance from them in disgust. If the sins committed in private were small, people may praise him but they will not mention the person with much goodness.
And, if the sins committed were large, it is very likely that people may not speak of him at all, neither in good nor in bad.
There are sins committed in private that result in misery (shiqqa) in this life and the Hereafter; it appears as if he is told to (choose and) stay in the place you decided for yourself, and so he lives confusingly.
O my brothers! Look at sins and their bad impacts. Abu’l-Darda’ {radiyAllahu ‘anhu) said: ‘A slave of Allah commits a sin (ma’siya) in private, so Allah instils in the hearts of believers disliking (bughd) of him, while he is unaware.’
You should contemplate what I have written and do not underestimate what you do in private or what you hide in your hearts because intention (niyyah) is the basis of all actions and the reward is proportional to sincerity (ikhlas).
(Source: al-Hafiz Abu’l-Faraj ibn al-jawzl [d. 597AH] “CAPTURED THOUGHTS being” a translation of his masterpiece ‘Sayd al-K hatir)
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