It should be clearly understood that according to Islam purity does not merely mean purity of overt word or deed. Islamic purity also implies purity of the heart and of the mind. In the estimation of God, a person cannot be accounted pure unless he has a pure mind. A person may not actually commit a sinful act, yet he cannot be called good and pure if his heart has a liking for evil and he takes delight in talking about sinfulness, unless, of course, in his heart of hearts he dislikes the taint of sin. For instance, there are persons who do not use abusive language when enraged but secretly curse their opponent and denounce him as a rogue. We cannot call them pure; only they have been able to hide their inner impurity successfully. In Islam purity means purity of heart. The tongue, and for that matter, visible conduct are mere tools which might only exhibit external purity. The Holy Quran says:
Whether you disclose that which is in your minds or keep it hidden, Allah will call you to account for it. (2:285)
God here raises a very delicate issue. To Him, the primary thing is the inner condition of the mind. Overt actions including speech merely express the inner state of mind which indeed is the real subject of divine judgment. You may or may not do an evil deed or speak an evil word. But if your heart is impure, you will face divine judgment. Elsewhere Allah says in the Holy Quran:
Be mindful of your obligations to Allah, as far as you can, and hear and obey, and spend in the cause of Allah, it will be the better for you. He who is delivered from the niggardliness of his mind is of those who shall prosper.
This means do all good deeds, but purify your hearts, for a heart that is impure will be called to account.
After making clear that good means the good heart, let me now proceed to discuss the threefold method of avoiding sin if the person concerned is clean and uncorrupted:
He or she must have true knowledge of right and wrong. The heart might urge towards right action, but if you do not know what the right action is, you cannot perform it. Similarly the heart might warn you against evil, but if you are ignorant of what and why an act is evil, you cannot guard yourself against it. Thus it is essential that you should know what you ought or ought not to do. It is not enough to have the capacity to do or not to do a certain action. For instance, you may be very eager to please your friend but you cannot do much unless your friend tells you how best he can be pleased. Therefore, knowledge of actions — good and bad — is of the greatest importance.
He or she must know the context in which right action has to be done and bad action avoided. For instance, you ask your servant to place furniture inside a room. The servant may be very active and eager but if he does not know where each item is to be placed, he might easily put tables in place of chairs and chairs in place of tables. The same would be true of a person who is ignorant of the appropriate occasion for a particular action, that is to say, when the action should be done and when not done. Hence he must know the circumstances under which an action is to be performed or avoided.
He should be conscious of the evil to which he is prone and which he wants to discard. That is why one of the conditions precedent to spiritual treatment of the self is that we should know our faults. He should also know wherein he lacks virtue, so that he can pursue good and avoid evil. If the heart is not corrupted and the rust of sin has not eaten into the mind, knowledge, albeit true knowledge, will be enough to transform him into a virtuous person; for how can we treat that which we do not know? It is knowledge of a disease alone which can help facilitate its treatment.
I shall now briefly discuss the foregoing three points of treatment. First, something about our knowledge of right and wrong. I have come across quite a lot of people who have the capacity to be good, but are ignorant of right and wrong. For instance, many men and women ask the following questions:
Are we rebellious and wantonly vicious?
Are we oppressors?
Do we misappropriate what belongs to others?
Do we tell lies?
Are we adulterous?
If not, then can you point out any other sin which we may have committed? What they mean is that if they do not commit these five sins, they do not commit any sin. These are described as the five sins under the Law. Their purpose seems to be to urge that there are no sins besides these sins. The fact is that there are hundreds of sins constituting a long succession. It is not possible to discuss them all, considering the limited time at our disposal. Also there are sins that are beyond human ken. The Holy Prophet — on whom be peace — was the one and only human being who had knowledge of all sin. There have been others who were vouchsafed this knowledge to a certain degree. But none was given nor can possibly be given the kind of knowledge possessed by the Holy Prophet — on him be peace and blessings.
Once in a dream I found myself telling a friend that neglect of physical exercise too was a sin. Now we do not call it a sin in normal life. But supposing there is a person on whose life depends the security of a million other lives. It would be sinful on his part not to take good care of himself. Who could be braver than the Holy Prophet — on him be peace — yet regular watch was kept for his personal safety. At his residence too proper security arrangements were maintained. A critic might ask whether he considered that his own security had priority over the security of others. But he would be missing the point; for what the Holy Prophet — on him be peace — did was just right and necessary because on his life depended the life of the entire world. Without him, Islam could not have been established. Therefore, for some to rest and keep good health becomes a positive virtue and its contrary a sin. Hazrat Abdul Qadir Jilani in one of his books says: There is a time when I do not eat until God is pleased to say: Abdul Qadir, get up and eat for My sake, or wear these robes to please Me. It is men like him who would do even their daily chores only when God wants them to; of course, not for their own sake but for the sake of God, for whatever they do, they do it to please Him. Thus there are sins and sins. They constitute a vast ascending or descending order. Their quality changes with the change of the person. Mystics put it like this. They say that the virtues of the sinners are the sins of the innocent.