Measure the quality of your character and service to others. So, while you are a student, do you cheat? If yes, then I hope that you do not get into Med School. But, aside from that, the point is that character is also central to Islamic religiosity. You cannot be a good believer and have bad character. Some companions complained to the Prophet -p- about a fellow who would make his prayers yet would go out and rob people. They were told that either his prayers would outweigh the effects of robbing, in his heart, or his robbing would outweigh the effects of praying. Meaning, your actions affect your belief. This category of character implies that we owe truth to others. We also owe trustworthiness to others. And, sometimes, we owe our material possessions to others.
Measure how you take care of what Allah has entrusted you with. This includes your body, wealth, possessions, and if you have children, your children. How much do you take care of these things? How clean are you?
The fourth involves the overall focus on excellence. For everything you do -- religious, secular, important, mundane -- do you focus on doing it in excellence. That is very central to our Tradition. The believer, we are taught, seeks excellence in everything s/he does. Excellence is not something that can be achieved overnight. Excellence is not a process of hitting a grand slam with every attempt. It finds its manifestation through long term patient, persistent perseverance. Except in the case of someone like Mozart, who seems to have written his greatest works in a single draft, the greatest accomplishments in history were the result of tireless hours of effort and perfection.
In sum, the first three speak of submission, compassion, and trust. The opposite of these would involve “submitting” to Allah on our own terms rather than His. Further, instead of compassion, we might fall into vanity. Instead of caring for what we’ve been entrusted with, we might fall into a sense of entitlement. All three wrong approaches are fundamentally narcissist. The fourth speaks of quality and precision. The opposite would be negligence. Many scholars of the heart regard negligence (ghafla) as the biggest of vices, for it allows us satisfaction with mediocrity in our service to the Divine, our character, and our nurturing of what we were entrusted with.
So, am I religious? I don’t know. But I know I have plenty of specifics to improve upon. And God knows best.
May Allah bless you.
Omer Mozaffar
Muslim Chaplain, Loyola University Chicago
In sum, the first three speak of submission, compassion, and trust. The opposite of these would involve “submitting” to Allah on our own terms rather than His. Further, instead of compassion, we might fall into vanity. Instead of caring for what we’ve been entrusted with, we might fall into a sense of entitlement. All three wrong approaches are fundamentally narcissist. The fourth speaks of quality and precision. The opposite would be negligence. Many scholars of the heart regard negligence (ghafla) as the biggest of vices, for it allows us satisfaction with mediocrity in our service to the Divine, our character, and our nurturing of what we were entrusted with.
So, am I religious? I don’t know. But I know I have plenty of specifics to improve upon. And God knows best.
May Allah bless you.
Omer Mozaffar
Muslim Chaplain, Loyola University Chicago