A true intention guides you through.

When sincerity becomes your compass, hardships bring you closer to Allah.

hourofqadr

Apr 08, 2025

Assalamu'alaikum wr wb my dear friend!

Here are 2 Ideas, A Verse to Reflect Upon & One Question for you 👇

Two Ideas this week

1. Intention is Everything

Two people can be fasting, and only one gets the reward.

Two people can be praying, and only one is safe from hellfire.

Two people go through Ramadan, one was forgiven, one was just left tired.

Why is this so?

Good deeds are not just about what you do, but why you did it.

Only the deeds which are done sincerely for Allah’s sake are accepted.

This goes back to the famous authentic hadith where Rasulullah ﷺ said, “Actions are by intentions…“

When we sincerely intend something for Allah, we will be tested on our intention, and through life tests, will we discover how sincere we are for Allah.

We say we want to find a blessed marriage, and then we meet a potential person who appears to be religious… and then suddenly a few actions seem off - you start texting in private, sweet words, and one thing leads to another… suddenly you are about to send something that risks your Islam … do we leave haram or do we leave Allah?

We say we want to find a halal income, and then Allah tests us with a period of unemployment, and suddenly someone offers a job with money that is questionable… do we leave haram or do we leave Allah?

From these tests, we ultimately learn our intentions and how sincere we are in striving for the sake of Allah. We may falter at some point out of genuine mistake, or worse, an intentional one. Yet Allah, Ar-Rahman, Ar-Raheem, gives us time to make amends and correct ourselves.

So go back to your intentions, are you doing what you do for the sake of Allah? Or for some other worldly benefit?

2. Intentions need renewal & refinement

We are all in a learning process and journey of refining our intentions. At times Allah blesses us with worldly ease… and then we delay our prayers, or forget to be grateful. This is perhaps why we keep renewing our “shield“ every few hours when we pray.

The act of praying is designed to be so intentional: one has to make ablution first, cleanse ourselves in sequence, and then as we enter prayer, we make the specific intention to the respective prayer.

Allah could have made ablution to be as simple as just washing our hands and feet, or praying just once a day instead of five. Ramadan could just be one week instead of a month. But Allah, in His Wisdom, has prescribed these specific quantities to keep our hearts tied to His remembrance.

We recite Surah Al-Fatihah at least of 17 times a day. But how often do we internalise its meaning?

“You alone we worship. You alone we ask for help.”

Surah Al-Fatihah 1:5

Sometimes, we may even start to see prayer as a burden — when it was meant to be a relief. This shows how much we need to constantly renew and refine our intentions. We need to also seek refuge of Allah from Shaytaan, who makes beautiful actions seem heavy.

So don’t be too quick to punish yourself when you forget. But we must be honest with our mistakes, have firm resolve, and strive hard not to fall into them. As with our deeds, we will only know the true depth of our intention & sincerity in akhirah, and this uncertainty is meant to allow us to have a positive worry in taking care of our intentions.

A Verse to Reflect Upon

Righteousness is not that you turn your faces toward the east or the west, but true righteousness is in one who believes in Allāh, the Last Day, the angels, the Book, and the prophets and gives wealth, in spite of love for it, to relatives, orphans, the needy, the traveler, those who ask for help, and for freeing slaves; and who establishes prayer and gives zakāh; those who fulfill their promise when they promise; and those who are patient in poverty and hardship and during battle.
Those are the ones who have been true, and it is those who are the righteous.
Surah Al-Baqarah 2:177

From tafsir Ibn Kathir, he explains that this verse was revealed to emphasize the essence of righteousness. The people at that time were heavily focused on the change of Qiblah from Baytul Maqdis (Jerusalem) to the Ka’bah (Makkah). Allah responds that true piety is not merely about facing a particular direction.

This verse contains many details as part of what are the things we can act upon besides facing the direction. This also highlights that intention without action is also not complete, rather our actions are an indicator of a true righteous intention.