The believer tries to improve his physical health on a daily basis while he often neglects that of his heart. Whether or not he does his utmost to increase his physical capacities, what is certain is that he dreads that some ailment might strike him on any part of his body whatsoever. So all his efforts tend to protect him from diseases. The more he has knowledge of the precautions to take to keep away from the slightest ailments, the more he will take care of his health, but what about the diseases of the heart ?
What are they and how are they cured ?
What does the Quran tell us about the diseases of the heart ?
Allah, Glorified be He, teaches us in the Quran that the heart can be sick.
"In their hearts is a disease (of doubt and hypocrisy), and Allah increases their disease. They will have a painful punishment, for having lied.
Verse 10 Surah Al-Baqarah
In this verse Allah clearly expresses three stages of the disease when He speaks of the disbelievers :
- To doubt Him, to doubt the Will of Allah, is a sign of hypocrisy that must be fought
- otherwise Allah increases the diseases in the heart of the one who doubts
- until it leads to the Eternal Punishment.
And this is the fate of the disbelievers. Yet the diseases of the heart do not concern them exclusively. The believer can be affected by them and suffer the consequences in his life. That is why it is important to know them and to do everything to guard against them.
Indeed, the diseases of the heart have harmful effects on our way of believing, of thinking and on our behaviour. Not fighting them leads to the destruction of our faith and, may Allah preserve us from it, to Hell.
Many Quranic verses reflect this observation :
- Once the heart is sick, Allah teaches us that temptations more easily affect the person and the heart becomes hard.
- Hypocrisy then becomes one of the other ailments of the heart. Because of the weakness of his faith which makes him doubt, he commits acts contrary to his religion, contrary to what Allah, our Creator, wants of us.
- The next stage, may Allah preserve us from it, is disbelief in Allah through persistent doubt.
"In their hearts is a disease (of doubt and hypocrisy), and Allah increases their disease. They will have a painful punishment, for having lied. Verse 10 Surah 2
"A people before you had asked (similar) questions, then, because of it, became disbelievers. Verse 102 Surah 5
Some examples of diseases of the heart
All the aforementioned verses confirm that the heart can fall sick. And these diseases stop at the death of the individual. There is no possibility of going back to believe and behave better.
The disease concerning understanding
The disease of the heart is often equated in the Quran with doubt. But how does the heart come to doubt ? It is the result of ignorance, far from the knowledge of one's Lord and one's religion. To ask oneself questions and to doubt is the result of a heart empty of meaning that obtains no clear answers and begins to stray from the Truth.
"But their hearts remain in ignorance regarding this [the Quran]. [Moreover] they have other (vile) deeds that they perform, Verse 63 Surah 23
The result is an error in the understanding of one's religion, a false vision of the world that surrounds us and in which we live. All the efforts of the one who doubts begin to focus on the acquisition of the goods of this world, ephemeral though they are, which represent everything to him. Leaving no more room for the pursuit of the knowledge of Allah, the pursuit of the correct understanding of Islam.
Thus when the beautiful things of this world, work, money, women, children, become the person's principal goal, it is the proof that a disease of the heart has settled in without one noticing. And it becomes urgent to rectify oneself.
The solution ?
To invoke Allah and ask Him to show us the Truth and above all to grant us to follow it. To invoke Him also to show us evil as it is and to grant us to turn away from it. Supplications are the backbone of our worship, a privileged contact to safeguard between our Creator and us.
Lord! Show us the truth as such and make us conform to it, and show us falsehood as such and make us turn away from it!
Allahumma! arina al-haqqa haqqan wa-rzuqna ttiba'ah wa arina al-batila batilan wa-rzuqna jtinabah! Amin
The pursuit of knowledge and of Truth are therefore the solutions to this disease.
The disease concerning behaviour
To lean towards disobedience, to want to do evil while knowing consciously that this is a sin, represents a disease of the heart from which one must protect or cure oneself. The pursuit of pleasures, of passions, is the source of this disobedience which embeds this disease in the heart through repetition.
Thus having a weak Tawhid leads to a poor belief in Allah. He who does not know his Lord enough can doubt Him, and thereby have a weak will to please Him.
How can one adopt the best of behaviours towards one's Lord and His Creatures if one does not know what He expects of us, if one doubts Him ? Thus not believing or wrongly believing in Allah inevitably leads to feeling abandoned by Him and to doubting, except for those whom He takes into His Mercy, may Allah make us among them.
The solution ?
To return to a pure belief in Allah, through His Names and Attributes that one will seek to know. The pursuit of His Knowledge and His Nearness strengthen the heart of the believer.
The disease concerning ill thoughts about Allah
To think that Allah does not save the believers or that He can do nothing about certain situations is part of ill thoughts towards one's Creator. Thus the weakness of certainty in Him is a disease of the heart that must be cured before it worsens the case of the one who holds such a heart.
To be ignorant of the knowledge of God, not to know Him well, makes one feel weak and leaves the door open to the devil who breathes doubt into it.
"Is there a disease in their hearts? Or do they doubt? Or do they fear that Allah will oppress them, as well as His messenger? No! but it is they who are the unjust. Verse 50 Surah 24
"And when the hypocrites and those who have the disease [doubt] in their hearts said: "Allah and His messenger have promised us only deception." Verse 12 Surah 33
"Or do those who have a disease in their hearts reckon that Allah will never be able to bring out their hatred? Verse 29 Surah 47
The solution ?
To return to the Quran and to the Sunnah of our Messenger Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, to return to the true, sincere belief.
It is only through the pursuit of knowledge that the believer will be firmly certain that the laws of Allah encompass all aspects of our lives and are perfect since they come from the One who alone is Perfect.
The particular case of the sick heart and its remedy
The problem with the sick heart is that it is neither like the sound hearts nor like the hearts for which nothing can be done anymore. By dint of straining between ignorance and the repetition of sins, it ends up little by little drawing closer to death.
A dead heart is a heart that no longer listens, no longer sees. A weak heart filled with doubts, tempted by sins and passions, never ceases to weaken until it no longer resembles either that of the believers or that of the disbelievers. It wavers between the two.
The remedy for the diseases of the heart?
To read the Quran every day !
Allah in the Quran warns us against following the footsteps of the disbelievers and against letting ourselves be seduced by the movements of the latter on Earth. Their power on Earth is but ephemeral pleasures before ending, for Eternity, in the Punishment, may Allah preserve us from it.
Thus the poor vision, and the weakness it induces, is repaired only with the assiduous reading of the Quran.
When we read the Quran, our poor understanding and poor vision of Allah is repaired with His Word. Our Tawhid and our trust in Him are strengthened and our heart comes back to life through the Truth that it reads.
Curing one's sick heart is done by remaining in contact with the Truth. One sees things with a new eye with the proofs coming from Allah. Trust and knowledge replace the doubts.
The Quran is the first (if not the only true) source of healing for the heart.
A heart without the Quran is like a place in ruins. Empty, it lets anything and everything settle in it. So, reading a part of the Quran every day with meditation brings all the elements the heart needs to strengthen itself and consolidate its knowledge of Allah.
The Quran is also the means of conversing with one's Creator. How can one deprive oneself of it?
Depending on the passages of our reading, we answer the All-Merciful directly without intermediary.
- A verse contains a supplication, and here we are supplicating for ourselves and our brothers and sisters in the world
- A verse testifies to the greatness of Allah or to any other Attribute of our Lord and we testify with it and glorify Him
- A passage evokes the punishments of the Hereafter and here we sincerely ask Allah to preserve us from them. And so on.
By reading the Quran, we invoke Allah, glorify Him and testify to His greatness and His blessings upon us.
We recall that our faith is not measured by the number of verses we read but by the sincerity we strive to put into His remembrance. And since there is no doubt that the more we read, the more it increases, then how can we remain far from His Word ?
May Allah spare us the diseases of the heart and strengthen us all on His straight Path. Amin