"Verily Allah does not look at your outward form and wealth; rather He looks at your hearts and deeds."
Muhammad, Hadith
I always warn my students about the dangers of cheery-picking information, and this is as true (probably more so) in regards to reading religious texts as it is in doing research for a scholarly paper. That said, I'm sure in the process of devoting myself to this, inshallah, year-long discussion I will doubtless be guilty of doing just that with regularity. I've talked about my own personal struggles over the internal vs the external aspects of my faith. Consequently, either consciously or unconsciously I'll end up cherry-picking Quranic passages or stories from the Ahadith that support my own view. All I can tell you is that I'll try and be balanced, although if history teaches us anything it's that I'll fail a goodly amount of the time. With that backstory in mind, here's one of my favorite Ahadith (the sayings associated with the Prophet). On the most basic level it's a reminder that youth or beauty or wealth don't matter nearly as much as what we hold in our hearts or what we actually do with our lives. This, of course, should be true no matter your faith. At the same time, I think this also speaks of the precarious balancing act between the external and internal aspects of the faith. Can't the more external aspects of the faith exist solely on the level of vanity if we don't think of them in relation to their role in getting us to the more profound internal elements of the faith. Could God possibly care as much about you praying five times a day as He/She/It cares about you being kind to every one and every thing in your life?
Muhammad, Hadith
I always warn my students about the dangers of cheery-picking information, and this is as true (probably more so) in regards to reading religious texts as it is in doing research for a scholarly paper. That said, I'm sure in the process of devoting myself to this, inshallah, year-long discussion I will doubtless be guilty of doing just that with regularity. I've talked about my own personal struggles over the internal vs the external aspects of my faith. Consequently, either consciously or unconsciously I'll end up cherry-picking Quranic passages or stories from the Ahadith that support my own view. All I can tell you is that I'll try and be balanced, although if history teaches us anything it's that I'll fail a goodly amount of the time. With that backstory in mind, here's one of my favorite Ahadith (the sayings associated with the Prophet). On the most basic level it's a reminder that youth or beauty or wealth don't matter nearly as much as what we hold in our hearts or what we actually do with our lives. This, of course, should be true no matter your faith. At the same time, I think this also speaks of the precarious balancing act between the external and internal aspects of the faith. Can't the more external aspects of the faith exist solely on the level of vanity if we don't think of them in relation to their role in getting us to the more profound internal elements of the faith. Could God possibly care as much about you praying five times a day as He/She/It cares about you being kind to every one and every thing in your life?
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