Website: www.aaiil.uk

Outward actions and inner intentions

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 2 January 2026

“To Allah belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth. And whether you manifest what is in your minds or hide it, Allah will call you to account according to it. So He forgives whom He pleases and punishes whom He pleases. And Allah is Powerful over all things.” — ch. 2, Al-Baqarah, v. 284

لِلّٰہِ مَا فِی السَّمٰوٰتِ وَ مَا فِی الۡاَرۡضِ ؕ وَ اِنۡ تُبۡدُوۡا مَا فِیۡۤ اَنۡفُسِکُمۡ اَوۡ تُخۡفُوۡہُ یُحَاسِبۡکُمۡ بِہِ اللّٰہُ ؕ فَیَغۡفِرُ لِمَنۡ یَّشَآءُ وَ یُعَذِّبُ مَنۡ یَّشَآءُ ؕ وَ اللّٰہُ عَلٰی کُلِّ شَیۡءٍ قَدِیۡرٌ ﴿۲۸۴﴾

Regarding the first sentence of this verse, we may say that various nations and religions think that they control this world and the hereafter. Those nations who make progress in the life of this material world fall into the trap of thinking that they are the special ones who have been chosen to own the world. Those people who follow various religions believe that they own the hereafter. They believe that the good of the hereafter is only accessible through them. But we are told here that all of this good belongs to God, permanently and absolutely. It is no nation’s automatic right. It is only by following the principles which God has established for the attainment of material and spiritual progress that any nation or any religious community is granted the bounties of this world and the hereafter. It is not a right due to anyone because of their race, or where they were born, or their religion. This is one of the meanings of the words: “To Allah belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth.”

In the second sentence of this verse, the “manifesting”, or “displaying what is in your minds”, refers to a person’s openly-known deeds, and “hiding” refers to his deeds which are not known to other people. In an earlier verse in the same chapter the Quran uses these same two words “manifest” and “hide” as follows:

“If you manifest (or show) charity, how excellent it is! And if you hide it and give it to the poor, it is good for you. And it will do away with some of your evil deeds; and Allah is Aware of what you do.” (2:271)

When charity is given openly for some national cause, or a cause of the community, it encourages those who see it to do the same, and they are motivated to join in and give. People need to see an example of a good deed being done by other people like themselves in order to be inspired to do it themselves as well. It says here that charity given openly is “excellent”. But sometimes it is not appropriate to give it openly, such as to help an individual who may feel belittled or embarrassed if he is identified as the beneficiary. So it is best to do it without knowledge of others. It says here that hiding what you are giving in charity is “good for you”. When a person gives openly in public view, it is always possible that a feeling of impressing other people and making a display of moral superiority over them may arise in his heart. But this possibility is eliminated when giving secretly. In that sense, it is good for the soul.

This verse tells us that God will judge a person by what is in his mind, his intention in doing the deed. There is a repeated hadith: يُبْعَثُ النَّاسُ عَلَى نِيَّاتِهِمْ or in similar words, meaning that on the Day of Judgment people will be raised up according to their intentions. An apparently good deed, i.e., a manifested action, done with a bad intention, such as making a show, will be judged according to that intention. On the opposite side, a deed may appear to people to be bad, but not actually be so. There are many examples in everyday life when people misunderstand what someone has done and consider it bad because they don’t know the full circumstances.

This also happens to prophets and to mujaddids. A prophet or a mujaddid says or does certain things which people condemn as bad. For example, the marriages of the Holy Prophet and his fighting wars are the basis of much criticism directed against him. Yet these actions were done with noble intentions. Prophets and mujaddids also made certain claims about their status as bestowed on them by Allah. Their opponents accuse them of trying to inflate their own importance, to glorify themselves, to impress people and make them into their humble followers. But these great men made their claims for the people’s benefit, not for their own worldly gain. These prophets and mujaddids in their lives behaved with humility, greater humility than any of their followers could show towards them.

By accepting the Holy Prophet Muhammad’s claim of prophethood, his followers are led to find out about the greatness of God, and indeed about the greatness of the prophets before him, which they could not know otherwise. He is the only one who leads people to worship God alone. By accepting the claims of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, we find out about the greatness of the religion of Islam and its Holy Prophet, we learn to serve Islam, and we find that among Muslims such persons can arise who can do the work of a Messiah.

Just as with openly known actions, similarly with secret or hidden actions. A person does acts of goodness privately and quietly. People don’t know this and don’t have a good word to say about him. But God judges him by his intention. Another person carries out conspiracies and intrigues against others secretly. People don’t know this and regard him as a good person, but God will call him to account. The Quran mentions the opponents of the Holy Prophet holding secret gatherings for planning some course of action against him. While condemning them it says in one place:

“There is no good in most of their secret counsels except (in) him who enjoins charity or goodness or reconciliation between people. And whoever does this, seeking Allah’s pleasure, We shall give him a mighty reward” (4:114).

In the other place it says:

“O you who believe, when you confer together in private, do not give to each other counsel of sin and revolt and disobedience to the Messenger, but give to each other counsel of goodness and observance of duty” (58:9).

The verse I recited at the beginning teaches us that the good or bad of an action is not determined by whether the action is done publicly or done without showing it to people. This was one of the matters on which the Jews and the Christians went to opposite extremes. The Jews came to believe that only outward actions have any value. Religious duties should be carried out with much ceremony and show to assure others that we are sticking to the religion. We see this sadly among Muslims today. Jesus condemned this behaviour and instructed his followers to do all these acts secretly, privately, so that no one but God can know that they have performed them. He said about prayer:

“But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place” (Matthew 6:6).

About fasting he told his followers to fast in a way:

“so that you do not appear to people to be fasting” (6:18).

About charity he said:

“But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret” (6:3–4).

His followers of later times took this to the extreme of believing that no religious act needs to be performed openly according to some set rules or structure. This meant that as the performance of those acts was left entirely to the individual’s discretion, people gradually stopped performing them.

Let us look at the implications of these two opposite attitudes. If a person believes that what is most important is to carry out religious duties mechanically, by bodily actions, and that the involvement of his heart and soul is only a secondary and unimportant matter, then all that he is gaining by his devotions is that people can see him being devout and religious. So gradually that becomes his aim, to look good before others, and even if that doesn’t become the aim at least the person is fully satisfied by just the bodily performance that he has completed his duty. On the opposite side, if people believe only in the importance of performing religious duties privately, without being seen by anyone, how can they teach these duties to others and be examples to them? Also, they gradually lose the motivation to do them. The rules and structures, such as saying prayers at certain times in a certain manner, or fasting between specified times in a set month of the year, enable us to overcome carelessness and laziness and putting things off to another time and never getting around to doing them.

What the Quran teaches is that we must maintain both the outward form and the inner spirit. We must perform the outward, manifest actions as well as the private acts unknown to anyone else that we are doing them. It is wrong to think, as the Jews came to hold, that a good deed can only be one which is visible and apparent to all, and it is wrong to think, as the later Christians came to hold, that a good deed can only be one which is kept secret and hidden from others. Both kinds can be good if the intention is good and sincere. Our good deeds should be like a floating iceberg in the sea. Some of it is above the water level and visible, while most of it is under water and not visible.

In another verse the Quran repeats the first and the third sentence of this verse:

“And to Allah belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth. He forgives whom He pleases and punishes whom He pleases”,

and then adds: “And Allah is Forgiving, Merciful” (3:129). When mentioning that Allah can punish, it immediately says that He is Forgiving and Merciful, indicating that forgiveness and mercy are more befitting for Allah to apply than punishment. The verse before this says to the Holy Prophet about his enemies:

“You have no concern in the matter whether He turns to them (mercifully) or punishes them; surely they are wrongdoers” (3:128). Even when his enemies were known to be wrongdoers, their fate was to be determined by Allah and not by the Holy Prophet.

The meaning of “He forgives whom He pleases and punishes whom He pleases” is not that God is like a king or dictator Who doesn’t follow any rules, but purely out of his whim or mood of the day He arbitrarily decides whether to forgive someone or to punish him. The meaning is that only God has the full knowledge for deciding who deserves forgiveness and who deserves punishment. On the basis of His perfect knowledge, God may forgive someone who we think should be punished and He may punish someone who we think should be forgiven. No human being can claim to know that certain people will be forgiven by God and certain other people will be punished. We can only know and teach the ways which lead to forgiveness and those which lead to punishment.

May Allah enable all Muslims always to act with the best intentions in mind — Ameen.

Website: www.aaiil.uk