بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ
Allah says in the Qur’an:
Then your hearts became hardened after that, being like stones or even harder. For indeed, there are stones from which rivers burst forth, and there are some of them that split open and water comes out, and there are some of them that fall down for fear of Allah . And Allah is not unaware of what you do.
[2:74]
We know that we as human beings have physical hearts and the hearts of our souls. So what exactly is the relationship or the role of the heart compared to the mind?
You see, our minds they process things. We analyse, we understand, we memorise, we learn and thus our minds progressively develop. In other words, a mind of a child at 4 years of age is less advanced than that of a of a 9 or 10 year old, and that 10 year old is not as advanced at 20 etc. So the mind is constantly growing, maturing and acquiring more and more knowledge as we age.
However, the heart is a different kind of entity. The heart doesn’t mature or grow; the heart fluctuates. Some days we have really good days as far as remembering Allah and being cautious of Allah. On other days it is really bad. We have ups and downs in the heart and the heart can become hard and it can also become soft. It can die and can come back to life etc.
So, on the one hand we have this entity that matures and on the other hand we have this other entity inside of us that is very volatile, very fragile. We have to take care of our hearts. In other words, sometimes we may know something in our minds but the heart still needs it; a reminder about Allah or a principle of Islam for example. Sometimes we start thinking “I already know this”, but in fact our hearts still need it to be told again and again.
Now from an Islamic or a Qur’anic perspective, when we make a decision, does it come from our minds or our hearts? How exactly do we make our decisions?
The answer to that is actually a combination of both, but the heart is in the driver’s seat as far as the Qur’an portrays.
For example, let’s say there is a young person who smokes. This person reads about how harmful smoking really is, is told at school about how it effects the lungs, the doctor is trying to make them stop etc. If one was to ask this person if they know that it is bad, they will say yes. Then if one asks them why they smoke? They never give an intellectual answer, “I like it” or “I will stop soon” or whatever.
So let’s say his same person is in their house upstairs smoking in their room and they see their dad pulling up on the driveway. What happens? The cigarette is immediately flushed down the toilet, air freshener comes out, gum in the mouth. Why? This is due to the fear of the father in their heart.
The lesson here is that if we do not have fear in the heart then even if we know it’s bad for us, we still do it anyway.
Now let’s take a look at an example from the Qur’an. In Surat Al-Baqarah and other places, Allah outlines the story of the Israelites, at the time of the Prophet (ﷺ) – they were known to be very intelligent people. Now they did not have any doubt that the Prophet (ﷺ) was indeed the final messenger from Allah – intellectually they understood this, and yet they still opposed him because their hearts were not willing to accept a gentile.
They were given so many miracles. One of which was a dead man being brought back to life in front of their eyes. Now the mind cannot play any tricks with this – a genuine miracle that they saw for themselves. Something outside the scope of our reality, but Allah says even after all this their hearts became hard, which means that if we let our intellect take control on its own, we have nowhere to go.
For us we have the miracle of the Qur’an and the Sunnah – the endless wisdom in Allah’s word and the Prophecies given by His Prophet (ﷺ) along with perfected narrations about his character. We can only benefit from it if our hearts are softened. A hard heart can get softer, it can be revitalised – as long as we are still breathing it is never too late.
May Allah soften our hearts and forgive our shortcomings, for it is the sins we commit that harden our hearts.
Allah knows best.