_Imām Ibn Qudāmah Al-Maqdisi -rahimahullāh-_
Said:
*SIGNS OF SICKNESS OF THE HEART AND WAYS OF DETECTING THEM.*
Know verily -may the blessing of Allāh be upon you that, every joint of the body was created for a certain purpose, the signs of illness of such joint is its inability to carry out and function on the root it was created for, or when the function of the joint is entirely different from that which it was created for.
Thus, the sickness of hands is its touching of things which are Haram, the illness of eyes is its looking at things which are forbidden thereby goes against the normal function it was created for, the sickness of the heart is its headlessness towards what it was created for which are; knowledge, wisdom, love of Allāh Ta’āla and His ibādāt and preferring all these against his desires and whims.
For if a man happened to have the knowledge of everything, but only lack the knowledge about Allāh, is as if he knows nothing in real sense.
The sign of knowledge in the heart is for the heart to love Allah, for whosoever has deep knowledge about Allāh, will surely love Him, and the sign of love for Allāh is for one not to prefer anything of desires as against the love of Allāh and His ibādāt, and preferring desires as against the love of Allāh is a sign of sickness and disease in the heart.
The sickness of the heart may be obscured to one and one may not be aware of such illness, for this reason, one may be headless of it, and if one is aware of the sickness, one may not be patient on the pain of curing such illness of the heart because its treatment is to work against desires, and if one happened to be a patient person, one may not find a sound and learned doctor who will cure the sickness for one, and the doctors here are the ulamā.
And sometimes, the sickness may even overpower the ulamaa because of its severity, and the doctor of the sickness may not get to its treatment, thus, the disease may be a terminal one, and the knowledge has no benefit to it, and the medicine does not tally with the heart and its sickness in its entirety.
Therefore, people with such terminal illness only practiced the outward ibādāt while the inward ibādāt which has to do with the heart contains some deficiencies and diseases.
*20th Rabī’u Ath-thāni, 1438H.*
Allāhu A’alam! Bārakallāhu fīkum!
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