I’m a strong believer in the saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. In Islam however, everything is about intentions, what’s in your heart is what will make you do good or do bad. In Islam, the road to heaven is paved with good intentions.
I sound like I’m contradicting myself, don’t I? well I’m not, not really. The road to hell really is paved with good intentions. People do what they think is right, I cannot stress enough on the word right because it is such a tricky little thing, and we’ve been living with its tricks in everything we do or say. it’s in our culture, our fiction, in the stories we tell to our children. Doing the right thing is a very subjective act. In the fairytales we tell our kids, it was right for Cinderella to sneak out of the house to attend the prince’s ball, Snow White to live with seven strangers, and Ali Baba to be a thief (the above are borrowed), and we must also never forget Robin Hood; the king of thieves and good intentions. It is noble to fight injustice but not quite so when you play dirty. USA dropped atomic bombs on innocent people in Japan, not only killing them, but maiming generations and generations to come with the aftereffects of those weapons. The atomic bombs ended the war, which is a very good intention, but at what price! Was it right to use them to get to that noble outcome? God only knows, but I don’t believe it is. How many decisions do we make every single day with the purest of intentions that end up hurting people deeply? Worse yet, how many actions do we take thinking they are the right thing to do under the circumstances while we would condemn them when we see other people doing them? The road to hell really is paved with our own good intentions.
But that is not right! In Islam, everything we do in life should be done with a certain intention, the most noble and most important of which is to serve God and do good. Yes, that was what the church was doing in the middle ages when they were burning scientists, but that’s not how it works in Islam. Islam sets the rules on how to live your life as an honest human being. The rules of Islam are the rules that govern humanity; justice, equality, compassion. In Islam, we can’t do bad things with good intentions. We can’t kill a man because he might possibly murder someone. We can’t lie to someone so that they would make a decision that is right but based on wrong information. In Islam, we cannot do an act that is abstractly wrong like stealing with the intention of doing good. It just doesn’t work that way because Islam’s guidelines give us a moral compass to lead our lives with, and when we stray from the right path, there is always redemption and forgiveness, which is also the way to heaven.
There is however something more interesting to the intention in Islam. The intention of serving and pleasing God can be set in every little detail in our lives, and they add to the score too. Something as simple as smiling in the face of someone is rewarded as charity. Working against one’s temptations counts as Jihad, and is actually stronger than Jihad at war. Saying a nice word, washing the dishes, helping someone out, all of these actions, little as they may seem count as long as they are done with good intentions. Even the failed attempt to do something with the correct intention counts. And the best part, it doesn’t necessarily count as one point. So maybe writing this, and you reading it counts too because I made you remember God, think about Him, and maybe I was of some help, so thanks for the score… May we all keep going with good intentions at heart and meet in heaven.
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