the envious person. Jacob said to Joseph—peace be upon them both: “Do not relate your vision to your brothers, lest they devise a plot against you” 1, to the end of the verse.

These, then, are some of the immense benefits and noble fruits that result from concealing one’s remembrance and not voicing it aloud. Through them, the Muslim can see the importance of concealing supplication and offering it privately, as opposed to voicing and proclaiming it openly, which produces the opposite effects.

Shaykh al-Islām—may Allah have mercy on him—then drew a useful comparison between remembrance and supplication in this regard, after explaining that each of them encompasses and falls within the other. He—may Allah have mercy on him—said: “Reflect on how [the Most High] says in the verse concerning remembrance: ‘Remember your Lord within yourself, with humility and fear’ 2, whereas in the verse concerning supplication He says: ‘Call upon your Lord with humility and in private’ 3. He mentions humility in both, meaning self-abasement, meekness, and brokenness before Allah. This is the very spirit of remembrance and supplication.

“He specifically associates supplication with privacy because of the wisdoms we have mentioned and others besides them, while He specifically associates remembrance with fear because one who remembers Allah needs fear. Remembrance necessarily entails love and brings it forth; anyone who remembers Allah abundantly will inevitably find that it produces love of Him. Yet unless love is joined with fear, it does not benefit its possessor but rather harms him, because it leads to laxity … Nothing preserves Allah’s limits and sacred prohibitions—and nothing enables those seeking to reach Him to do so—like fear of Him, hope in Him, and love for Him. Whenever the heart is devoid of these three, it becomes so corrupt that no reform can be hoped for