– Truthfulness in speech: that a person speak the truth and affirm it in his own heart.
– Truthfulness in deeds: to strive to perfect one’s actions and execute them with excellence.
• Falsehood is whatever contradicts all of the above.
Because of this, truth and falsehood have varying levels: “A servant continues to tell the truth and to seek it out until he is recorded with Allah as a ṣiddīq, and a servant continues to lie and to pursue lying until he is recorded with Allah as a liar.” (1)

• Justice (ʿadl) and wrongdoing (ẓulm):
  • Justice means treading the straight, balanced path in beliefs, character, words, and deeds, just as was said regarding truthfulness.
  • Wrongdoing is whatever violates that.
  Accordingly, wrongdoing falls into three categories, each one negating justice:
  – Wrongdoing in monotheism by associating partners with Allah; the Exalted says: “Indeed, association is a tremendous injustice” (Luqmān 31:13).
  – Wronging people in their lives, their property, their honor, and their rights.
  – A servant’s wrongdoing against his own self in matters short of polytheism.
  A person attains complete justice only when he abandons all these forms, repents to his Lord for whatever of them he has committed, and restores people’s rights to them. For this reason, upholding the entirety of the religion is itself justice and equity.

• Worship (ʿibādah) and servitude to Allah: a comprehensive term for everything Allah loves and approves of—beliefs, deeds of the heart, and deeds of the limbs. Every action or avoidance that brings a person nearer to Allah is an act of worship; thus, one who refrains from a sin for Allah’s sake is worshipping and drawing close to his Lord thereby. Worship is only perfected through sincerity.