In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful.

Among the writings of Shaykh al-Islam—may Allah have mercy on him—on the diseases of the heart and their cures:

All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may Allah bless our Prophet Muhammad, his Companions, and grant him peace.

We have explained elsewhere that a person’s well-being lies in justice, just as his ruin lies in wrongdoing. Allah, exalted is He, created man upon justice and due proportion. The soundness and health of the body result from the balance of its humors and organs, whereas illness stems from their deviation and imbalance. The same holds true for the heart: its uprightness, balance, moderation, soundness, health, and righteousness are inseparable.

Allah mentions the sickness of hearts and their healing in several places in His Book, and the Sunnah of His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) does likewise. Among His words, exalted be He, are the following:

• Concerning the hypocrites in al-Baqarah: “In their hearts is a disease, so Allah has increased their disease” (2:10).
• “You see those in whose hearts is a disease racing toward them” (5:52).
• In al-Tawbah: “He will heal the breasts of a believing people and remove the anger in their hearts” (9:14–15).
• In Yunus: “There has come to you an admonition from your Lord and a healing for what is in the breasts” (10:57).
• In al-Isrāʾ: “We send down of the Quran that which is healing and mercy for the believers” (17:82).
• In Fuṣṣilat: “Say: It is, for those who believe, guidance and healing” (41:44).
• In al-Aḥzāb: “Do not be soft in speech, lest he in whose heart is a disease should covet (you)” (33:32).
• Also in al-Aḥzāb: “If the hypocrites, those in whose hearts is a disease, and the alarm-mongers in Madinah do not desist, We shall indeed incite you against them” (33:60).
• And: “When the hypocrites and those in whose hearts is a disease said, ‘Allah and His Messenger promised us nothing but delusion’” (33:12).

The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Why did they not ask when they did not know? The cure for ignorance is to ask.”

Al-Rashīd once remarked, “Now you have cured me, O Mālik.”

In Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī it is narrated from Ibn Masʿūd that “a person remains upon goodness as long as he fears Allah; and when he is uncertain about the interpretation of something, he asks another who clarifies it for him—yet a time may soon come when he will find no one.”

By Him besides whom there is no deity! What Allah has mentioned regarding the sickness of hearts and their remedies stands on the same footing as what He has mentioned regarding their death and life, their hearing and sight and intellect, as well as their deafness, muteness, and blindness. Our concern here, however, is the disease of the heart.

We therefore say: disease is of two kinds—(1) corruption of perception, and (2) corruption of natural movement together with what is connected to it of volitional movement.