Chapter 68
Scrupulous Piety (warʿ) and the Avoidance of Doubtful Matters

Allah the Exalted says, “You imagined it to be insignificant, yet in the sight of Allah it is tremendous” (Q 24:15); and He also says, “Indeed, your Lord is ever on the lookout” (Q 89:14).

Explanation
The author al-Nawawī—may Allah have mercy on him—in his Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn entitled this section “Scrupulous Piety and the Avoidance of Doubtful Matters.”

Many people confuse warʿ (scrupulous piety) with zuhd (ascetic renunciation). Ibn al-Qayyim—may Allah have mercy on him—clarified the distinction in his book al-Rūḥ: warʿ is to leave whatever harms one in the Hereafter, whereas zuhd is to leave whatever brings no benefit. Therefore, the rank of zuhd is higher than that of warʿ. Warʿ requires a person to abandon what is harmful, while zuhd requires him to abandon what is of no benefit. In sum, things fall into three categories: harmful, beneficial, and neither harmful nor beneficial.

The ascetic (zāhid) forsakes two of these categories: he avoids what is harmful and turns away from what is neither beneficial nor harmful, acting only upon that which is beneficial. The scrupulous person (mutawarriʿ) avoids just one category—the harmful—while he engages in what is beneficial and in what is neutral.

Because of this, the station of the zāhid is loftier than that of the mutawarriʿ, even though the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Warʿ, at its core, is to avoid what is harmful, and that includes steering clear of doubtful matters—whether the doubt concerns their legal ruling or their very reality. The first type is uncertainty about the ruling