Taqwa

Photo Credit: Pienw (Flickr)

The first practical step to gaining taqwa is accountability, known as muhasabah in Arabic; taking account of your actions. We see this concept from the beginning of Islamic history.:

In the Qur’an

In Surah Al-Hashr, Allah says:

يا ايها الذين امنوا اتقوا الله ولتنظر نفس ما قدمت لغد واتقوا الله ان الله خبير بما تعملون

Translation: O you who have believed, fear Allah . And let every soul look to what it has put forth for tomorrow – and fear Allah . Indeed, Allah is Acquainted with what you do. (Surah Hashr, verse 18)

The following is a guest post from I Got it Covered, a blog about hijab, Islam, and life. You can find the original article here.

In the time of ‘Umar ibn Al-Khattab, radiAllahu anhu, the second Khalifah, it was mandatory upon all the young girls to learn Surat an-Noor.

From the beauty of this Surah is that it begins with, “[This is] a surah which We have sent down and made [that within it] obligatory and revealed therein verses of clear evidence that you might remember” [Surat an-Noor: 1]. Although the whole Qur’an is obligatory upon us, this Surah begins with that commandment, as a special reminder. And then, later on in the Surah, comes the commandment of hijab [see Surat an-Noor: 31].

Imagine this. You are speeding on the road. The police officer catches you, pulls you over and gives you a speeding ticket.  What would your reaction be, next time you are driving especially driving through the same road. You would naturally slow down! Or you are stealing from your prayer (i.e. racing through it), you glance over and it seems like your friends might be looking at you. Your reaction…. In these and in countless other situations, we refrain from doing bad because we fear that we might be caught or someone might be looking at us. Most of the times, we are not even full 100% sure and yet we change our behavior.  But how about Allah, the ever watchful, who we know with certainty is always watching us. How much are we aware of Him? Lets look at some examples: