The Prophet (SAW) said: “When one commits a sin, a black spot appears on his heart. When he refrains from it, seeks forgiveness, and repents, his heart is polished clean. But if he returns to it, it increases until it covers his heart., and this the Ran which Allah mentioned: ‘No, but on their hearts is the Ran which they earned.’” (Al-Mutaffifin: 14)
We all have setbacks in our lives. Our journey to Allah will have its setbacks as well. The Hadith teaches that we always have the power, with Allah’s help, to transcend our mistakes and erase them from our hearts. If we don’t, they will grow to destroy our hearts and lives.
The Prophet (SAW) teaches us in this hadith that sins affect our hearts. Each sin deposits a black dot into the heart, the size of each is in proportion to the severity of the sin. To understand the damaging effects of sins, consider what happened to the Black Stone in this hadith. The Prophet (SAW) said: “The Black Stone came down from Heaven and was whiter than milk but the sins of the children of Adam blackened it.” (Tirmidhi)
If this is what sins can do to a stone, imagine what they do to a living and beating heart! Interestingly, sins have an effect on the environment around us. Sins even harm non-living objects, depriving the world of its beauty and blessings. The absence of peace, the rise of conflict and crime, lack of blessings in our harvests and societies, all these are our sins speaking back to us and announcing our moral failures.
Like the lost beauty and purity of the Black Stone, we lose our beauty, purity, and shine with each sin. Each sin is a black dot on a white cloth, a spot of rust on a shiny surface. Sin does not only bring Hell in the next life but a hellish existence on this earth as well. Sin steals away joy from our lives. It imprisons us in our anxieties and fears, in our dissatisfactions and anger, and steals us away from Allah.
How can we find comfort and beauty away from Allah, the source of all comfort and beauty? Sin blocks us from seeing the truth and loving it; it makes us more inclined towards corruption, shaitan, and our desires. With each sin, we lose more of our sincerity and iman, even our potential for iman and understanding of the truth diminishes.
The black marks on the heart are invisible but their effect on our lives is unmissable. When life seems dark, even though there is no major problem in your life, you should trace this feeling back to these dots. When the reminders of the Qur’an and hadith fail to move you, you should link this to the iman in your heart. When you find your comfort and happiness in what Allah hates and not in what Allah loves, you should attribute this to the weakness of your heart. Sins even leave their mark on the faces of the impious, covering them with gloom and stealing their beauty and light.
When enough of these pile up, they completely block our path to Allah. This is the Ran that the Hadith and the Qur’an speak about. Ran is covering, a layer, a membrane that surrounds the heart. It is like rust on a smooth and shiny surface. The more of it, the more that it conceals and distorts. Allah (SWT) said: “When Our ayats are recited to him he says: ‘Tale of the ancients.’ No, but what they earned has covered their hearts.” (Al-Mutaffifin: 13-14)
Allah explains in these ayats that their rejection of the truth happened because of the sins that overwhelmed their hearts. These sins stood between them and Allah and prevented them from loving and following His guidance. Their constant rejection of the truth and disobedience contributed to their misguidance. Though these ayats are describing the disbelievers, Muslims have to worry about the possibility of their sins eventually leading to a similar fate. In the state of Ran, sin becomes a habit, the heart gets so used to it that it not only fails to reject it but misses it when it’s absent. If we experience similar emotions, we have to realize that some sins have left deep marks on our hearts.
The hadith mentions three things that polish the heart and return it to its health: stop the wrong we are doing, ask Allah for forgiveness, and repent. Taubah (repentance) embeds in it the sense of regretting the act and intending never go to back to it. This treatment is the cleansing that eviscerates the trace of sin. Just like when we wash our clothes or polish our valuables, taubah restores the brilliance of our iman and the energy of the living heart. Taubah is needed constantly, a daily and even hourly obligation of returning to Allah and asking for forgiveness. We need it because we make mistakes all the time and we need this cleanse to maintain the soundness of our hearts. This is why the Prophet (SAW) explains in another hadith that he repented to Allah a hundred times every day.
The heart is like a mirror, and when it is clear, it presents an honest reflection of the world around it. It sees the truth as such and falsehood as such, without distortions or exaggerations. When rust starts to cover the mirror, it loses its ability to honest representation; you only see the ugliness of the rust every time you look. This rusty mirror fails to reflect reality as a rusty heart fails to see the truth.
The clean heart is very sensitive to sin. Any small sin bothers it because sin contradicts its imanic nature; the heart is naturally repulsed by it. The heart can move to become hypersensitive to sin, sensing it even when there are no clear signs of it. The heart can feel that there is something wrong when the senses cannot yet detect or anticipate it. This internal suspicion is not reliable enough on its own to prove the sinfulness of something, but it can be a sign that Allah grants to His pious worshippers to protect and guide them. But this heart is reserved for those who are very close to Allah. When the heart surrenders to its Creator, Allah guides and protects this heart in ways that escape our expectations and comprehension. May Allah grant these hearts and protect us from all evil.
by Dr. Ali Al-Barghouthi
