DAILYREFLECTION
“And they were commanded only to worship Allah, being sincere to Him in religion.”
There is a kind of worship that now feels unfinished until it is posted.
The Umrah carousel. The donation screenshot. The verse shared at the perfect hour.
Each one is real. Each one is good. And each one quietly collects a new currency the previous generation never had to handle: the like, as a fresh form of applause.
The platform pays in exactly the coin the ego craves.
So underneath the first question, "is Allah watching," a second one slips in. "Who else will see."
That second question has a name. Riya: worship performed to be seen.
It travels with a quieter cousin. Ujb, the small swell of self-admiration that arrives after the deed, when no one is watching at all.
Riya stains the intention going in. Ujb spoils the fruit coming out.
The nafs is rarely cleverer than this. It does not fight our prayer. It climbs inside it and asks for credit.
We say this gently, because the answer is not fear.
The fix is not to delete the account or hide every good deed. Leaving a deed for the sake of people, the scholars said, is itself riya, just wearing a humbler coat.
The work is to keep a private layer underneath the visible one.
A secret charity. A night prayer. A dua no one hears.
And to notice the moment a deed feels incomplete until it is shared, then to do it anyway, unshared.
Building in public is fine. The danger is when it quietly becomes worshipping in public.
The lamp burns brightest where no one looks.
Reflect on this: Which of your good deeds would still feel worth doing if no one would ever know you did it?
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Yusuf was seven, and Yusuf loved to help.
When he carried the bin out for his neighbor, Mrs. Khan, he waited by the gate until she came to the window.
“Did you see, Mrs. Khan?” he called. “I carried the bin all by myself!”
“Masha’Allah, Yusuf,” she said. “Such a good boy.”
Yusuf grew taller just from the words.
That night at dinner, his older sister Maryam noticed him quietly counting on his fingers.
“What are you counting?” she asked.
“All my good deeds today,” Yusuf said proudly. “I helped Mrs. Khan, AND I shared my snack, AND I picked up Baba’s keys. Everybody saw me. I’m probably the best helper on our whole street.”
Maryam smiled, but it was a thinking kind of smile.
“Yusuf,” she said gently, “do you help so people will say ‘good boy’? Or do you help for Allah?”
Yusuf stopped. He hadn’t thought about that.
“Both, I think,” he whispered.
“Try something,” said Maryam. “Tomorrow, do one good thing, and tell nobody. Not me. Not Mrs. Khan. Not even Baba. Make it a secret between you and Allah.”
The next morning, Yusuf saw Mrs. Khan’s flowerpots were thirsty. Quietly, with no one watching, he filled his little cup again and again and gave every plant a drink. Then he tiptoed home and said nothing.
It felt strange. There was no “good boy.” No one grew taller from words.
But there was something else, something warm and quiet, right in the middle of his chest.
“Maryam,” he said that night, “I did the secret deed. And it felt… different. Better, almost. Like it was only mine and Allah’s.”
“That feeling,” said Maryam, “is called ikhlas. It means doing good just for Allah. The deeds people see, you share with people. The secret ones, you keep for Allah. And those are the most special of all.”
Yusuf nodded slowly. From then on, he still helped where people could see him.
But he always, always kept one good deed a secret.