The Shaykh’s comment on the saying, "The outward appearance is the title of the inward reality."

Because the outward appearance is the title of the inward reality, some people may imagine that this phrase—"the outward appearance is the title of the inward reality"—is a Sufi saying. And part of the misconception among some people is also thinking that anything some Sufis say is what? Rejected in Islam. That is not the case. They are a group of Muslims who are held accountable and judged like others; they are weighed by the scale of the Shari'ah. So this phrase, too, should be weighed by the scale of the Shari'ah. "The outward appearance is the title of the inward reality"—is this a true statement or a false one? We say: No, it is a true statement. That is because there are many hadiths that confirm this meaning. Among the most famous of these hadiths is his saying (peace and blessings be upon him) in the hadith of al-Nu'man ibn Bashir (may Allah be pleased with him), the beginning of which is: to the end of it. Then he said (peace and blessings be upon him): . So the soundness of the outward appearance is due to the soundness of the inward reality. But among the subtle, unseen wonders that we would not have known had we not been given this lenient Shari'ah is that both the outward and the inward interact and cooperate. If the heart becomes sound, the outward appearance becomes sound. If the outward appearance becomes sound, the heart gains strength, and so on. Therefore, we arrive at a very important conclusion: every Muslim who cares about the rulings of his religion must attend to his outward appearance just as he attends to his inward reality. He should not say, as the ignorant do, when you order him to do what Allah has made obligatory upon them, such as prayer, for example. He says to you, "My brother, the point is not the prayer; the point is what is in the heart." The answer, which you now know, is: if his heart were sound and correct, his limbs would exude what indicates the soundness of his heart. But the reality is the exact opposite. He says, "The point is what is in the heart." Well, the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) says: . So we must care about rectifying the outward appearances just as we care about rectifying the inward realities. And we must not be deceived by this phrase, which comes from some of the ignorant, that the point is only what is in the inward reality. No, because the outward and the inward are interconnected and cooperate with the strongest cooperation; one strengthens the other. As we mentioned earlier, for this reason, one of the etiquettes of gatherings of knowledge is closeness, because this phenomenon is a phenomenon... that has a connection to the heart.