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differs from the Sunni method.
The sayings also include references, on occasion, to the idea of how many hassanat a person can
accumulate for undertaking certain acts, or uttering certain verses of the Quran, or other invocations.
In our age, you are going to come across people who only look at the world in terms of hassanat
and sayiat. They paint every action, and thought, in terms of black or white, permitted or not
permitted. And they count—most probably subconsciously—the good points that they are collecting
throughout the day.
* * *
Where does this take us? How far does it move us in the direction of morally worthy acts? I find that
it is useful in so far as it points us in the right direction. However, it also limits us if we don’t think
about it more broadly. If you expand the use of hassanat and sayiat to all spheres of life, you tend to
forget about appreciating the moment in which you are living, and you enter a kind of moral
accounting or arithmetic of religion.
Now you might think that this is noble and worthy—and it is. But don’t forget that accounting for
things in life is a way of keeping track of activity. The importance of life is not the accounting but the
activities that we engage in. Don’t be a moral penny-pincher. If you are focused on the general arc of
your moral life, no amount of hassanat will be able to compete with a life lived with uncounted acts
of kindness and generosity. Rather than counting your hassanat, give of your goodness freely. The
points system is a framework and a starting point, but imagine how generous a person can be if he or
she is not counting the points they gain by doing certain acts. If you can let go of your personal ethical
point-scoring, then you will likely have reached a higher ethical state within Islam.
Think of the system of hassanat and sayiat as the framework for your principled and selfless
action. Points fit in well with the question-and-answer approach to moral conduct, which uses
questions such as, Is this halal or haram—allowed by Islam or not? The balanced, principled person I
want you to become no longer needs to ask these questions because he or she has absorbed the
appropriate principles of behavior. In this state, you know the elegant and consistent way in which
Allah’s principles operate in new and diverse spheres of life that no one in seventh-century Arabia
could have imagined. At this stage of knowledge and behavior, I expect you to be and feel more
complete. And your values are more integrated with one another and displayed in your daily actions,
rather than in just your daily accounting.