I recently came across a video by a girl named Aisyah, and she spoke about something that I

haven’t been able to stop thinking about — the importance of sincerity as a Muslim, and

what it really means to check the intention behind everything you do. This is a breakdown of

what she said, and my own reflections on it.

All I do on this earth is worry.

I worry about a lot of things. My future, my relationships, how I’m perceived, whether I’m

doing enough, whether I’m being enough. But there’s one thing I’ve realised I don’t worry

about nearly as much as I should — and that’s my niyyat. My intentions. My sincerity.

And that scares me.

Imam Sufyan ibn ‘Uyaynah, an Islamic scholar from the 8th century, once said something

that has stayed with me: “The most difficult disease that I still haven’t found a cure for is my

intention.”

This is a man who dedicated his entire life to knowledge, to worship, to God — and he

couldn’t get a handle on his own niyyat. And here I am, barely scratching the surface of

what it means to be sincere, thinking I’m fine.

Another scholar from the same era, Imam Sufyan al-Thawri, noted that niyyat changes so

rapidly, and yet so discreetly. It mutates quietly, almost imperceptibly, beneath the surface

of what we think we’re doing. You don’t always feel it shift. But shift it does.

There’s a hadith that I find genuinely terrifying. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ spoke about the

first three people to be cast into Jahannam on the Day of Judgment. Not the worst of

criminals. Not the most obvious sinners. The first three are: a martyr, a scholar, and a

generous man.

Each of them is brought before Allah. Each of them is reminded of the blessings they were

given. And each of them gives an answer that sounds, on the surface, completely righteous.

I fought and died for your sake.I learned and taught the Quran for your sake.

I gave and gave and gave for your sake.

And each time, the answer comes back: You lied.

Not because they didn’t do those things. They did. But because buried underneath the deed

was a different intention altogether — the desire to be seen. To be talked about. To be called

brave, knowledgeable, generous. And they got exactly what they wanted. They got their

reward — from the people. So there was nothing left for them from Allah.

What this hadith is not saying is that every scholar, every martyr, every philanthropist is

secretly rotten. It’s also not saying that it’s safer to avoid big deeds than to risk doing them

insincerely — that kind of thinking is its own trap.

What it is saying is that the intention behind the deed matters enormously. Profoundly. In

ways we often underestimate.

And the thing about niyyat is that it doesn’t stay still. It’s not something you set at the

beginning of an action and then forget about. It mutates. It drifts. It gets contaminated

slowly, quietly, by ego, by the desire for validation, by the slow creep of wanting people to

notice.

If we’re not careful — and I mean genuinely, actively careful — the things we do “for the sake

of Allah” might not be for the sake of Allah anymore. The actions might look the same from

the outside. But the engine driving them has changed.

I think about this in mundane, everyday moments too.

Why did I fix my posture just then? Was it because my crush walked in? Why am I reading on

the train — do I actually want to read, or do I want to look like someone who reads? Why did

I post that? Did I want someone specific to see it?

We live in a world that is absolutely saturated with performativity. Performative men.

Performative intellectualism. Performative wellness. And yes — performative Muslims. It is

entirely possible to pray, to fast, to post Quran verses, to speak about deen, and to be doing

all of it, at least in part, for an audience. I can be a performative Muslim. You can be a

performative Muslim. The line between sincerity and performance is thinner than we’d like

to admit, and it moves.

So what do we do?We clock ourselves. Constantly. We interrogate our intentions not once at the start of a

deed, but over and over again, at the same rate at which those intentions can mutate. We

ask ourselves: What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Who am I doing this for?

And we have to be honest. Brutally, uncomfortably honest.

Because imagine standing before Allah on the Day of Judgment — in front of the entirety of

humanity, every person who ever lived — and hearing: “The things you did were not for Me.”

There’s no backpedalling from that. There’s no clarification you can offer, no context you

can add. That moment of exposure, in front of everyone, is final.

So we do the interrogation now. We confront ourselves now. We sit with the discomfort of

our own mixed motives now — before we are confronted with them somewhere we can no

longer do anything about it.

The Prophet ﷺ said it himself, in what scholars widely consider the most important hadith:

actions are by intentions, and every person will have what they intended.

You will get what you want. The question is just — what do you actually want?

I think what struck me most about Aisyah’s video is how she didn’t frame this as something

that only applies to the obviously pious — the scholars, the activists, the very visibly

religious. She made it personal. She made it mundane. The same niyyat problem that

brought a martyr to his knees on the Day of Judgment is the same one operating in you

when you adjust how you’re sitting because someone attractive just walked in. It’s the same

mechanism. Just different stakes.

And I think that’s the most sobering part of all of this. It’s not that we’re bad people trying to

do bad things. Most of us genuinely want to do good. We want to be sincere. We want our

deeds to count. But sincerity isn’t a one-time decision — it’s a practice. A constant, daily,

sometimes exhausting practice of catching yourself, questioning yourself, and redirecting

yourself back to what actually matters.

The niyyat will drift. That’s almost guaranteed. The goal isn’t to achieve some perfect,

unshakeable purity of intention and then coast on it forever. The goal is to keep checking.

Keep catching it. Keep asking — who is this actually for?

Rinse and repeat. Again and again, for the rest of your life.

That’s the work. And honestly? It might be the most important work any of us ever do.

Credit & full watch: Aisyah’s original video — highly recommend if this resonated with you

https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSmfXqLHh