Intention: why and how do we care?

First of all, intention is only for Allah. We can’t read others mind for intention as it’s between them and Allah.

We judge people by their actions and Allah judges us by our Intention. 

Actions are judged by our intention (allam albinniyah)

Intention doesn’t justify the means.

Why would we care of others intention is right or wrong? After all it’s between them and Allah. 

We cannot bad suspect because it’s haram according to Sura Al-Hujurat

I argue that it matters. Because people will not only bring forth their actions in front of us but try to influence us or even pursue us to do something or go to their direction of intention. That could be benign or harmful. If it’s harmful for us, then we need to protect us from that harm. However, if it’s benign, then it will waste our valuable time and keep us away from our higher purpose of life. Examples of benign intention are: vain chatting to fill the moments, “time pass”, 

However, when it’s harmful, then we ought to be careful, extremely careful. Remember! the Iblis? What did it do? It came and advised Adam and Eve by swearing by Allah that he is their well wisher! Had Adam and Eve understood Satan’s true intention that is to misguide humans, they wouldn’t have followed Iblis, right? So it’s important to understand what they intended for. 

So, it’s important to understand the intention of someone who comes to you privately or publicly and pursue you towards steer one direction or another: what is the intent behind the person’s actions?

Now the biggest question and challenge is, how do we understand the intention? It seems very complicated at the outset but it’s rather not that difficult. Here’s a logical explanation on how to deduce intention from actions:

• Follow the trail where the person came from. How do you do that? You look into the person’s past actions for consistency. If you see them contradicting themselves and doing different things than their current preaching, then that gives out the first clue. For example: if someone says that we shouldn’t be racist and bigot but they make fun of other ethnicities then be aware.
• When they change position on a certain things, did they repent or cleared them up publicly? Not when they are caught red handed but proactively. However, even when they are forced to accept or repent, it’s better than not doing it. You can give that person a grace mark for that instead of a negative marking.
• What do they gain from their preaching? For example, someone is asking you to go to their YouTube channel for the sake of Allah and withholding the information that they live off of advertising on that channel. That could be withholding that information or make that information so obscure that it’s not easy to identify that. You may ask that if they don’t earn then how would they live their life? For that , You should see their lifestyle: are they just living their life or living a lavish life compared to the society? If I drive a Tesla or a Maserati car instead of a regular car off of my preaching of Islamic life then it’s a clear warning sign. Look at the life of our beloved prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and his khulafa-e-rashedun’s life. If they don’t think that they should live such a humble living, then they should find other professions where they can make tons of money to live that lavish lifestyle. There are tons of professions that are well paying and nobody would care about asking their intention as the intentions are pretty prevalent from those professions: that is to make money and live a lavish lofe.
• Do they humble themselves and accept their mistakes with humility? If you see them doing repeatedly the same acceptance of mistakes without rectifying as they had promised, then it’s a sign to consider questioning their intentions. Mark Zuckerberg is one example who repeatedly goes to Senate hearing and keep accepting that Facebook dod not uphold users privacy for years and will rectify its security and data privacy but keep doing the same thing again and again: apologizing and repeating the profiteering from selling users privacy.
• As a Muslim, do they connect to Allah privately? It’s very important that if someone is preaching to you for the sake of Allah and all they are doing is publicly visible actions without spending time privately to connect to Allah then it’s a sign of contaminated intentions. Remember the Hadith of a martyr, scholar and charitable person? They all did those great acts of worshipping publicly so that people praise them and they gained from those praises in this world. Allah exposed them in the day of judgement and drags them to the fore of hell. Now the question is, how can you determine if they are connecting to Allah privately? After all, they are doing privately, right? I think you can see it if you are introspective. Think about a person is going to gym privately in his house’s basement and practices healthy life style. Wouldn’t you see the person, for instance, walk differently with a more strength and upright postures, look different in terms of body shape, and stay relatively healthier a few months before and after that? I bet yes. So, similarly you should see the person is more content, more composed, more confident, more humble, more kind, more happy, more reliable, more patient, more relying on Allah, less distressed rather than more irritated, more backbiting, more impatient, more unkind, more reliant on people, more distressed, etc.
• How their life and family style reflects of their preaching? If someone is preaching for healthy lifestyle and they live off of unhealthy choices. Someone advises you to be kind to your family and that person is worst to their family member. Then those are warning signs. A person preaching healthy life style or being kind to family should be living a healthy life and be nice to their own family first and foremost.
• Conflict of interest: this should be the ultimate litmus test if you should be doubting their intention or not. How do you do that. It’s rather easy. See if the outcome of their preaching disproportionally increase their material gains. For example, if someone is suggesting you to stay in a particular hotel without disclosing that they own shares of that hotel or a doctor sends you to a diagnostic facility for a blood lab test from where they gets a commission for each lab work or when you’re the owner of a company and you ask your employee to work dedication for the company as if it’s their own company but you don’t add them to the ownership share, etc. However, if they disclose their gains clearly first before advising so, then it doesn’t fall under conflict of interest.

Now, if you say that: hey, it’s a lot of work to check all of the above, then I would argue that either you consider the advises are trivial in your life or you are oblivious about consequences of following their advice. Whatever the reason could be but thats not a good sign of someone who is in control of their own life’s affairs. And you have more important things to solve in your life than verifying others intention behind their actions that’s impacting you. 

Finally, I would like remind to you and myself the quote from Ali Ibn Aboutaleb (Allah is pleased with him): “Do not seek for the truth by means of me , rather find the truth first and then you will recognize who follows it.”