Deen: A Manual for the Muslim

The Arabic word deen shares its root with dayn, debt. The classical lexicon Lisan al-Arab gathers the senses of the root: recompense, obedience, custom, a way owed.

Al-Fatiha, the opening chapter of the Quran, names Allah Master of Yawm ad-Deen, the Day of Recompense, the day accounts settle (Quran 1:4). Read the two together and the word teaches itself. Life arrives as a loan: breath, time, body, provision. Deen is the repayment schedule. The Day of Deen is the audit.

Allah named the system Himself, in a verse revealed during the Farewell Pilgrimage:

ٱلْيَوْمَ أَكْمَلْتُ لَكُمْ دِينَكُمْ وَأَتْمَمْتُ عَلَيْكُمْ نِعْمَتِى وَرَضِيتُ لَكُمُ ٱلْإِسْلَـٰمَ دِينًا

Al-yawma akmaltu lakum dīnakum wa atmamtu ʿalaykum niʿmatī wa raḍītu lakumu-l-islāma dīnā

"The deen with Allah is Islam" (Quran 3:19). Islam means submission. Submission is the deen's proper name.

The Architecture

Its blueprint was delivered in a single sitting. A stranger in white arrived at the Prophet Muhammad's gathering, peace be upon him, sat knee to knee with him, and asked four questions. What is islam: testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is His Messenger, establish the prayer, pay the zakat (the wealth due), fast Ramadan (the month of fasting), make hajj (the pilgrimage) to the House if able. What is iman (conviction): belief in Allah, His angels, His books, His messengers, the Last Day, and the decree. What is ihsan (excellence): to worship Allah as though you see Him, for if you do not see Him, He sees you. When the stranger left, the Prophet turned to his companions.

That was Jibril. He came to teach you your deen.

So the deen carries a skeleton of practice, a spine of belief, and a spirit graded by presence. This manual concerns the practice. The practice carries the rest.

The Engine

Actions are only by intentions, and every man has what he intended.

Al-Bukhari opened his entire collection with this sentence, and it is the mechanism of the whole system. The same meal, the same sale, the same night of sleep either registers as worship or does not, and niyya (intention) is the switch. Flip it and the mundane converts. This is how a deen can govern table manners and inheritance in the same breath as prayer: with intention, all of it is prayer carried into other rooms.

The Clock

Five anchors hold the day: fajr before sunrise, dhuhr past midday, asr in the afternoon, maghrib at sunset, isha at night. "The head of the matter is Islam, and its pillar is the prayer" (Tirmidhi).

إِنَّ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ كَانَتْ عَلَى ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ كِتَـٰبًا مَّوْقُوتًا

Inna-ṣ-ṣalāta kānat ʿalā-l-muʾminīna kitāban mawqūtā

The Prophet compared the five to a river running past your door in which you wash five times a day: no filth remains (Bukhari and Muslim). The week has its anchor in jumu'ah (the Friday congregation): when the call sounds, trade stops; when the prayer ends, the earth opens again for His bounty (Quran 62:9-10). The year has Ramadan and the zakat. The life has hajj. Day, week, year, life: four nested clocks, each wound by worship. The manual below walks the same line a life walks, waking to burial.

Sleep and Waking

1. Go to bed on wudu (the ritual washing made for prayer). The Prophet taught al-Bara ibn Azib: make wudu as for prayer, then lie down on your right side (Bukhari and Muslim).

2. Dust the bedding off first. You were away, and you were not watching it (Bukhari and Muslim).

3. Recite Ayat al-Kursi, the Throne Verse (Quran 2:255). A guard from Allah stays over you until morning (Bukhari).

4. Last words: "Bismika Allahumma amutu wa ahya." In Your name, O Allah, I die and I live (Bukhari).

5. First words on waking: "Alhamdu lillahil-ladhi ahyana ba'da ma amatana wa ilayhin-nushur." Praise to Allah who gave us life after He made us die, and to Him is the rising (Bukhari).

6. The Quran calls sleep a taking of the soul (Quran 39:42). The deen treats every night as a small death and every morning as a small resurrection, and it puts those exact words in your mouth.

The Body

"Purity is half of iman" (Muslim).

1. Wudu before prayer: wash the face, the arms to the elbows, wipe the head, wash the feet (Quran 5:6).

2. Ghusl (the full bath) after marital relations, and the Friday bath before jumu'ah (Bukhari).

3. Keep the fitrah (the natural constitution): clip the nails, trim the mustache, clean the teeth with the siwak (the tooth-stick), wash with water after relieving yourself. The Prophet listed these among ten practices of the fitrah (Muslim).

4. The right hand is for honor: eating, giving, greeting. The left hand does the cleaning (Bukhari and Muslim).

5. Entering the toilet: "Allahumma inni a'udhu bika minal-khubthi wal-khaba'ith." O Allah, I seek refuge in You from the foul male and female spirits (Bukhari and Muslim).

Dress

1. Cover the awrah (what must stay covered). The jurists' working minimum for a man runs navel to knee. For a woman, the majority position covers all but the face and hands, with the khimar (the headcover) drawn over the chest (Quran 24:31) and an outer garment when she goes out (Quran 33:59).

2. Men wear no silk and no gold (Bukhari and Muslim on silk; Abu Dawud and an-Nasa'i carry the wording "haram for the males of my umma (community), halal for its females").

3. Begin on the right side. He loved the right in his purification, his combing, and his sandals (Bukhari and Muslim).

4. Nothing trails in arrogance. Allah will not look at the one who drags his garment out of pride (Bukhari and Muslim).

5. "Allah is beautiful and loves beauty. Pride is rejecting the truth and looking down on people" (Muslim). So dress clean and dress well, inside the other law: "Take your adornment at every masjid (place of prayer), and eat and drink, and do not be excessive" (Quran 7:31).

Food

"Eat of what is on the earth halal and tayyib," lawful and wholesome (Quran 2:168).

1. The table protocol fits in one sentence, the one the Prophet gave the boy Umar ibn Abi Salama: say Bismillah (in the name of Allah), eat with your right hand, eat from what is in front of you (Bukhari and Muslim).

2. If the bismillah slips your mind, recover it mid-meal: "Bismillahi awwalahu wa akhirahu." In Allah's name at its beginning and at its end (Abu Dawud and Tirmidhi).

3. The ceiling: "The son of Adam fills no vessel worse than his stomach. Enough for the son of Adam are morsels that keep his spine upright. If he must, then a third for food, a third for drink, a third for breath" (Tirmidhi).

4. Off the table entirely: carrion, blood, swine, whatever was consecrated to other than Allah (Quran 5:3), and every intoxicant, which the Quran files alongside gambling as filth from the work of shaytan (Satan) (Quran 5:90).

5. The food is never insulted. He never once criticized a meal. He ate, or he left it (Bukhari and Muslim).

6. Close with praise. Allah is pleased with the servant who eats a meal and praises Him for it, drinks a drink and praises Him for it (Muslim).

7. One month a year, Ramadan puts the appetite itself under command (Quran 2:183-185).

Greeting and Speech

1. The greeting is assigned: As-salamu alaykum, peace be upon you. Spread it. The Prophet chained the logic: no Paradise without iman, no iman until you love one another, and love spreads through the salam (Muslim).

2. Answer better or answer equal: "When you are greeted with a greeting, respond with a better one or return it" (Quran 4:86).

3. Order of initiative: the rider greets the walker, the walker greets the seated, the few greet the many (Bukhari and Muslim).

4. The filter on the tongue: speak good or stay silent (Bukhari and Muslim).

5. Backbiting is named for what it is: eating the flesh of your dead brother (Quran 49:12).

6. "Truthfulness leads to birr (righteousness), and birr leads to Paradise" (Bukhari and Muslim).

7. The sneeze has a liturgy. The sneezer says alhamdulillah (praise to Allah). The hearer answers yarhamukallah (Allah have mercy on you). The sneezer returns yahdikumullahu wa yuslihu balakum (Allah guide you and set your affairs right) (Bukhari).

8. Promises are load-bearing. The marks of the hypocrite: he lies when he speaks, breaks what he promises, betrays what he is trusted with (Bukhari and Muslim).

The Home, the Parents, the Blood

1. Enter with salam: "When you enter houses, greet one another with a greeting from Allah, blessed and good" (Quran 24:61).

2. Bismillah at the door and bismillah at the food leave shaytan announcing to his kind: no lodging here and no supper (Muslim).

3. Parents rank directly after the worship of Allah in the same verse: worship none but Him, and to parents, excellence. No word of contempt, not even "uff." Lower to them the wing of humility and pray: "My Lord, have mercy on them as they raised me small" (Quran 17:23-24).

4. Kinship holds even unreturned. The true maintainer of ties is the one who reconnects them when they are cut (Bukhari).

Marriage and Children

"And of His signs is that He created for you mates from yourselves so you may find rest in them, and He placed between you affection and mercy" (Quran 30:21).

1. Marriage completes half the deen; fear Allah in the remaining half (al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman).

2. Vowed celibacy was refused. "I fast and I break my fast, I pray and I sleep, and I marry women. Whoever turns away from my sunnah (my practiced way) is not of me" (Bukhari and Muslim).

3. The contract stands on her consent, her mahr (a dower paid to her, hers alone) (Quran 4:4), witnesses, and the walimah (the public wedding feast), "even with one sheep" (Bukhari and Muslim).

4. The standing order inside it: "Live with them in kindness" (Quran 4:19). The rank attached to it: "The best of you is the best of you to his family" (Tirmidhi).

5. The newborn gets an aqiqah (a sacrifice on the seventh day), a good name, and a shaved head (Abu Dawud and Tirmidhi). The child is commanded to prayer at seven (Abu Dawud).

Work and Trade

1. Itqan (perfected work) first: Allah loves that when one of you does a work, he perfects it (al-Bayhaqi, Shu'ab al-Iman).

2. The stakes of honest commerce: the truthful, trustworthy merchant is raised with the prophets, the ever-truthful, and the martyrs (Tirmidhi).

3. Disclosure blesses, concealment burns: buyer and seller hold the option to cancel while they still sit together, "and if they were truthful and made things clear, their sale is blessed for them, and if they concealed and lied, the blessing of their sale is erased" (Bukhari and Muslim).

4. "Woe to the shortchangers, who take in full when they receive and give short when they measure" (Quran 83:1-3).

5. No gharar (sales built on blind uncertainty) (Muslim).

6. He put his hand into a grain pile, found rain-damp hidden under the dry surface, and ruled: whoever cheats is not of me (Muslim).

7. The worker is paid before his sweat dries (Ibn Majah).

8. "May Allah have mercy on a man easy when he sells, easy when he buys, easy when he demands his due" (Bukhari).

Money: Lending and Debt

1. Trade is permitted and riba (usury, interest) is forbidden (Quran 2:275). The Quran reserves its harshest commercial sentence for those who persist in riba: a declaration of war from Allah and His Messenger (Quran 2:279).

2. Debts get written. The longest single verse in the Quran is a procedure: a scribe, dictation, and witnesses for the recording of debt (Quran 2:282).

3. Lending done right is worship. The qard hasan (the goodly loan) is recorded as a loan to Allah and repaid multiplied (Quran 57:11).

4. The struggling debtor gets time until ease, and remitting the debt outranks collecting it (Quran 2:280).

5. The able debtor pays on schedule: "delay by the wealthy is injustice" (Bukhari and Muslim).

6. Repay better than you borrowed: "the best of you are the best in repayment" (Bukhari and Muslim).

7. Zakat, the purifying due: one fortieth, 2.5 percent, of qualifying wealth held a lunar year above the nisab (the minimum threshold). Allah kept the distribution list for Himself: eight categories, named in Quran 9:60.

8. Past the obligation sits sadaqa (voluntary charity): "charity does not decrease wealth" (Muslim).

Inheritance

1. Allah kept the design of the estate for Himself. Children, parents, and spouses take fixed shares spelled out in Quran 4:11-12, sealed with the words "these are the limits of Allah" (Quran 4:13).

2. Order of settlement: debts and any bequest come off before the heirs take (Quran 4:11-12).

3. The wasiyya (the bequest) is capped at one third of the estate. "A third, and a third is much," he told Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas. "To leave your heirs rich is better than to leave them stretching palms to people" (Bukhari and Muslim). And the bequest goes outside the circle of heirs: "no bequest to an heir" (Abu Dawud and Tirmidhi).

4. Write the will now. A Muslim with anything to bequeath has no right to pass two nights without the written will beside him (Bukhari and Muslim).

The Brother, the Neighbor, the Guest

1. One hadith carries the whole social code, six rights of the Muslim over the Muslim: return his salam, accept his invitation, counsel him when he asks, answer his sneeze, visit him when he is sick, walk in his funeral (Muslim). Greeting to grave, in one sentence.

2. Jibril kept pressing the neighbor's claim until the Prophet thought the neighbor would be written into the inheritance (Bukhari and Muslim).

3. Honoring the guest sits in the same sentence as belief in Allah and the Last Day (Bukhari and Muslim).

4. "None of you believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself" (Bukhari and Muslim).

5. Iman runs seventy-odd branches: the highest is la ilaha illallah (there is no god but Allah), the lowest is moving a harm off the road, and haya (shame before Allah) is one of the branches (Muslim). The deen counts road maintenance as faith. Take the measure of a system with that range.

Death and Burial

"Every soul tastes death" (Quran 3:185). "Remember often the destroyer of pleasures" (Tirmidhi).

1. At the deathbed, prompt the dying, gently, toward la ilaha illallah (Muslim). Whoever's last words are these enters Paradise (Abu Dawud).

2. At the news: "Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un." We belong to Allah, and to Him we return (Quran 2:156).

3. The body is washed by its own people, then wrapped in the kafan (a plain shroud). White: "wear white garments, and shroud your dead in them" (Abu Dawud and Tirmidhi).

4. The janazah (the funeral prayer) is a debt the community owes its dead; some must stand it for all. Attendance is weighted: pray it and take a qirat (a mountain-sized share of reward, likened to Uhud); stay until burial and take two (Bukhari and Muslim).

5. Bury fast (Bukhari and Muslim). Graves stay low and plain: he forbade plastering them, sitting on them, and building over them (Muslim).

6. Grief stays honest. Over his own dying son he said: "The eye weeps and the heart grieves, and we say only what pleases our Lord" (Bukhari). Wailing, torn clothes, and struck cheeks stayed behind in jahiliyya (the age of ignorance) (Bukhari and Muslim).

7. Mourning runs three days, except the widow's iddah (waiting period): four months and ten days (Quran 2:234; Bukhari and Muslim).

8. The community feeds the grieving house. When news of Jafar's death came, he ordered: "Make food for the family of Jafar, for there has come to them what occupies them" (Abu Dawud and Tirmidhi).

9. Visit the graves; they remind of death (Muslim).

The Measure

"The deen is nasiha," sincere fidelity: to Allah, His Book, His Messenger, and to the leaders and the common run of the Muslims (Muslim). "The deen is ease, and no one strains against it except that it defeats him" (Bukhari). The pace is set accordingly: "the most beloved deeds to Allah are the most constant, even if small" (Bukhari and Muslim).

Run the sections back. The deen reaches the bed, the table, the closet, the contract, the estate, the grave. Secular time is unassigned time, and this system assigns every hour. Every practice serves the spirit, and the spirit is trained through practice. The debt is repaid in daily installments: a bismillah at the door, an honest scale in the shop, a third of the stomach left empty, a salam handed to a stranger, a will written beside the bed. Small payments, constant, until the Day of Deen closes the account and the Master of that Day, who set every term above, settles it in full.

مَـٰلِكِ يَوْمِ ٱلدِّينِ

Māliki yawmi-d-dīn

Take one section. Practice it until it stops requiring effort. Then take the next. The deen is the debt. Pay daily.

By Mike Rashid King  •  Allah's Humble Servant