The most dangerous illness afflicting humanity is not wickedness itself, but the conviction of one’s own righteousness. This self-righteousness becomes the foundation for the greatest tragedies in human history, from wars between nations to the oppression of individuals within societies.
The Quran warns believers of this very trap:
“O ye who believe! why do you say what you do not do?” (61:3).
This divine question penetrates to the heart of hypocrisy (nifaq), where words and deeds diverge, creating a chasm between professed belief and lived reality.
In our contemporary world, we witness this phenomenon everywhere. Politicians proclaim justice while perpetrating injustice. Educators profess values they do not embody. Religious leaders preach morality while engaging in immoral conduct. This incongruence stems not from simple wickedness, but from a deeper malady: the belief that we are fundamentally righteous, that our cause is pure, that our actions are justified. This self-righteousness, rooted in arrogance and fear of losing power and control, blinds us to our own shortcomings while magnifying the faults of others.
The Root Cause
The Promised Messiah(as) identified the core of this problem with remarkable clarity. He stated that within our nafs ammara (the soul inclined to evil) exist several impurities, but the worst among them is arrogance (kibr). He further observed that if arrogance did not exist, there would be no disbelievers left in the world. Therefore, he counseled believers to become meek and humble. This profound insight reveals that arrogance is not merely a character flaw but the fundamental barrier between humanity and God, between our lower and higher selves.
Arrogance manifests in subtle ways. It appears when we judge others while excusing ourselves, when we demand standards of others we do not meet, when we feel secure in our own righteousness while condemning others’ failings. This is the essence of nifaq: presenting an outward image of piety while harboring inner corruption, or more insidiously, genuinely believing in our own moral superiority while remaining blind to our contradictions.
A Historical Mirror
The incident of the Battle of Tabuk provides a powerful illustration of this principle. When the Prophet(sa) returned from the expedition, many hypocrites offered elaborate excuses for their absence, seeking immediate forgiveness. The Prophet(sa) accepted their outward apologies, though their sincerity was questionable. However, three companions, including Hazrat Ka’b bin Malik(ra), took a different path. They offered no excuses, made no justifications, and confessed their failure plainly.
The Prophet(sa) ordained their punishment: a social boycott that lasted approximately fifty days. During this period, Hazrat Ka’b(ra) later described how the world became constricted for them despite its vastness. Yet this punishment was not vindictive but transformative. These three companions demonstrated what it means to be a true momin: they acknowledged their weakness without self-justification, they accepted accountability without deflection, and they submitted to divine judgment without rebellion. Their humility and honesty ultimately led to divine forgiveness and became a model for believers throughout history.
The contrast is striking. The hypocrites, secure in their self-righteousness and clever excuses, remained trapped in their nifaq. The three who confessed, stripped of self-justification, found purification and elevation. This is the paradox the Promised Messiah(as) captured in his question: how do we make a momin out of a momin? How do we transform someone who already believes into a true believer?
The Solution
The answer lies in taqwa, often translated as righteousness or God-consciousness, but more precisely understood as vigilant awareness. Taqwa is not merely avoiding sin; it is maintaining constant vigilance over one’s thoughts, for thoughts give birth to words, and words manifest as actions. A person of taqwa does not simply avoid hypocrisy; they examine their own hearts with the same rigor they might apply to others. The Promised Messiah(as) wrote a couplet in which he said
Har ik naiki ji jarh yeh ittiqa hai (the root of every virtue/good is taqwa),
and then Allah revealed the second line to him:
Agar yeh Jarh rahi sab khuch raha hai (If this root remains, then everything remains).
This vigilance requires humility to recognize our own capacity for error, courage to acknowledge our mistakes, and wisdom to understand that the greatest battle is not against external enemies but against the self-righteousness within. The Prophet(sa) taught that the greater jihad is the struggle against one’s own nafs. This internal struggle against arrogance, against the comfort of self-justification, against the security of believing ourselves righteous, this is the true test of faith.
The Promised Messiah(as) emphasized that the path to spiritual progress lies in meekness and humility. When we abandon the armor of self-righteousness, we become vulnerable to transformation. When we stop defending our image of perfection, we create space for actual improvement. When we cease judging others from a position of assumed superiority, we begin to see our shared human condition with compassion rather than condemnation.
Overcoming the Righteous
The ultimate question facing humanity is not how good will triumph over evil, but how the evil within the good will be recognized and overcome. How will the unrighteousness of the righteous be addressed? This is the final enigma of history, and it can only be resolved through individual transformation, one heart at a time.
The path forward requires each of us to examine our own hearts with brutal honesty. Are our words aligned with our actions? Do we excuse in ourselves what we condemn in others? Do we use our religious or moral convictions as weapons of judgment rather than mirrors for self-examination? Do we feel secure in our righteousness while the world suffers from our contradictions?
True faith demands that we become the change we wish to see, that we embody the values we profess, that we hold ourselves to the standards we expect of others. It requires the humility to confess when we fall short, the courage to accept consequences, and the wisdom to learn from our failures. Only through such taqwa, such vigilant self-awareness coupled with humble acknowledgment of our limitations, can we hope to overcome the self-righteousness that plagues both individuals and societies.
The verse cited earlier from Surah As-Saff echoes through time as both warning and invitation: why do you say what you do not do? Until we can answer this question honestly, until we can bridge the gap between profession and practice, we remain trapped in the very hypocrisy we claim to oppose. The cure begins not with changing others, but with the difficult work of transforming ourselves, replacing arrogance with humility, self-righteousness with self-awareness, and nifaq with the authentic congruence of a heart aligned with its tongue and hands.