Sincerity

Hi guys. Tonight, I just want to share my opinion regarding sincerity or ikhlas. Basically, sincerity is the degree of genuineness of your self-expression. It is also a virtue of being free from pretense, deceit, or hypocrisy. Sincere people act truly about feelings, beliefs, thoughts and desires. Honesty is the basis of sincerity since you need tell the truth in order to not to be hypocrite. In Islam, ikhlas is the main pillar of all the ibadah that we perform. We should devote ourselves to Allah SWT by literally being sincere as His servant. We were created to serve but not to walk on this Earth with ego and hypocrisy. Since Islam is a religion of honesty and sincerity, why we are still 'pretending' as Mukmin?

There are many ways to practise sincerity in our lives. Firstly, we should act the same way as we do when in the presence of others. Try to develop a monopersonality and do not try hard to develop things that people want to see in you. But, behaving in a situation and adapting yourself are not hypocrisy. It is just a method of controlling yourself and may help you in developing good akhlak.

Other than that, we should do things from our heart. Don't expect rewards (including non-materialistic rewards) from others. When you give without expecting the boomerang effect to occur, the giving becomes an act of sincerity and an expression of your genuine concern for and interest in others. Allah will surely reward you in Jannah in the Hereafter. Don't expect reward from people since we can get more from The Creator. Be hospitable to let yourself in a willing mode.

Then, we should understand that sincerity should be from the deepest valley of your heart. You cannot say yes to something you hate. This may cause you to develop a severe mental abuse which can lead to hatred etc. You cannot be sincere when you compliment someone but deep inside you keep hatred on him or her. You cannot be sincere when you apologize just for the sake of disarming the person that you offended, with the motive of future revenge, but you can be sincere if you are truthful to yourself. Remember that a sincere man is a man who is willing with his heart to do something. 

Last but not least, do not over-polish things. Sincerity is about immediacy, spontaneity responses that comes from your genuine self. Polishing responses (whether by e-mail, speech, letter or otherwise) often removes the sincerity and replaces it with caution, attempted perfectionism and maybe even sugar-coating. This is totally jeopardizing sincerity since the real intention may be distorted.

Being sincere is hard but being dishonest in your good deeds is unacceptable. A small deed may become great due to the intention behind it, and a great deed may become small, due the intention behind it. I know it is totally hard to become sincere in everything since we were given challenges by Allah in many forms. But, what are the challenges for? To test us, am I right? So, lend me your hand and together we try to develop ikhlas in our deeds by remembering that we were striving for eternal happiness instead of temporary compliment.