Hawzah News Agency- Addressing a scholarly gathering on “The Value and Difficulty of Intention,” the senior Islamic thinker said that while many people are capable of performing outwardly good deeds, far fewer possess the ability to purify their intentions.
Citing narrations from the Infallible Imams (peace be upon them), Ayatollah Javadi Amoli recalled that “the intention of a believer is better than his action” and that “the best deeds are those that are best preserved.” He explained that intention constitutes the soul and inner reality of action, and for this reason, it represents one of the most demanding dimensions of moral conduct.
He noted that an action cannot be performed with the intention of seeking nearness to Allah unless it meets two essential conditions. First, the act itself must possess actual goodness—meaning it must be inherently permissible and capable of drawing a person closer to God. Second, it must carry active goodness, referring to the purity of the doer’s motivation.
“When an action is free from all forms of adornment, self-display, and ego,” he said, “its intention becomes superior to the action itself. Achieving such sincerity, however, is extremely difficult, and that is why intention is considered among the highest of deeds.”
The Grand Ayatollah warned that subtle forms of hypocrisy often go unnoticed. He explained that individuals may seek recognition for their good works—such as desiring their name to appear on the cover of a book, on the sign of a mosque, or in public gatherings. Others, he added, may deliberately avoid having their names mentioned so that people praise them for their supposed humility—an attitude he described as another hidden form of leadership-seeking.
“In some cases,” he said, “a person becomes hypocritical without realizing it. This is a mysterious form of hypocrisy that is rarely detected, yet it is highly dangerous.”
Ayatollah Javadi Amoli further cautioned that Satan’s deception does not follow a single pattern. “Satan deceives everyone in his own way,” he said. “Some people even abandon good deeds out of fear that others may accuse them of hypocrisy, while in reality, it is the opinion of people that motivates them to give up righteous actions.”
His remarks are drawn from his work The Stages of Morality in the Quran (p. 245), which explores the inner dimensions of ethical conduct and the constant struggle to safeguard sincerity in worship and social responsibility.
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