islamic ritual

Journal of the American Academy of Religion June 2004, Vol. 72, No. 2, pp. 425–459DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfh036© 2004 The American Academy of Religion

Interiors, Intentions, and the “Spirituality” of Islamic Ritual Practice

Paul R. Powers

The Arabic term niyya (intention) is prominent in texts of Islamic rituallaw. Muslim jurists require niyya in the “heart” during such ritual dutiesas prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage. Western scholars often treat niyya as a“spiritual” component of Islamic ritual. Muslim jurists, however, con-sistently treat niyya as a formal, taxonomic matter, a mental focus thatmakes a given act into the specific named duty required by religious law.Although the effort to thrust niyya into a “spiritual” role is meant todefend Islam from charges of “empty ritualism,” it subtly reinforces thecharacterization of Islam as rigidly legalistic. Much scholarship on niyyabelies the scholars’ own definition of “proper religion” centered on aninner, individual, nonmaterial dimension of the self. Instead of trying towash away the formalism of niyya, I argue that scholars ought to recog-nize that such embodied practices are properly religious rather thanspiritually defective.

Western ankles won’t do what Muslim ankles have done for a lifetime.Asians squat when they sit, Westerners sit upright in chairs. When myguide was down in a posture, I tried everything I could to get down as hewas, but there I was, sticking up. After about an hour, my guide left,

Paul R. Powers is an assistant professor of religious studies at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR 97219-7899.

My thanks go to Frank Reynolds, A. Kevin Reinhart, Alan Cole, Robert Kugler, James Riley,Paul L. Heck, and Fred Donner for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article and forconversations that sharpened my thinking on this and related topics. Some of the research on whichthis article is based was done in Amman, Jordan, 1995–1996, supported by a grant from theFulbright Program. I delivered an embryonic version of this article at the American Academy ofReligion Annual Meeting in 1999.

426 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

indicating that he would return later. . . . I never even thought about sleep-ing. Watched by the Muslims, I kept practicing prayer posture. I refusedto let myself think how ridiculous I must have looked to them. After awhile, though, I learned a little trick that would let me get down closer tothe floor. But after two or three days, my ankle was going to swell.

—Malcolm X: 333–334

THIS PASSAGE POIGNANTLY illustrates the physicality of Islamic rit-ual practice; Malcolm X is not worried here that he has misunderstoodIslamic theology but, rather, that he cannot achieve the proper prayerposture.1 It is often said that Islam is a religion of orthopraxy more thanof orthodoxy, focused more on ritual practices and proper comportmentthan on theological doctrines and philosophical reflection. Many observ-ers see in Islam an emphasis on law over theology or philosophy and inlaw an emphasis on getting the actions right. For example, FrederickDenny notes that in Islam “belief, interestingly, is perfected and provedin service to God, service that includes worship acts performed accordingto strict rules and procedures” (1994: 112, see also 113, 174; cf. Gibb: 60).A. Kevin Reinhart finds that “Islamic morality is a morality of action. . . .Only God knows hearts, say the legal sources, so one must judge byactions. Right action is thus presumptive evidence of inward virtue”(1993: 24, cf. 1983). Certainly, Muslims have reached impressive heightsof theological sophistication, but many scholars recognize a certain prideof place that Islamic societies have often given to proper comportmentand to the efforts to determine the rules of such comportment.

This view of Islam as praxis oriented reflects a welcome modificationof much previous western scholarship that saw Islam as mechanically rit-ualistic and thus ethically superficial. In 1878 Robert Durie Osborn saidof Islam “there is no [other] creed the inner life of which has been socompletely crushed under an inexorable weight of ritual”; Muslims’ dist-ant view of God “empties all religious acts of spiritual life and meaning andreduces them to rites and ceremonies” (4, cited in Tisdall: 57). WilliamTisdall in 1910 claimed that “the stress which [Islam] lays upon ceremo-nial observances, such as fasting, . . . the recitation of fixed prayers atstated hours, the proper mode of prostration, etc., tends to make thegreat mass of Muhammadans mere formalists”; thus, “it will be evidentthat purity of heart is neither considered necessary nor desirable: in factit would be hardly too much to say that it is impossible for a Muslim”

1 Of course, Malcolm X (see esp. chaps. 17–18) did question the theological teachings of theNation of Islam and did revise his own theological beliefs. My point is simply that he also recognizedthe crucial role of proper action.

Powers: Interiors, Intentions, and the “Spirituality” of Islamic Ritual Practice 427

(80, 88).2 In 1951 Gustave von Grunebaum remarked that Islam, itsprayer marked by “peculiar formalism” (13), “left the believer satisfiedwith an arid, if physically exacting liturgy” (3). Islamic law itself has beenseen by some as the convoluted result of an overemphasis on the outwardforms of action; N. J. Coulson has argued that by the fifth century ofIslam jurists were so focused on elaborating the minutiae of right actionthat the law they generated “could not be supported by society inpractice. . . . Their fundamental concern was the study and developmentof ‘law’ for its own sake. Practical considerations were only employedwhere this could be done without infringement of any theoretical princi-ple” (222–223). For many observers, Islamic law suffers from obsessive-compulsive worry over the infinite potential forms of action, ironically sofocused on praxis as to be impractical. Thus, even when Muslim concernwith right action has been recognized, it has often been denigrated.

The newer standard of seeking a neutral description of Islam as praxiscentered is an advance in both accuracy and attitude, reflecting a generalincrease in academic comfort with ritual and the body. Some scholars,perhaps trying to atone for the sins of previous generations, have soughtto show that Islamic ritual (and praxis in general) is not just “empty ritual-ism” and cynical “letter of the law” compliance but, rather, is the surfaceof a deeply “spiritual” experience. In their efforts some such scholarshave focused on the Arabic term niyya (pl. niyyat), usually translated as“intention.” The term is prominent in Islamic ritual law, the discursivefield that provides the traditional normative framework of Islamic ritualpractice. Muslim jurists require (or at least recommend) niyya in acts ofworship (‘ibadat, sg. ‘ibada)—principally prayer, fasting, almsgiving, andpilgrimage. In general, niyya is to be formulated at the beginning of anact and maintained for the duration of that act; if the niyya is “lost” or“invalidated,” this invalidates the act of worship and necessitates reper-formance. Niyya is done “with the heart” and may or may not beexpressed “with the tongue.” In a hadith (a report of the words and deedsof the Prophet) often cited in legal texts, the Prophet said: “Actions aredefined by intentions, and to every person what he intends (innama al-a‘mal bi-l-niyyat wa-innama li-kull imri’in ma nawa).” As a pervasive,subjective, individual, “internal” component of ritual, then, niyya seemsto be a good place to look for a “deep” or “spiritual” component of ritual.

However, such a “spiritual” treatment of niyya is more than the legalsources will bear. Muslim jurists often treat niyya as one formal step inthe process of performing acts of ritual worship; niyya is a focusing of the

2 The latter phrase (taken from the 1906 second edition, with the same page number) is cited inGoldziher: 19.


mind on the act of worship. The “right niyya” for a given act is simply the“niyya to do that act.” Its inclusion in the requirements of worship hasmore to do with allowing an actor confidence that she or he has fulfilled aduty than with a spiritual communing with the divine. Although theeffort to thrust niyya into a “spiritual” role is part of a wider effort todefend Islam from charges of “empty ritualism,” this move in fact subtlyreinforces the characterization of Islam as superficial and legalistic. Muchscholarship on niyya belies the scholars’ own a priori definition of “properreligion” as “spiritual,” revolving around an inner, individual, private,nonmaterial, eternal (and thus preemptively important) dimension of theself, the “true self” beneath an ephemeral surface. To be sure, Islamencompasses some aspects that can accurately be described as “spiritual,”but it also contains some aspects that are decidedly exoteric, materialist,and “this-worldly,” treating the temporal and bodily as the locus of themost important religious goings-on; niyya in ritual law is a part of thisembodied dimension of religion.

Rather than recognizing the value some Muslims ascribe at times to“this world” and seeing such value as properly religious, scholars havesought to make niyya the solution to a problem of their own making. More-over, the apologetic effort to spiritualize Islamic ritual by spiritualizingniyya participates in the troubled enterprise of seeking a sweeping, holi-stic characterization of “Islam,” merely substituting an ostensibly favor-able characterization (“deep/profound”) for a negative one (“superficial/legalistic”). In short, my thesis is first that niyya does not serve thepurposes attributed to it and, second, that these mischaracterizations ofniyya reflect a misguided effort to show that Islam really is—in spite ofitself?—“deep” and “spiritual.” I will begin by recounting the relevantsecondary scholarship and then compare this to the relevant Islamic legalsources.

NIYYA AS THE HEART OF ISLAM: WHAT WESTERN SCHOLARS SAY

The topic of intentions in Islamic law has received relatively little atten-tion from western scholars, with much of that focused on contract lawand of little relevance here (Arabi 1997, 1998; Johansen; Linant de Belle-fonds; Messick 1998, 2001; Rosen 1985, 1989, 1995, 1999). As for theplace of niyya in ritual law, a handful of scholars have addressed this.However, if one were to read only this material (and not the primarysources of Islamic ritual law or Muslim secondary scholarship on thetopic), one would be left with a significantly skewed understanding. The


secondary scholarship often depicts niyya as some kind of spiritual heartof Islam, the “solution” to the “problem” of a putative Islamic overcon-cern for things exterior.

To begin, a still-influential early giant of western Islamic studies,Ignaz Goldziher, in his 1910 Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law,strives to demonstrate that Islam is more than law and the performanceof ceremonial acts. He declares that in the Qur’an (2:177, 22:34, 37) “theintention behind an act is the criterion for the religious value of the act”(18) and that “the highest value is ascribed to ikhla5, unclouded purity ofheart (40:14); taqwa al-qulub, ‘piety of heart’ (22:32); [and] qalb salim, ‘awhole heart’ (26:89)” (18). He concludes that “such are the criteriaby which the believer’s religious worth is assessed. . . . They are extendedover the entire range of religious life by the doctrine that niya [=niyya], thedisposition or intention behind a religious act, serves to gauge the valueof that act. According to this doctrine, a tincture of selfish or hypocriticalmotive deprives any good work of its value” (18–19).3 For Goldziher,such emphasis on the “disposition or intention behind a religious act” isclearly a good thing, the mark of a religion with the proper values andpriorities, and he lauds the centrality of such concerns in Islam:

The value of works is determined according to the intention thatprompts them: this is one of the supreme principles of religious life inIslam. One may infer the importance of this principle for the Muslimfrom the fact that a statement of it is inscribed over one of the mainentrances of al-Azhar, the mosque in Cairo that is the much-visited cen-ter of theological learning in Islam. It reminds all who enter, whethertheir mind is set on study or devotion: “Deeds are judged according tointentions; each man’s accounts are drawn up according to his inten-tions.” This hadith rose to be the guiding thought of all religious actionin Islam. (42)

Here Goldziher cites the key hadith passage (already cited above) that is theproof text Muslim jurists most often employ.4 Without citing anyMuslim commentary on the topic (aside from noting the al-Azhar

3 Goldziher uses this observation explicitly to refute William Tisdall’s condemnation of Islam asrigidly legalistic, quoted above. Goldziher remarks: “Thus no unprejudiced observer will accept theReverend Tisdall’s dictum that ‘it will be evident that purity of heart is neither considered necessarynor desirable: in fact it would be hardly too much to say that it is impossible for a Muslim’ ” (19,citing Tisdall: 88). As I show, however, Goldziher seeks only to salvage a putative “original ethicalvision” of Islam that he finds lacking in most of Islamic history.

4 Goldziher (see 41–43) cites several other hadith that seem to fit his characterization; these are notcommon in fiqh texts. Goldziher presents decontextualized Qur’an and hadith passages togetherwith his own exegesis, without exploring whether Muslim commentators agree.


epigram), Goldziher presents niyya as nothing less than a “supreme princi-ple” and “the guiding thought of all religious action in Islam.”

From this properly spiritual early phase, Goldziher depicts Islam on atrajectory of decline, from the early period’s high ethical standards cen-tered on internal dispositions and intentions, toward a later, degradedreligious sense dominated by legalistic concerns for outward practice. Hepulls no punches when discussing classical Islamic law: “This cultivationof jurisprudence, which reached its prime as early as the second Islamiccentury, contributed a new element to the intellectual world of Islam: fiqh,the science of religious law, a science which, perverted by casuistry, wassoon to become disastrous for religious life and religious learning” (44).This “disaster” was precipitated by the establishment of consensus(ijma‘) as a “doctrine of the infallibility of the consensus ecclesiae” and theattendant emergence of a class of legal experts with inordinate controlover the form Islam would take (Goldziher: 50).5 These developments ledto the adulteration of the Qur’an and the Prophet’s ethical vision, for evenif “the scholars of fiqh did not intend to embitter the life of the Muslim byimprisoning him in a stockade of legal restraints,” their work led Islaminto “soul-destroying pedantry” (Goldziher: 55, 62). The profound, interi-oristic religion of the Prophet gave way to excessive legalism as the “theo-logical spirit was trained to . . . quibbling discriminations. . . . that proveddetrimental to the inwardness of religion,” undermining “true piety, thedevotion of the heart,” in “perversion of the religious ideal” (Goldziher:63, 66). Fortunately (in Goldziher’s eyes), the Sufis, especially al-Ghazali(d. 505/1111), “worked hard to rescue the inwardness of religion from theclutches of quibbling religious lawyers” and restored “inward religiosity”to Islam by rejecting legalistic casuistry and “the hairsplitting of the dog-matics of the kalam (dialectical theology)” (Goldziher: 66, 158–159).6

It could hardly be clearer that Goldziher harbors an a priori defini-tion of “good religion” against which various aspects of Islam are to bemeasured.7 For Goldziher, religion with a proper “theological spirit” is

5 Goldziher admits, however, that ijma ‘ “provides Islam with a potential for freedom of movementand a capacity for evolution” that explains the impressive “adaptability of Islam” (52).

6 My point is not that al-Ghazali did not make these arguments but, rather, that they are not, froma scholarly point of view, the restoration of the true and proper form of religion that Goldziher wantsthem to be. Neither al-Ghazali’s work nor anything else licenses Goldziher’s sweeping claim that“amid this hairsplitting struggle over formulas and definitions, Sufism alone harbored a tolerantspirit” (165).

7 For an interesting study of Goldziher’s personal views, see Patai. Raphael Patai is generallysympathetic toward Goldziher, yet he documents Goldziher’s distaste for much of the contemporaryIslamic world, his “disdain for foreigners” (70–71, 90), and his preference for spiritual mystery overembodied practice. See, e.g., the remarkable entry of 1 October 1873, recounting a visit to anIstanbul synagogue (Patai: 99–100).


“inward” and thus “truly pious”; niyya, elevated by Goldziher to the levelof “supreme principle,” both constitutes and demonstrates this spiritualpiety. Straining to find the good in it, he reasons that Islam must havehad a proper spirit at one point but that it slipped away in a wash of legal-ism and distracted theologizing, only to be partly salvaged by Sufism. Forall his historical-critical insight (he was one of the pioneers of westernhadith criticism), Goldziher is wedded to a contrived vision of the goldenage of the Prophet, against which later Islam largely pales.

If Goldziher’s work is a locus classicus of this view of niyya as the“heart of Islam,” it is hardly alone. This same set of views is reflected inA. J. Wensinck’s brief but dense entry on niyya in the influential Ency-clopaedia of Islam. Here Wensinck asserts that in the canonical hadith(“which, generally speaking, reflects the state of things up to the middleof the 2nd/8th century”) niyya “has not yet acquired in this literaturethe technical meaning and limitation” that it displays in fiqh works;instead, niyya here has “the common meaning of intention” (1954–: 66).Wensinck then recapitulates Goldziher’s treatment of niyya as an inner,better thing:

In this [common, nontechnical] sense, [niyya] is of great importance.Al-Bukhari opens his collection with a tradition, which in this place isapparently meant as a motto. It runs: “Works are only rendered effica-cious by their intention.” . . . This tradition occurs frequently in thecanonical collections. It constitutes a religious and moral criterion superiorto that of the law. The value of an ‘ibada, even if performed in completeaccordance with the precepts of the law, depends upon the intention ofperformer, and if this intention should be sinful, the work would be value-less. “For,” adds the tradition [i.e., hadith] just mentioned, “every manreceives only what he has intended”; or “his wages shall be in accordancewith his intention.” (1954–: 66, emphasis added)8

Wensinck here, like Goldziher, gives his own exegesis of the hadith, notthat of Muslim sources. Having just indicated that the relevant hadithpredates the technical developments of fiqh, Wensinck nonetheless thenclaims that the meaning of niyya in those hadith “constitutes a religiousand moral criterion superior to that of the law” and applies this “prior”usage to fiqh al-‘ibadat. Niyya certainly carries a less technical meaningin the cited hadith than in fiqh, yet Wensinck arbitrarily holds the

8 Wensinck cites one other hadith: “There is no hidjra after the capture of Mecca, only holy warand intention” (1954–: 66). This is the only other hadith about niyya to appear regularly in fiqh,though much less frequently than the other one I have noted.


former superior and measures the latter against it. For Wensinck, errantniyya is “sinful,” a moral interpretation he does not support withevidence. He next notes that both some hadith and some later sources(i.e., Lisan al-‘Arab and al-Ghazali’s Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din) indicate that“the intention of the faithful is better than his work” (1954–: 67), thussuggesting that at least some Muslims returned to this prior, “superior,”antinomian sensibility. Wensinck follows Goldziher in seeing a trajectoryfrom hadith, the high point of religious depth, so to speak, downward/outward into fiqh, and then back upward/inward through al-Ghazaliand Sufism.

Wensinck’s Encyclopaedia of Islam entry is essentially a condensedversion of portions of an earlier and largely overlooked Dutch article, his1920 “De Intentie in Recht, Ethiek en Mystiek der Semietische Volken.”9

This article covers both Islamic and Jewish treatments of intention in arange of textual genres, especially ritual law and “mystical” writings. It iscareful and thorough within its limits, and it is unfortunate that it has not,to my knowledge, been translated into a more widely read language and,moreover, that the Encyclopaedia of Islam entry loses most of the article’ssubtlety. For his Islamic sources, Wensinck first focuses on the termniyya in fiqh al-‘ibadat, recounting basic technical details such as thetiming and “location” of niyya (i.e., in the qalb, “heart”). This material isaccurate and clearheaded about the formalism of the sources, noting, forexample, the jurists’ insistence that the niyya correspond closely to theritual action it accompanies (e.g., the noon prayer must include niyyafor that prayer, not the evening prayer [Wensinck 1920: 112]).Wensinck (1920: 121–138) then goes on to explore ethical and Sufimaterials, especially al-Ghazali’s mystical/ethical treatise, Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din,and again provides a responsible account of his sources. Unlike in theencyclopedia entry, here Wensinck keeps his genres distinct, allowingfiqh materials their independent due (even if his agenda is disconcert-ingly broad—i.e., a holistic account of intentions in “the two Semiticmonotheisms”).

Joseph Schacht’s important 1964 Introduction to Islamic Lawincludes a chapter on “General Concepts” that gives primacy of place toniyya: “A fundamental concept of the whole of Islamic religious law, beit concerned with worship or with law in the narrow sense, is the niyya(intent)” (116). Schacht, characteristically terse, asserts a historical tra-jectory that is already becoming familiar:

9 My access to this Dutch text is limited to a partial translation that I personally commissioned; mythanks go to Alex van der Haven for his invaluable assistance (although any errors in my interpretationof this text are entirely my own responsibility).


[Niyya] applied originally to acts of worship; the religious obligation isdischarged not by outward performance as such but only if it is donewith a pious intent. But Islamic orthodoxy insisted on the performance, andniyya, from being a state of mind, became an act of will directed towardsperforming a religious duty; it must, as a rule, be explicitly formulated,at least mentally. An act of worship without niyya is invalid, and so is theniyya without the act. (116, emphasis added)

Schacht’s observations about technical details are correct, as is his obser-vation of a shift from a general to a technical meaning specific to ritualcontexts (a development we have seen asserted by Wensinck). Schacht,however, subtly suggests a devolution from niyya as “pious” to niyya asmere “will” directing mechanical, “orthodox” performance of ritualduties.

By now a picture is emerging of niyya as a “spiritual” component ofIslamic ritual, one that was endorsed as such by the Prophet himself, fellout of favor with the jurists, and reemerged with the rise of Sufism.Goldziher, Wensinck, and Schacht share the idea that in its early usage,niyya was an “ethical” matter before law made Islam into a legalisticreligion. Wensinck and Schacht grudgingly recognize that medievalfiqh treats niyya formalistically; Goldziher and Wensinck restlesslyyearn for Sufism to (re)inspire the faith, whereas Schacht simplywatches it ossify.

Among the most significant recent studies of niyya in Islamic ritual isa 1990 essay by Frederick Denny.10 Denny treats niyya as the ethical andspiritual core of Islamic ritual practice, forcefully asserting that “niya [=niyya]is believed to emanate from the worshiper’s innermost being. It safe-guards the sincerity (ikhla5) of the ritual performance. . . . Only by a sortof descent into the self’s core before resurfacing with correct intention inthe presence of one’s creator may the Muslim truly commune with God.There is thus an ethical relationship between worshipper and Lord. . . .[N]iya ensures spiritual spontaneity as well as integrity in worship”(1990: 209). Denny gives little evidence for such strong claims, and heprovides no citations (though he implies that his inspiration here is al-Ghazali), so that he appears to be trying to characterize all of “Islam.”Denny’s project (i.e., exploring the “ethical dimensions of Islamic rituallaw”) strikes me as a good one, and the technical aspects of niyya that

10 Another scholar, John R. Bowen (1993, 1997), has also paid attention to niyya in Islamic ritualcontexts, studying a dispute in the Gayo region of Indonesia in the 1980s and 1990s over whether tomake a verbal pronouncement of intent to worship. Bowen’s work suggests that there is yet muchwork to be done exploring how medieval Islamic law relates to later Islamic doctrine and practiceand that niyya can be understood very differently by different Muslims.


Denny does discuss are accurate as far as they go.11 But from this startingpoint, he runs quickly into territory uncharted by Islamic ritual law. In apassage reminiscent of Goldziher, Denny comments on “the” hadith:“ ‘Works are in the intentions’ . . . is a frequently cited hadith. This sayingis encountered in many contexts—ritual, legal and others—and serves asa universal ethical principle among Muslims. In the case of ritual, there is akind of dialectic between niya and the performance of the various acts ofworship. . . . Individual and personal moral responsibility are required forniya and without it the act would be devoid of ethical meaning” (1990: 209,emphasis added). Niyya here “emanate[s] from the worshiper’s innermostbeing” and “serves as a universal ethical principle among Muslims,” giv-ing ritual practice its “ethical meaning.” This ethical meaning Dennydefines as a “communing with God,” for niyya puts one “in the presenceof one’s creator.” In short, niyya is again placed by a scholar at the heartof Muslim “spirituality”; the acts of Islamic ritual law have no value savethe “spiritual” one they supposedly get from niyya.

Denny goes on to argue a point seemingly similar to that which I ammaking myself, that Islamic ritual practice has often been central toMuslim religious life and that this praxis-centered quality is easily mis-understood and debased by outside observers (especially those accust-omed to certain Christian antinomian attitudes).12 However, Denny doesnot accept this praxis orientation as properly religious but, rather, seeksto defend Islam against charges of legalism by asserting that “authentic”Islam really is “spiritual,” and niyya is central to his argument. My pointhere is subtle but crucial, so I will quote Denny at length:

It appears that ritual acts are at the heart of Islamic ethics, and in fact aretheir source and ground to the extent that they function as a means ofdrawing near to God in a predictable pattern. This supremely valuablerelationship must, then, be hedged about with the protection andminute regulation of law. Niya is the basic moral act involved in ritual.The niya ensures the validity of the specific ritual to be performed, andthe performance itself reinforces the integrity of both the individual andher or his “moral community,” to adapt Durkheim’s phrase. . . . Whenniya and the core meaning of akhlaq [i.e., Islamic ethics] are considered,

11 For example, he rightly notes the requirement that niyya immediately precede and endurethroughout most acts of worship, though he mistakenly indicates that niyya must be verbalized(jurists disagree about this). Additionally, Denny notes without elaboration that “niya is itself a ritualact, of course, and as such it is defined and explicated in the fiqh books” (1990: 209).

12 Denny observes that “Christian thinkers at least since the Apostle Paul have denounced legalismin relations between humankind and God. The history of Christian liturgy, however, displays muchconcern for regulation and decorum, although there has never been a universally uniform cultussince the primitive church” (1990: 210).


along with the flexible “five principles” [i.e., required, recommended,permitted, detested, and forbidden—the possible assessments in Islamiclaw], Islamic ritual may be understood to be anything but legalistic in itsauthentic form. Many western critics of Islam who have sometimesdecried what they have perceived to be rote repetition in Islamic wor-ship have known little about the inner dimensions of Muslim piety,whose patterns and habits in and outside the mosque are informed andenergized by religion as a complete way of life. The legal elements arestrong and determinative, not because they are the possession of a legal-istic people, but because they safeguard the spiritual path of a seriouspeople. . . . [W]e need to be sensitively aware of the intimate relationshipbetween ritual, legal, and ethical norms in the Islamic scheme of things.This relationship derives from the common Semitic ethical monotheismthat Jews, Christians, and Muslims share, and that at its most authenticalways bases itself on God as the sole source of value. (1990: 209–210,emphasis added)

Denny recognizes the centrality of ritual praxis and that Islamic ritualtakes place in a social, this-worldly context; I welcome his observationthat Muslim rituals are potentially interwoven with serious ethical reflec-tion and, yes, spiritual concerns. But Denny does not assert that oneought simply to accept the possibility that Muslim ritual practice mightplace a strong emphasis on form, on bodily posture, verbal utterance,and simple mental focus; rather, he seeks to erase this formalism with aniyya-based spirituality. I take issue with his implicit claim that to beproperly moral, properly religious, means to be inwardly focused andespecially that niyya, as “the basic moral act involved in ritual,” is whatmakes Muslims’ praxis properly moral and religious. Denny seems to betrying to save Islam from itself. No doubt Denny’s heart is in the rightplace, perhaps a significant improvement over Goldziher, but still he pro-duces a profound, if subtle, distortion.

In sum, much of what has been written by western scholars on thetopic of niyya in Islamic ritual law tends to devalue the physical, bodily,praxis-oriented qualities so central to Islamic ritual law and practice.Even when they seek to defend and not denigrate, as with Denny, theyimply that Islamic approaches to ritual are defective to the extent thatthey really are temporal, bodily, and this-worldly. Earlier generations ofscholars perhaps reflected the colonialist and missionary biases of theirtimes; the more recent work is surely politically more benign, with anhonest goal of achieving greater understanding. But the later work retainsa surprising level of antinomian, antiritual animus. If we are spared aview of “Muhammadan mere formalism,” with its “inner life completelycrushed under an inexorable weight of ritual,” then it is in part because


niyya has been transformed by scholarly alchemy into the lever that priesopen the spiritual heart of Islam. As we turn next to the primary sourcesof Islamic ritual law, we will see that niyya is not the spiritual phenome-non it has been made out to be.

NIYYA IN ISLAMIC LEGAL SOURCES

That the secondary sources tend to misconstrue the meaning and role ofthe term niyya in Islamic ritual law is fairly easily demonstrated (thoughit requires somewhat technical evidence). A reading of the medievalmanuals of Islamic law shows that the jurists do not treat niyya as a “spiri-tual” component, as many of the secondary sources imply.13 Rather,niyya is one step among several in the proper performance of an act ofritual worship; it is, in short, what one does with one’s mind while doingother things with one’s body. One might say that the jurists treat theheart/mind (qalb, the locus, as we will see, of niyya) as coextensive withthe body, subject to the will, and required to be in proper alignment forthe act of worship to be proper and valid. Niyya is the mental stateaccompanying an act of worship, and the intentionality, the “aboutness”of the mind, while doing the ritual act—the intention “that I performthis act.” As such, niyya defines a given action as a particular kind ofaction, a specific, named type of action, so that it can be located in thelegal taxonomy of actions. Niyya “to pray,” for example, helps make agiven set of words and gestures into prayer. The function that medievaljurists assign to niyya is not a vaguely “spiritual” one but, in fact, anepistemological and taxonomic one; niyya allows the ritual actor theknowledge that a given action is the legally stipulated one, that one hasfulfilled one’s duty.

Niyya in the legal sources is indeed subjective, “internal,” and indi-vidual, done by the heart/mind and unavailable for direct assessment byanyone other than the actor him- or herself. But it is not “the supremeprinciple of religious life in Islam” emanating from “the worshiper’sinnermost being,” a “descent into the self’s core” placing one “in the

13 The “medieval” period from which I draw my sources spans from the end of the formativeperiod (roughly the end of the ninth century C.E.) to just preceding the modern period (roughly thenineteenth century and later); this is a long period during which Islamic law certainly developed, butfor our present purposes the jurists’ treatment of niyya in this period can be considered sufficientlystable as to disregard changes. By “manuals of Islamic law” I mean works of positive law (generallycalled furu‘ or usul), the normative “rule books,” as distinguished from works of legal theory (‘usulal-fiqh), collections of juristic responsa (fatawa), and court records. I will not pay systematicattention to variations (ikhtilafat) among schools (madhahib); some disagreements arose regardingniyya in fiqh al-‘ibadat, and I will mention these as they affect my argument.


presence of one’s creator.” As I will note below, some Muslim sources dotreat niyya in this “spiritual” fashion, but because a central strand ofIslamic normative discourse does not, we cannot simply characterizeniyya as “spiritual”; nor can we in turn use niyya to characterize “allIslam,” as the secondary scholarship has too often done.

Fiqh manuals include a set of materials collectively known as fiqh al-‘ibadat, a term often translated as “ritual law.” The ‘ibadat include theso-called five pillars of Islam, as well as rules for purification and otherritual and religious concerns. As previously noted, the key term for inten-tion in the ‘ibadat is niyya.14 The term does not appear in the Qur’ an.15

As noted above, it does appear in several widely accepted hadith, where itdisplays the general meaning of intention but not the technical sensefound in works of fiqh. The most important—because most commonlycited in fiqh manuals—of these hadith is the following (already citedabove): “Actions are defined by intentions, and to every person what heintends (innama al-a‘mal bi-l-niyyat wa-innama li-kull imri’in manawa). So whoever emigrated [i.e., participated in the hijra] for God andHis Messenger, then his emigration was for God and God’s Messenger,and whoever emigrated for worldly benefits or for a woman to marry, hisemigration was what he emigrated for.”16 This hadith is cited—in full oroften only in part (often the equivalent of the first sentence in theEnglish)—in virtually all fiqh manuals; in many, it is the only hadith citedin regard to niyya. Given this fact, it is striking that the hadith sheds solittle light on the legal meaning of niyya. The hadith is vague in its usageof the term—here it has very general connotations of “plan” or “pur-pose.” The hadith says nothing of acts of worship or of requiring or rec-ommending niyya as an element of any action. Rather, it seems to suggestthat niyya is a pervasive fact of human life, the motive behind action. Onits face, this hadith has a vaguely moralistic tone, as the Prophet appa-rently calls for honesty and piety in behavior and implies that God knows

14 Wensinck notes that “in some instances adjma‘a is used, where the later language has nawa”(1954–: 66). The most common verbs used to indicate the act of formulating or having niyya aresimply verbal forms of the root n-w-y, from which the noun niyya is derived. Also note that, hereand throughout, my translation is in the present tense, rather than the literal perfect tense often usedin the Arabic, to better convey the deontological sense of the text.

15 The root for this term, n-w-y, appears only once in the Qur’ an, in surat al-An‘am, 6:95. Here theroot is used in the word al-nawa, meaning “fruit or date pit.” This highlights an etymological aspectof the root, illustrating its connotation of seed, kernel, core, central inner element, and so forth.However, neither the noun nor the verb form of the root appears in the Qur’an with the meaning“intention.”

16 This hadith is found in most major collections (see Wensinck 1969: s.v. “niyya”); Wensinck citessome twenty-five hadith employing the term niyya. However, the one given here is the only one ofthese consistently cited in fiqh manuals.


the motives behind actions and judges accordingly. Though it may seementicing, this hadith frankly tells us little, and we have no license to followGoldziher, for example, and read a sweeping spiritual message into it. Inshort, neither the Qur’an nor the hadith tells us much about the specificmeanings of niyya in fiqh. For that, we must search in the texts of fiqhal-‘ibadat themselves. The analysis below will necessarily venture into thetechnical details of Islamic law, and though the uninitiated may find thistricky terrain, it is exactly my point that such technical details cannot beoverlooked because the very concepts in question are partly constitutedby such detail.

Purification (Tahara) and Prayer (Salat)

Following the arrangement of the primary sources, we begin withpurification (tahara). Purification is required before certain ritual acts(e.g., prayer, Qur’an recitation, hajj, etc.); it is accomplished by wetablutions (wudu’), dry ablutions (tayammum), and bathing (ghusl).17

Causes and states of impurity can be either “major,” which necessitatesa full-body bath (ghusl), or “minor,” which necessitates ablutions of thehead/face and extremities.18 Many rules govern the specific elements ofeach act of purification (e.g., the specific causes of impurity, the qualityof the purifying water and its container, etc.). Most jurists agree thatniyya is a required element of wudu’ and tayammum (though they varyon ghusl).

A few passages from Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi’s (d. 476/1083) al-Muhadhdhabillustrate the usage of niyya here. In his first mention of niyya, heremarks: “As for purity from minor impurity (hadath), it is [attained by]wudu’, ghusl, and tayammum, and nothing of this is valid without niyya,[in accord with] the saying of the Prophet, ‘Actions are defined by inten-tions, and to every person what he intends’ ” (1:69). The timing andduration are specified clearly: “It is preferred that one intend from thestart of wudu’ until the completion of wudu’ and that one continue theniyya [throughout]” (al-Shirazi: 1:69). Next, Shirazi raises the prospect ofthe “loss” of niyya: “If one formulates niyya at the point of washing theface, and then the niyya slips (‘azabat) [from one’s mind], it [the wash-ing] is valid, because [the washing of the face] is the first of the obligatoryactions. If one formulates niyya at that point, the niyya includes all the

17 Technically, for most jurists tayammum does not produce purity as such but, rather, licenses theperformance of the ‘ibadat even in the absence of purity. Tayammum, a sort of dry pantomime ofwudu’, allows one to perform rituals, especially 5alat, in the absence of ample clean water.

18 Major impurity is caused mainly by sexual fluids and menstrual and postpartum bleeding,whereas minor impurity is caused by a wide range of acts and substances (e.g., urination, defecation,sleep, etc.).


[subsequent] obligatory actions” (1:69). Niyya is understood here as adiscreet act, at a discreet moment in time; it is a step in the process thatsomehow licenses that which follows or accompanies it. It is lost by“slipping from the mind,” not by “sin.”

Shirazi discusses the object of niyya or, we might say, what isintended while intending. Acts of purification raise peculiar issues in thisregard: “The characteristic nature (5ifa) of niyya is intending the removalof minor impurity or [intending] purity from minor impurity, and eitheris valid, because one intends the goal (al-maq5ud), and this removes theminor impurity. Intending ‘purity’ without qualification (al-tahara al-mutlaqa) is not valid because the purity could be purity from minorimpurity or from major impurity, so it is not valid to have an unspecifiedniyya” (al-Shirazi 1:70). So one may formulate the niyya negatively,intending the absence (or removal) of impurity, or positively, intendingthe presence of purity; Shirazi sees these as equivalent. Moreover, onemay intend either the act of purification (e.g., “that I become pure”) orthe act of ritual worship for which one is purifying (e.g., “that I [becomeprepared to] pray”). Shirazi also considers the prospect of wudu’ pro-ducing mundane effects in addition to ritual purification: “If one intendsby his purification the removal of hadath and also cooling off and gettingphysically clean, the wudu’ is valid . . . because one thus intends removalof hadath and combines it with things that are not incompatible with it(la yunafihi), [although] there are those among our colleagues who say:‘Such wudu’ is not valid because it divides (ashrak) the niyya into [both]an act of worship (qurba) and something else’ ” (1:70; cf. al-Shafi‘i: 1:44).In Shirazi’s opinion, multiple “compatible” goals are acceptable in wudu’,although some jurists disagree. Note that cooling and cleaning are notpresented here as unintentional consequences but, rather, as part of theobject of the niyya; even though cooling off is not given a “spiritual” casthere, it is accompanied by niyya.

Already we may begin to entertain doubts that niyya refers to a stateof spiritual reverie and communion with the divine. It first appears asone step among many in the specific formal procedures of the ‘ibadat.Niyya here and above connects the mind to the outward actions, not thespirit to God and the heavens. While considering niyya in tahara, juristsoften discuss the location (mahall) of niyya, which they agree is the qalb,a term usually translated as “heart.” The legal texts do not explicitly dis-cuss the implications of this fact; they simply assert it.19 But the texts

19 For example, al-Musili says that “niyya is done in the heart because it is an action of the heart(‘amal al-qalb)” (1:47–48). Shirazi (1:69) and Ibn Qudama (2:132) similarly insist that the locationof niyya is the heart and further that niyya is a silent, mental phenomenon, though it can be made


reflect the prevailing belief in medieval Islamicate lands that the heart(qalb, located in the chest) is the seat of the intellect, the ‘aql (mind orrational faculty [Gardet: 486; Massignon 1922: 468, cited in Gardet: 486;Massignon 1997: 198–199, passim; al-Qarafi: 17–18]). The qalb was notseen either as simply a blood-pumping organ or as the seat of the emotionsbut, rather, as what Wensinck (without elaborating on the implications)calls “the central organ of intellect and attention” (1954–: 66). Contraryto contemporary western folk understandings, the heart was not seen asthe locus of bodily lusts, which were taken to come from the liver and bile(Massignon 1922: 489n7, cited in Gardet: 486). This was not only in keep-ing with the antecedent Semitic understandings of the heart; it was alsounequivocally endorsed by the Qur’an (Gardet: 486).20 Classical fiqh textsreflect this understanding of the heart as the organ of intellection, and evenmany modern legal scholars retain this view (al-Ashqar: 115–117; Bahnasi:6–8). In the legal texts the heart is an organ of thought, and niyya, as afunction of that organ, is a rational mental phenomenon. (Loose transla-tion of qalb as “heart” may itself support romantic misreadings of niyyain fiqh, so I will use “mind” or “heart/mind” instead.)

Medieval Muslim jurists had at their disposal a well-developed voca-bulary for things of the “spirit”; we have to assume, I think, that theydeliberately chose not to use it when discussing niyya. Classical Arabicreligious and legal texts generally employ a sophisticated terminology forvarious aspects of the self, including ruh (soul, spirit), nafs (spirit, self),irada (will), fikr (thought), ‘ilm (knowledge, understanding), the variousemotions, and so forth (see Calverley; Massignon 1997; al-Qarafi: 7–16;Smith and Haddad: esp. 17–21, 36–37, 56–59, 121–125). The terms ruhand nafs are largely interchangeable, and in what Calverley calls “thedominant Muslim doctrine,” the spirit/soul is seen as corporeal, “differ-ent in quiddity (al-mahiyya) from [the] sensible body, of the nature oflight, high, light in weight, living, moving, interpenetrating the bodilymembers as water in the rose” (882). Created to be eternal, it leaves thebody temporarily in sleep and leaves again to undergo the first judgmentafter death; it then normally returns to the body to await resurrectionduring the Last Days. Thus, the spirit in much Islamic thought is itselfseen in corporeal terms, capable of sensations and actions and closelylinked to the physical body. The Aristotelian notion of an incorporeal

more emphatic with a simultaneous verbal pronouncement. On the question of whether niyyaentails a verbal pronouncement, a “statement of intent,” medieval fiqh texts are consistent in treatingniyya as a mental, nonverbal action/state. Niyya is closely associated with certain verbal formulas,especially in salat and the hajj, but remains distinct from those utterances.

20 Gardet cites, e.g., Qur’an 7: 101, 179; 22:46; 26:89; 30:59; 39:45; etc.


spirit did find a niche in Islamic thought, especially via al-Ghazali andtheistic philosophy, but, Calverley notes, “it has never dominated Islam”as has the corporeal doctrine (881).

Most jurists say nothing about the nafs or ruh when discussing niyya;they simply assert that niyya is located in the qalb. In his treatise on niyyaal-Qarafi asserts that niyya is indeed an aspect or function (hal) of thesoul (nafs), at least indirectly, because niyya is a function of the mind(‘aql), which in turn is among the properties (5ifat, ahwal) of the soul. Indiscussing the location of niyya, al-Qarafi (17) asserts that niyya is a partor type (naw‘) of the will (irada) and a function of the mind (‘aql). As theQur’an establishes that the ‘aql is seated in the qalb, so too the niyya isseated in the qalb. Moreover, “if it is established that the ‘aql is in the qalb,it must be among our axioms that the nafs is in the qalb, because every-thing related to the ‘aql such as thought and knowledge and the like areproperties (5ifat) of the nafs”—and, further, “it is the nature of the soul togive rise to knowledge and thought, and it is this that is called ‘aql” (al-Qaraf i: 18). So niyya, being related to the ‘aql, is a “property of the soul.”However, this does not lead al-Qarafi into a discussion of niyya as thespiritual conduit between humans and God, in part because he clearlyholds the dominant corporeal view of the soul: “The soul (al-nafs),” hesays, “is a subtle [‘light,’ latif] body dwelling transparently within thephysical [‘heavy,’ kathif] body, from which it is distinguished like a fetus”(18). The soul does not appear here as the unfathomable inner depths ofthe self but, rather, as a corporeal entity with a place in the body. Al-Qarafi is primarily concerned to show that niyya is located in the qalb. Heends up demonstrating the indirect link of niyya to the soul but shows nointerest in the “spiritual” implications of this fact.

Al-Qarafi does, however, shed light on the juristic understanding ofniyya in the ‘ibadat and of the ‘ibadat themselves. He explicitly assertsthat niyya is that which defines a particular act of worship, distinguishingit from other actions: “The rationale for the requirement [of niyya] is dist-inguishing (tamyiz) acts of worship (al-‘ibadat) from ordinary actions(al-‘adat), and distinguishing among levels of acts of worship” (20,cf. 9–10). The term al-Qarafi uses here, tamyiz, is central to his definitionof niyya. As Sherman Jackson observes, for al-Qarafi, “the role of intention[is] to isolate (yumayyiz [a verbal form of the word tamyiz]) the specificobjective for which a willful act is performed” (200). Further, al-Qaraf iasserts:

[Niyya] distinguishes that which is for God from that which is not, sothe action is fit for glorification ( faya5luhu al-fi‘l lil-ta‘zim). Forexample, bathing (ghusl) may accomplish cooling off and cleaning up,


but can also accomplish a commanded act of worship (‘ibada). If oneintends specifically that the act is for God, the person accomplishes theglorification of the Lord with this bathing (fayaqa‘u ta‘zim al-‘abd lil-rabb bidhalika al-ghusl). In the absence of niyya . . . fasting (al-5awm) is[merely] lack of nourishment. (20)

Niyya not only defines an act but also allows certain acts to accomplish“the glorification of the Lord” and the fulfillment of divine commands. Itdoes this not by moral soul-searching but, in fact, by making a givenaction into an ‘ibada, an act that glorifies God. It is through bathing that aperson “glorifies the Lord,” not through niyya; niyya makes washing intoritual bathing and abstaining from food into 5awm (legally prescribedfasting), and those acts glorify God. The point of niyya is to define a givenaction as the particular action called for by the shari‘a, an action that initself accomplishes the religious goals of worship and glorification ofGod. These acts are religious, even “spiritual” in a sense, but not becauseniyya makes them so. Niyya does not make just any act into a religiousone; niyya would not make sleeping or turning summersaults into spirit-ual offerings to God. Niyya makes certain movements (e.g., rinsing withwater) into the stipulated acts of fiqh al-‘ibadat (e.g., wudu’), acts that arereligious because they are stipulated by religious law, not because they areaccompanied by niyya.21

21 Ibn Rushd asserts that most jurists agree that niyya is necessary in every “pure act of worship”(‘ibada mahda): “By this I mean [an act] which has no rational meaning (ghayr ma‘qulat al-ma‘na),and what is meant by it is only a devotional act (al-qurba), like prayer and the like, as distinguishedfrom an act of worship with rational meaning (‘ibada ma‘qulat al-ma‘na), such as washing off majorimpurity (ghusl al-najasa)” (1988: 1:8, 1994: 1:3). In other words, a “pure act of worship” is an actwith no other purpose; there is no rational “explanation” for prayer beyond it being a religious dutyand devotional action. Some acts categorized as acts of worship, however, do have other purposes,other explanations: ghusl, for example, physically removes unclean substances. In effect, thisestablishes a threefold classification of acts governed by fiqh: pure acts of worship (‘ibada mahda,synonymous with ghayr ma‘qulat al-ma‘na), actions that combine worship with material orinstrumental ends (‘ibada ma‘qulat al-ma‘na or al-‘ibada al-mafhuma al-ma‘na), and acts withpurely material or instrumental ends. Ibn Rushd continues: “There is no disagreement that a pure‘ibada requires niyya, and that an ‘ibada with a rational meaning (al-‘ibada al-mafhuma al-ma‘na)does not [necessarily] require niyya [the third category, purely instrumental acts, does not requireniyya]” (1988: 1:8–9, 1994: 1:3–4); wudu’, he notes, has characteristics of each category (shabah minal-‘ibadatayn), combining the effects of cleansing with fulfilling a devotional duty, and jurists mustdecide which characteristic (i.e., the rational/utilitarian or the nonrational/worshipful) they deemstronger. Not all jurists use this language of “pure ‘ibada”; many simply indicate that niyya isrequired in a given act of worship. Ibn Rushd uses it consistently, however, as does Shirazi (see, e.g.,1:69, 236; 2:598, 642, 698). Niyya, in these terms, is a definitive element of “pure” acts of worship,acts with no rational functions or explanations, only “religious” ones; these are acts one does simplybecause one is commanded to do so. Niyya gives a defining purpose or goal (i.e., “to be acts ofworship”) to acts with no other purpose.


That the central function of niyya is taxonomic becomes increasinglyclear with al-Qarafi’s discussion of acts that do not require niyya. Niyya isnot necessary for acts that are inherently directed toward God, which hecalls “acts of worship (al-qurbat) about which there is no confusion” and“actions of the heart devoted (muta‘alliqa) to God almighty” (21, 34). Theseinclude “believing in God, affirming [God’s] greatness and majesty, fear-ing His punishment, hoping for His reward, depending on His mercy,humility before His splendor, adoration of His wondrousness, awe beforeHis authority, and likewise pronouncing the tasbih and the tahlil (com-mon invocations of God’s glory and unity, respectively), recitation of theQur’an, and engaging in dhikr (recalling and/or reciting the name[s] ofGod)” (al-Qarafi: 21, see also 34). These are mostly actions that are “internal,”mental states in and of themselves, and thus do not involve an additional,accompanying state of mind. These acts also all have in common that theirobject is effectively defined by the act itself—one cannot believe in and fearGod without the act being “for God.” As al-Qarafi puts it, “These are dis-tinguished by being for the honor of [God] almighty, and thus the niyya isdirected (mun5arifa) to God almighty by their very form (bi-5uratiha). Thusthere is no harm done if [these acts] have no additional niyya” (21). Herethe form of the act defines the niyya, so to speak. The act is what matters;niyya makes some acts into the right act required by shari‘a, but niyya issuperfluous for those acts that by their very form are “for God.”

Following purification, fiqh texts turn to 5alat, including the (usuallyfive) daily prayers as well as prayers done for certain special occasions(e.g., funerals, holidays, etc.). For present concerns, the role of niyya in5alat is of central importance. Prayer in many religious traditions involvessome kind of interaction between the human/natural and divine/super-natural realms and is widely treated as an arena of “spirituality.” Niyya isa prominent element of Islamic 5alat and seems to lend itself handily tointerpretation as a “spiritual” phenomenon. But a survey of the sourcesonly further proves that, however “spiritual” 5alat may be, niyya in medi-eval fiqh is largely a formal, bodily (and mindful) matter. Salat as des-cribed in medieval fiqh al-‘ibadat is an act of obedient worship, not a“conversation with God.” Salat does not properly include entreaties toGod, petitions for specific blessings or rewards; Islamic law and popularpractice do provide for such activities, but these are distinct from theobligatory 5alat. Salat is a set of prescribed bodily postures and verbalpronouncements, to be done at the prescribed time and place; niyya is aprescribed mental component that accompanies the outward, bodilyforms, completing them as 5alat.

Ibn Mawdud al-Mu5ili (d. 683/1284) provides a typical example of thegeneral role given to niyya in 5alat: “There are six required [preliminaries


to 5alat]: purity of the body from major and minor impurities, purity ofthe clothing, purity of the place, proper covering of the body, locating ofthe qibla [i.e., the direction of Mecca], and niyya” (1:45). This accountputs niyya on the level of the formal, physical alignment of body and spaceprior to 5alat proper. In 5alat the object of niyya must be the specific type of5alat to be performed. As Shirazi asserts, “If the prayer is a required one,one must have specific (ta‘yin) niyya, intending the noon prayer or theevening prayer to distinguish (li-tatamayyaz) it from other [prayers]”(1:236). Again niyya defines the act of worship that it accompanies. Shiraziconsiders the possibility of changing one’s niyya: “If one enters into noonprayer then changes the niyya to the mid-afternoon prayer this invalidatesthe noon prayer, because it interrupts (qata‘a) the niyya, and the mid-afternoon prayer is not valid because he did not intend this at the point of[entering] ihram” (1:237). Once prayer has been initiated with the properniyya, changing or “interrupting” the niyya (again, not “sin”) invalidatesthe prayer.22 And one’s niyya can be wrong, causing the act to fail. The actis central, and niyya again does not make just any act into an offering toGod; rather, if put in the right place, it makes an act into the act called forby the shari‘a. Niyya alone, however, does not define the act, for if oneintends to perform an obligatory prayer, for example, but acts before theproper prayer time, the prayer only counts as a supererogatory prayer.The niyya cannot overcome certain objective limitations; subjective andobjective criteria both matter in defining the act.

Shirazi affirms, as he did for wudu’, that the niyya must remain con-stant throughout the prayer: “If one intends breaking off (al-khuruj)from prayer or intends that he will break off [in the future] or doubtswhether he broke off or not, the prayer is invalidated, because niyya isrequired throughout the prayer, and he has already cut it off (qad qata‘a)by so doing and thus invalidated the prayer, as purity [is removed] if it iscut off by minor impurity” (1:237). This passage introduces a new pros-pect, namely, that one might intend the ending of or exiting from prayer.This passage presents the actor as changing the niyya from “niyya topray” to “niyya to break off from prayer”; changing niyya is like “chang-ing one’s mind.” This implies that one can only have a single niyya at atime; significantly, the texts do not envision an internally divided self,

22 Ibn Qudama remarks: “If one enters ihram for a religious duty (farida) then intends to change(nawa naqlaha) to another duty, the first duty is invalid because the niyya is interrupted (qat‘a), andthe second duty is invalid because he did not intend it from the start” (2:135). He goes beyond thebinary possibilities of “niyya/not niyya,” suggesting the possibility of insufficiently firm niyya: “If onebegins prayer with a niyya wavering between completeness and interruptedness (mutaraddada baynaitmamiha wa-qat‘iha), the prayer is invalid, because niyya is firm resolve (al-niyya ‘azmu jazimu)”(2:133). On the term resolve (‘azm), see note 25 below.


intending several potentially incompatible actions/goals at once, but,rather, a binary, niyya/not niyya (or this niyya/that niyya) situation. Hereniyya is not only the intention to perform an act of worship but also theintention to perform any act (including the act of ending prayer). Fur-ther, Shirazi does not describe a person necessarily acting on the inten-tion to cease praying but simply formulating such an intention; formingthe niyya to break off the prayer is the act of breaking off the prayer, asmuch as any outward indication, such as ceasing the bodily movementsof prayer.

When traveling (or ill, or at war), a Muslim is permitted to performan abbreviated version of the daily prayers. For Shirazi, the permissibilityof this abbreviation hinges in part on the niyya: “Abbreviation is not per-mitted unless one intends abbreviation at the point of entering into theprayer state (ihram), because the norm (al-a5l) is the complete version[i.e., the default mode is full prayer unless otherwise specified by niyya];so if one did not intend abbreviation while establishing his purity, he isobligated [to perform] a full prayer, and is not permitted to abbreviate, asis the case for one who is not traveling” (1:338). The goal of the niyya mustbe not simply to pray but to pray an abbreviated prayer, and this must beestablished prior to the start of the prayer. Doing so establishes whichprayer (full or abbreviated) the ensuing bodily actions constitute. Theimplication is that even if one should proceed to perform the movementsof full prayer, if one starts with the niyya of abbreviation, the actionwould be counted as abbreviated prayer.

Shirazi also illustrates the role of niyya in defining actions when headdresses group prayer. Islamic law establishes that whenever two ormore Muslims pray together, one must be the leader and the others musttake their cues from the leader. Niyya plays an important role in deter-mining the designation of prayer leader:

Group prayer is not valid unless the follower (al-ma’mum, the member ofthe prayer congregation) intends [to be among the congregation in] thegroup prayer, because one wants (yuridu) to follow (yataba‘a) another[person], for it is necessary to [have] the niyya of following. If two mendecide to pray individually and [a third person] intends to follow thetwo, his prayer is not valid, because it is not possible for him to emulatethe two at one time, and if he intends emulation of one of the two, with-out specifying (‘ayyin), his prayer is not valid, because if he does not specifyit is not possible to emulate [one of them]. (al-Shirazi: 1:310)23

23 Ibn Rushd recounts a disagreement among jurists on this issue: “[The ‘ulama’] disagree aboutwhether it is required that the niyya of the follower agree with the niyya of the leader in specification(ta‘yin) of the prayer and its necessary steps (al-wujub [i.e., the outer form]), that he is not permitted


When two or more people pray together, each must have the appropriateniyya to lead or follow. It is rarely clearer that niyya serves to define an actand locate it within the legal taxonomy. Niyya also distinguishes one whois traveling (and may thus engage in an abbreviated form of 5alat) fromone who is stationary; according to Shirazi, “If one who is travelingintends (nawa) to stay for four days, excluding the day he arrives and theday he leaves, he is considered (5ar, lit., ‘becomes’) stationary, and hislicense (rukha5) [to perform the abbreviated practices] of travel is invali-dated” (1:339–40; cf. al-Kasani: 1:97; al-Mu5ili: 1:79). The issue is notstaying in one place but, rather, intending to do so, and once one has thisintent, one shifts from being a traveler to being a stationary person. Onedoes not wait until one has actually stayed the requisite number of daysbut, rather, begins full prayer when the niyya to stay for that long isformed. Jurists may disagree over how many days one must have in mindto be considered stationary, but they agree that niyya is the issue. This is aclear case of the niyya defining the action, the legal status of the actor,and the prescriptions incumbent on him or her.

Muslim jurists’ discussion of niyya in 5alat clearly produces a great dealof casuistic detail; niyya serves several specific functions in this complex setof rules. It appears as a basic focusing of the mind on the act at hand, payingattention to the movements of 5alat, and, as it were, putting the mind in theright “place” while putting the hands, head, feet, and so forth in the rightplaces. I think we are not far off base here if we think of niyya as akin to abodily posture, that of the qalb. Further, niyya partly constitutes the distinc-tion between outwardly identical acts. As such, it helps locate a given actionin the taxonomy of Islamic law, linking a given action to the prescribedcategories of fiqh. It may thus serve the psychological function of producingor confirming knowledge that a given act was performed and a specific dutywas fulfilled. But niyya is not, in any overt, explicit way, “spiritual,” even inthe context of prayer, presumably the most “spiritual” of the ‘ibadat.

Niyya in the Other ‘Ibadat

Even if 5alat were a good place to expect niyya to be a “spiritual” compo-nent (though, as we have seen, it is not), we would still face the problem thatthe term niyya is also important in the other ‘ibadat, actions not so clearlyfitting a common (contemporary western) notion of “religious” or “spiri-tual.” The ‘ibadat include zakat, a tax levied on certain kinds of personal

to pray the noon prayer behind a leader who is praying the mid-afternoon prayer, or to pray asupererogatory prayer when the follower prays a required prayer. Malik and Abu Hanifa hold that itis necessary that the niyya of the follower agree with that of the leader, while al-Shafi‘i holds that thisis not necessary” (1988: 1:120, 1994: 1:132).


wealth, distributed primarily to the poor of the Islamic community. Thepayment of zakat, like the other ‘ibadat, requires niyya at the time of perfor-mance (al-Mu5ili: 1:101; al-Shirazi: 1:560). Niyya distinguishes between anobligatory and a supererogatory instance of almsgiving, two actions thatmay outwardly appear identical. In short, niyya defines a given act of givingmoney/goods as zakat, distinguishing it from generic “giving” and volun-tary “charity” (5adaqa). Further, the jurists envision a case in which the per-son paying the zakat does not personally transport the payment to therecipient but, rather, authorizes another party to act on his or her behalf:

Regarding the timing of the niyya, there are two opinions: One, onemust intend the situation of payment (hal al-daf ‘ ) because entering intothe action is an ‘ibada, so it is necessary to intend at the beginning like inprayer; Two, it is permitted that the niyya precede [the payment]because delegating authority (tawkil) is permitted for [zakat], and niyyais not simultaneous with the fulfillment [of the duty] by the delegate, soit is permitted that the niyya precede the action, unlike in the case ofprayer. (al-Shirazi: 1:560; see also al-Nawawi: 6:156–158)

The person responsible for the zakat must have the niyya when design-ating the amount of goods/cash to be used as payment; if a proxy physic-ally delivers the payment to the recipient, that proxy need not have theniyya of this duty. The important niyya is that of the person on whosewealth the zakat is levied. Here we see again that niyya is literally a defin-itive element of a given act of worship. The very facts that niyya isrequired for zakat and, indeed, that zakat is an ‘ibada, an act of worship,undermine the overly interioristic and spiritualistic view of niyya, Islamicritual, and “Islam” found in some secondary sources. Niyya here is notthe intent “that God accept my offering” or “that my zakat support thepoor,” though no doubt Muslims may have such hopes for their zakat;rather, niyya is the intent “that this transfer of wealth be zakat.”

Niyya is required in fasting, whether that fasting is for Ramadan, infulfillment of an oath, an expiation (kaffara), or a supererogatory devo-tional act. In fact, niyya is a crucial element constituting the differenceamong such fasts (Ibn Qudama: 4:333–334). This is demonstrated by IbnQudama (d. 620/1223): “One must specify the niyya for each requiredfast, such as whether the next day’s fast is for Ramadan, or for making upa previous broken fast, or as an expiation, or [in fulfillment of] an oath”(4:338).24 Like many jurists, he enters a debate over just when the niyya is

24 Ibn Qudama (see 4:338–339) notes, however, that jurists disagree about this and that someallow less specificity about the fast when formulating niyya.


to be formed, particularly whether it must be formed before sunrise onthe day of fasting or whether it can validly be formed after that (amongthe major madhhabs, the Hanaf is are alone in generally supporting thelatter idea [see the Hanafi al-Mu5ili: 1:26]).25 For example, Ibn Qudamaasserts that it is not acceptable to form the niyya a day ahead, “unless onemaintain it into part of the night,” so that there is niyya the night immedi-ately preceding the day of fasting (4:336). He further discusses a debateregarding whether one must re-form the niyya each night of Ramadan orone may form it once for the whole month (three madhhabs say theformer, whereas Hanafis say the latter [see Ibn Rushd 1988: 1:292ff, 1994:1:341ff; al-Nawawi: 6:266ff]). Another aspect of Ramadan, “retreat to themosque” (i‘tikaf ), also requires (or is recommended to have) niyya(i‘tikaf is the supererogatory act of spending time, usually in the evening,and sometimes even overnight, in a mosque). Niyya is the intention thata given stretch of time spent in a mosque count as the fiqh-defined actioni‘tikaf, thus distinguishing the act from the outwardly identical act ofsimply spending time in a mosque (see, e.g., al-Mu5ili: 1:136–138).

The remaining major Islamic ritual is the hajj, the pilgrimage toMecca required once in the lifetime of every physically and financiallyable Muslim. This is a complex ritual, with numerous subelements gover-ned by a detailed array of rules. Niyya appears at several points along theway, first as the niyya of the overall performance of the hajj (or ‘umra,the supererogatory “lesser pilgrimage”) and later for several separateconstituent elements. The pilgrimage proper begins when the pilgrimreaches one of the several approved entry sites into the precincts of Mecca.At this point the pilgrim must be in the state of ihram (purity, inviolabil-ity), which includes wearing a special seamless garment. Al-Mu5iliobserves, “[The pilgrim] prays two rak‘as and says: ‘O God, I desire to per-form the hajj, so make my way easy and accept it from me,’ and if he for-mulates niyya in his qalb, this [makes the hajj] lawful” (1:143); and he adds,“[One enters ihram] when he formulates niyya and calls out the talbiyya

25 Wensinck notes that “the period of fasting is from dawn to sunset. Because it is hard to establishprecisely the time of dawn, and the fast is not an action which starts at a specific moment, theformulation of [niyya] cannot be immediately followed by the action; one speaks here, when oneexpresses himself precisely, of ‘azm [resolve]; this is not to deny that the term [niyya] is usually used”(1920: 110). Ibn Qudama uses the term ‘azm when discussing the timing of niyya for fasting, effectivelytreating ‘azm and niyya as synonymous in this context: “The meaning of the niyya is the aim (al-qasd),and this is the settling of the heart/mind to do something, and one’s resolve about it (‘azmuhu ‘alayhi)without wavering” (4:337; he [1:156] gives a similar definition of niyya when he first discusses it atlength). Denny comments that if the niyya does not immediately precede the act, then “its status isreduced to mere ‘decision’ (‘azm), which would be no more than what precedes ritual niya” (1990: 209).This deprecation of the term ‘azm seems to me unwarranted, as the sources take a more neutral tone. Itmay be that jurists disagree about the proper usage of this term, a matter that awaits further study.


[i.e., calling out, ‘Here I am, O Lord. . . ,’ a standardized invocation]”(1:144; cf. al-Shirazi: 2:698–699).26 Shirazi (and his commentator al-Nawawi) notes that niyya determines the taxonomy of the act, whether itcounts as hajj or ‘umra: “One should specify [with niyya] whether one ispreparing for the hajj or the ‘umra” (al-Nawawi: 7:237, see also 7:235–239).

As with zakat, jurists consider the prospect of one person performingthe hajj on behalf of another, such as someone physically unable to travelor one who has died without having performed the duty. This is generallyallowed, provided the proxy has already performed his or her own oblig-atory hajj. In such a case niyya is the crucial action that distinguishes theperformance (i.e., “someone else’s hajj”) from the outwardly identical act(i.e., “one’s own hajj”). For example, according to al-Mu5ili, “whoeverperforms the hajj on behalf of another intends (yanwi) the hajj for thatperson, while saying ‘I am at your service, O Lord, on behalf of so-and-so’ ” (1:170–171; see also al-Shirazi: 2:700; Wensinck 1920: 114). Theproxy goes on to perform all the normal actions of the hajj, but the fulfill-ment of the duty is attributed—legally and, it is hoped, in the eyes ofGod—to the person on whose behalf the proxy acts. The niyya, in thiscase linked to a verbal statement, defines the act it accompanies, estab-lishing its legal status.

Such casuistic detail may seem beside the point to a reader in searchof the “spirit of Islam.” That is precisely my point. I recount this materialto show how niyya is actually discussed in the legal sources because anyanalysis of niyya must deal with these facts. Like most legal systems,Islamic law generates a complex normative taxonomy of human activity,defining the types of actions one should do (or not do) to fit into thesystem. Muslim jurists are not strict behaviorists, and fiqh al-‘ibadat con-ceptualizes action in a way that includes intention. One must get the out-ward form right, but one must get the inner form right as well. Niyya is afunction of the mind, the rational faculty, and its link to the spirit/soul(itself a corporeal entity) is indirect; it is depicted being spoiled not by“sin” but by “slipping the mind.” The call to “formulate niyya” is the callto focus the mind on the ‘ibada at hand. Niyya is definitive of actions,critical to making a given set of movements and utterances into one type

26 As with fasting, timing is also a complex issue in the hajj. See Wensinck 1920: 113–114. On thetopic of verbalizing one’s niyya during the hajj, Shirazi remarks that one Nafi‘ reported asking IbncUmar, “ ‘Is it necessary for us to say whether we are on hajj or cumra?’ He answered ‘Does God knowwhat is in your hearts? Then this is your niyya’ ” (2:699–700; see also al-Nawawi: 7:237–239).Though this seems to imply that niyya is some kind of link to the divine, Shirazi simply presents thisaccount as evidence that the niyya need not be verbalized. So even when faced with an apparentopportunity to do so, Muslim jurists do not wax eloquent about the spiritual qualities of acts ofworship, or place niyya in a spiritual role, but, rather, maintain a focus on the formal.


of act and not another (say, performing ablutions, not cooling off orcleaning up; the noon prayer, not the evening prayer; or someone else’shajj, not my own). Thus, niyya helps make a person’s particular actioninto the named type of action identified and required by the law.

CONCLUSION: THE SEARCH FOR THE “SPIRIT OF ISLAM”

If niyya has elements of a “spiritual” quality in fiqh al-‘ibadat, it doesso indirectly, as an intention to perform an act of worship. An ‘ibada is anact of obedient service in accord with the will of God. Niyya is not simplythe intention, for example, “that I bow at the waist, then kneel, then touchmy forehead to the floor.” Rather, niyya is specifically the intention “that Ipray,” “that these actions constitute 5alat,” and, implicitly, “that my actionbe an ‘ibada.” A valid ‘ibada, then, must be accompanied by niyya with thegoal “that this action be done to accord with the will of God.” Thus, niyyacan perhaps be described as a “religious” or “spiritual” component of the‘ibadat, if by this we mean it is an intention to fulfill the will of God, theshari‘a. This is how we ought to take al-Qarafi’s assertion that niyya is theintention “specifically that the act is for God” and “accomplishes the glori-fication of the Lord.” The shari‘a governs actions in this life, includingwhat might seem to some to be quite mundane matters. This is one way ofunderstanding what Muslims mean when they insist that Islam is not a“religion” as modern westerners often use the term but, rather, is a “wayof life.” Proper religion does not necessarily involve Denny’s disembodied“descent into the self’s core,” for “religion” in fiqh al-‘ibadat is consistentlypresented in bodily, formalistic terms, an embodied orientation towardGod. Niyya is Goldziher’s “supreme religious principle” only if one takes“religion” in this embodied sense (and even then there are plenty of other“principles” at least as important as niyya). The jurists treat the qalb(heart/mind) as part of the body, which must be properly aligned whenperforming the ‘ibadat. It would be better to recognize that all the ‘ibadat,in all their aspects, are properly religious, properly “spiritual,” than to sepa-rate niyya off as that element that makes them such.

I wish to be emphatically clear: I am not making the absurd claim thatthere is nothing “spiritual” (in the more interioristic, disembodied sense)about anything in the many and varied Islamic religious traditions. Noram I arguing that no Muslim ever uses the term niyya in a “spiritual”way.27 Fiqh al-‘ibadat is not the whole of Islam, and there are contexts

27 Anecdotally, it should be noted that the many Muslims with whom I have discussed niyyaattribute a wide range of connotations to the term. My initial interest in the topic was only sharpenedby the apparent lack of worry about niyya reported by several fellow students of mine at the College


and genres in which the term niyya is given a different, more “spiritual” castthan in fiqh (see, e.g., Padwick: 48–54). For example, al-Ghazali, who inGoldziher’s account is the savior of Muslim interiority, addresses niyya atsome length in his Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din, devoting an entire chapter (kitab) to“niyya, ikhla5, and 5idq (intention, sincerity, and truthfulness)” (14:154–177). This text does indeed treat niyya as a “spiritual” thing, a kind of con-duit between the believer and God, and as Wensinck’s “religious and moralcriterion superior to that of the law.”28 Goldziher, then, is partly correct;Sufi writings generally do tend to have a more interioristic notion of reli-gion, including religious praxis, than fiqh texts do. But fiqh is no minor partof the Islamic tradition, and no sweeping characterizations of “Islam” thatmisrepresent fiqh will do. And casting Sufism as “superior,” as the cure to alegalistic disease, is inappropriately normative and historically simplistic.

The misreading of niyya found in the secondary sources is indicativeof a troubling tendency in the academic study of Islam to privilege interio-rity over exteriority, often in a quest for some religious “essence.” Toomuch scholarship on Islam appears intent on making Islam “friendly” to anon-Muslim audience by making it look more “spiritual” (perhaps morelike Protestant Christianity) than it sometimes does. The goal seems to beto correct the widespread impression that persists among non-Muslimsthat Islam is a rigidly legalistic tradition, preoccupied with overt adher-ence to rules of behavior generated by patriarchal jurists. Often, this“correction” means privileging Sufism over fiqh, much as Goldziher and,more subtly, Wensinck and Denny do. Karen Armstrong, for example,admits that following the demise of the ‘Abbasid caliphate in the tenthcentury, “the ulama, with the backing of the Shariah, became the only stableauthority,” yet she immediately adds that “as Sufism became more popular,the piety of the people deepened and acquired an interior dimension,” sothat “a truly Muslim people had come into being, who had learned toendorse the faith at a profound level” (2002: 87, 92–93). Similarly, MaliseRuthven asserts that contemporary Muslim attitudes toward Islamic laware problematically conservative: “The solutions, I believe, are to be

of Islamic Law at the University of Jordan. My inquiries about niyya, especially my expectation thatone might fret over the indeterminacy of one’s own niyya, often inspired quizzical responses andcalm assurances that one “simply does the niyya.” Others, however, have told me that they verymuch see niyya as a crucial spiritual element in their religious practice, especially 5alat, describingniyya in terms of spiritual insight or comfort. My point is not that the latter Muslims are wrong but,rather, that the former are also right.

28 Al-Ghazali maintains that God rewards good intentions even if they are not put into action,suggesting that for him niyya is the ethical core of an individual’s actions, the aspect of one’sbehavior that matters most to God. He cites a hadith: “the niyya of the believer is more importantthan his action” (162). However, no fiqh manual I have consulted cites al-Ghazali’s opinion or thishadith, which al-Ghazali’s editor notes is considered “weak” (da‘if [162n1]).


found in those Islamic traditions that resisted the encroachments of pop-ulist orthodoxy in the past, notably the spiritual disciplines of Sufism andthe forward-looking orientations of modern Shi‘ism” (399).29 Such anti-nomian, antiritual, romanticized, and neocolonial attitudes are oddlycontinuous with those of Osborn, Tisdall, and Goldziher.30

The 11 September attacks seem to have given new life to such time-worn western calls for Islamic reform. R. Scott Appleby, for example,asserted in November 2001 that “Islam has been remarkably resistant tothe differentiation and privatization of religion that often accompaniessecularization. . . and has not undergone a reformation like the one experi-enced by Christianity, which led to a pronounced separation of sacredand secular” (Lingua Franca, November 2001, cited in Fish: 36). Simi-larly, Andrew Sullivan has called Islam “a great religion that is nonethe-less extremely inexperienced in the toleration of other ascendant andmore powerful faiths” (New York Times Magazine, 7 October 2001,cited in Fish: 36). Stanley Fish responds to such assertions by observingthat “privatization and secularization are not goals Islam has yet toachieve, they are specters that Islam (or some versions of it) pushesaway as one would push away death” (36). Moreover, Fish continues,“when Sullivan says of Islam that it is ‘a great religion,’ he means apotentially great religion. Islam will be fine when it rids itself of itsimpurities, the chief impurity being a stubborn insistence on a fidelityto a set of particular beliefs” (36). (I would hasten to add “fidelity to aset of particular practices.”) This reformist agenda rests on a notion of“true religion” that Fish calls “vague, nonbinding, light-as-air spirituality,

29 Along the same lines, Ruthven cites approvingly the work of P. J. Stewart, whom Ruthvensummarizes as arguing that “religiosity, like other endowments, may be genetically transmitted. . . .In Islam there is no celibacy, and the Sufi orders, which in the past acted as a kind of spiritual yeast insociety, may be the carriers and preservers of a vital genetic component. . . . [T]he future of Islammust lie in a renovated mystical orientation where depth of religious feeling can be yoked tometaphorical understandings of the Quran and the Prophetic traditions” (399–400).

30 Russell McCutcheon comments on the tendency among certain prominent authors (e.g., KarenArmstrong, Joseph Campbell) to search for evidence that the many various religious traditionsfound in human history are actually directed toward the same God, the same “profound spiritualexperiences” of divine power and mystery. He makes the salient point that perhaps what is moreinteresting and in need of exploration is “just why it is that people seem continually drawn togenerating nonempirical sameness where empirical differences dominate” (43). The popularity ofArmstrong’s work (especially 1993), McCutcheon asserts, “is itself evidence of the age in which welive when people of relative privilege seem intent on reducing empirical diversity and multiplicity toethereal and essential unity and simplicity—a unity and simplicity that follows a rather strict partyline. This is nothing more than the ideological strategy of universalization” (54). McCutcheonrecognizes that this is a liberal agenda, one that may be well intentioned in the sense of seeking somedegree of social harmony, but its consequence, intended or not, is the construction of “homogeneityby means of rhetorics of unity, a rhetoric that purchases social identity at the expense of those whodo not quite fit the dominant pattern” (55).


the chief characteristic of which is that it claims—and believes—nothing,”a religion of “surface pieties—abstractions without substantive bite—towhich everyone will assent because they are empty, insipid, and safe”(37, 38). Whatever the reason for taking this reformist approach, it failsto describe or explain contemporary Islam, not, of course, because Islamis “imprisoned in a stockade of legal restraints” and “soul-destroyingpedantry” but, rather, because this approach rests partly on the peculiarlymodern (and perhaps particularly Protestant Christian) notion thatembodied praxis has less value than inward, silent, private, meditative,“spiritual” activity. Certainly, the Islamic world today has its share ofaggressively conservative voices, and these may be disproportionatelymore concerned with external performance than with inner spirituality.But making Islam “safe” by making it uniformly more concerned withspirit and less with form is a confused and inappropriate scholarlyagenda, albeit one with a long history.

Efforts to spiritualize niyya serve this same broad agenda of correctinga “defective” Islam. They seem wedded, moreover, to an ethical visionfocused on the “inner self ” as a complex site of conflicting drives and,indeed, as the principal battleground of good and evil (see Thomas).According to this view, proper objective action is not sufficient; properinternal disposition is also required. Further—and this is crucial, for thisis where Islamic ritual law really veers from this course—not only is theperson divided into inner and outer but the inner self is seen as dividedand unruly, capable of the worst kinds of betrayals. “Ethical profundity”here emerges as a hermeneutic of suspicion of one’s own actions thatrefuses to be satisfied and that consistently distrusts the interior self.However, the “inner self” as presented in fiqh al-‘ibadat is not so complex.If we are not yet at the point of offering a systematic theory or genealogyof the Islamic legal self on the order of Michel Foucault’s (1978, 1985) orCharles Taylor’s work on western selfhood, a few preliminary observationsare in order (see Messick 2001: 151–152; see also Rahman). There is noFall in the general Islamic view of history or human nature; as Dennyhimself points out, “Fitra, humankind’s God-given sound, originalnature,” is, as God’s creation, inherently good (1990: 203; cf. MacDonald).Most Muslims think themselves born as “blank slates” rather than onesneeding erasure of inherited mistakes. Islamic ritual law does not envi-sion the inner self as unruly and rebellious, “fallen” and prone tobetrayal.31 The jurists do not treat niyya as a slippery slope; one need not

31 Beyond treating niyya more “spiritually,” Sufis also tend to see the internal self as complex,multilayered, and potentially divided, even dangerous. Al-Muhasibi (d. 243/857), for example, isrepresentative of a strain of Sufi thought regarding the complexity of the inner self: “The person who


pile layer upon layer of niyya, so that one must not only “mean it” whenone acts but also “mean to mean it” and so on indefinitely. And niyya isnot depicted as conflicted, in some Augustinian turmoil of self-doubt,wanting to “mean it” but not able to. Niyya, the internal, subjectivedimension of right action, is presented as generally stable and subject tothe will. Subsequently, the ethic pervading ritual law texts is not one of anelusive, unattainable standard (i.e., a claim that one’s niyya can never bedeep or lasting enough). One can actually get the actions right, bothinside and out. The jurists are scrupulous in assessing actions (in theirsubjective and objective aspects), but it is not the runaway, insatiable,interioristic scrupulousness that Goldziher, Denny, and others seem toharbor as a model of ethical profundity and try to find in Islam. My pointis not that Denny is wrong in suggesting that Islamic ritual is profoundbut, rather, that the specific model of profundity he seeks inappropriatelyconstrains the data.

The actions governed by Islamic ritual law are presented as valuable andmoral in and of themselves, not (just) as symbolic surfaces, signifiers, ormetaphors. The texts of Islamic ritual law, when addressing the nature androle of niyya, do not say that niyya “puts one in the presence of one’s cre-ator” or that “niyya gives these acts their ethical meaning and religiousworth”; they do not say to “be spiritual” or “be moral” when doing theseacts. Rather, they say, “Formulate niyya when doing these acts,” which is tosay, “Do these acts and not others, for one is being religious and moral bydoing these acts.” Of course, many Muslims see morality and religion asinvolving much more than just these acts. But western scholarship hasoften overlooked a crucial aspect of niyya in fiqh al-‘ibadat—its technicalaspect as a discrete step in embodied (and mindful) ritual duties. Westernscholars have too often tried to wash away the sticky “problem” of thisformalism with the monotheistic universal solvent of “spirit.” Such anapproach to niyya is defensive and apologetic, meant to show the spiri-tual depth of Islamic practice, but it ironically only perpetuates the char-acterization of Islam as rigidly formalistic. Making niyya into thespiritual side of praxis pushes back against, and thus props up, a misun-derstanding of Muslim ritual actions as somehow spiritually defective.

falls into vanity does not hesitate to become mired in self-delusion (ghirra) . . . . [and] even goes sofar as to lie about God Most High while thinking that he is being true, to stray into error whilethinking he is well guided [kitab al-ri‘aya li-huquq Allah]” (in Sells: 172–173). Sells notes that manySufis more systematically divide the self (nafs) into three phases: “the phase of ego-domination (an-nafsu l-‘amara), the phase of self-blame (an-nafsu al-lawama), and the phase of peace and security(an-nafsu al-mutma’inna),” a distinction derived from Qur’an 12:53, which refers to “the self thatdominates with wrong [an-nafsu l-‘amaratu bi s-su‘]” (178n19).


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