What Is Hayā’?
There are several accessible articles and even a book in English that explore the scope and significance of ĥayā’ in Islamic sources,10 so I will endeavor to keep this discussion relatively brief. While shallow understandings of ĥayā’ as shyness or mere modesty have recently been used to attempt to silence outspoken women and young people in some Muslim spaces, the Islamic tradition provides a much more profound account, with one hadith recording: “We were with the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, when modesty [ĥayā’] was mentioned to him. They said, ‘O Messenger of God, is modesty part of the religion?’ The Prophet said, ‘Rather, it is the entire religion.’”11
Derived from the Arabic root ĥā’-yā’-wāw, which it shares with the Divine Name al-Ĥayy (the Living) and the words for life (ĥayāh) and alive (ĥayy), ĥayā’ is considered an essential attribute of living beings, especially human beings, naming a kind of awareness of being the object of moral gaze, as fourteenth-century (eighth-century Hijri) Hanbali scholar and Sufi Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah writes:
Ĥayā’ is of the most superior qualities, of the greatest in status, and of the most beneficial. Indeed, it is quintessential to humanness, for whoever carries no ĥayā’ has no share of humanness other than flesh, blood, and outward appearance. Likewise, there is no potential for good in a person [without it]…. Were it not for ĥayā’, many people would not have fulfilled any of their obligations, nor acknowledged the rights of any being, nor kept the ties of kin, nor even shown kindness to parents. The driving element in these acts is either religious, namely hoping for its good outcome [ultimately], or it is worldly, which is the ĥayā’ of its doer from the [eyes of] creation. Therefore, were it not for ĥayā’ from either the Creator or the creation, one would not have engaged in these acts.12
The Qur’an describes God as not having ĥayā’, or shame, to “set forth a parable of a gnat or something smaller” (2:26) or “to tell the truth” (33:53) and reveals that “the Prophet has too much ĥayā’ to mention” (33:53) that people lingering to speak with him would bother him. Indeed, the Prophet ﷺ, the epitome of Islamic masculinity (muruwwah), is described as being more intense in ĥayā’ than a virgin girl in her room.13 What a difference between his beautiful example (33:21) and that of many promoters of “masculinity” today. Thus, far from being simply a “feminine” virtue, as ¢Alī b. Abī Ţālib, the Prophet’s son-in-law and paragon of Islamic chivalry (futuwwah) said, “ĥayā’ is the key to all goodness.”14
In the hadith literature, even God is described as having ĥayā’: “Verily, God has ĥayā’ and is generous. He would have ĥayā’, when a man raises his hands to Him, to turn them [the upraised hands] away empty and disappointed.”15 Al-Qushayrī reports a tradition, popular in later Sufi works, that on the Day of Judgment, God will hand each of his servants a sealed letter containing all of their deeds, and they will be ashamed to read it, but God has also written in this letter, “You did what you did, and I am ashamed to show it to you. Go, for I have forgiven you.”16 In the same work, al-Qushayrī recounts a related saying from early Central Asian Sufi Yaĥyā b. Mu¢ādh al-Rāzī, “If a man is ashamed before God Most High while being obedient, God will be ashamed of [punishing] him, when he sins.”17 As Sa¢dī also wrote in his Gulistān, “Look at the generosity of God: the servant sins, and God feels ashamed!”
Angels are also described as having ĥayā’ before God due to their inability to praise Him adequately, and in one narration, the Prophet ﷺ said of his companion ¢Uthmān, “Should I not feel shy [have ĥayā’] before a man before whom the angels feel shy [have ĥayā’]?”18 The prophets are also described as having ĥayā’ before God and others, as al-Qushayrī writes that after Adam’s slip, “when God asked him, ‘Are you fleeing from Me?’, he answered, ‘No, I am fleeing out of shame before You!’”19 However, the semantic range of ĥayā’ covers everything from traditional notions of modesty to being considerate and conscientious with people—refraining from doing or saying anything that might cause them discomfort or harm (unless necessary to prevent greater harm)—to remaining clothed even when alone out of awareness of being in the sight of God, the angels, and the natural world.
What unites all of these forms of ĥayā’, however, is a sense of conscientious “shame” or “reticence” resulting from the awareness of being the object of the moral gaze of others, whether stones, plants, animals, other people, angels, and God, and even of one’s own gaze. Most of us would be ashamed to do something wrong in front of a small child, someone we respect, or even a mirror, so God is even more deserving of our ĥayā’, and the complete integration and internalization of this awareness is regarded as the loftiest form of ĥayā’. The hadith tradition also distinguishes between “good,” “positive,” or “intelligent” and “bad,” “negative,” or “stupid” ĥayā’, the former resulting from the correct prioritization of these different moral gazes.20 Indeed, much of the modern aversion to shame can be understood as a preponderance of the negative forms of ĥayā’ and the paucity of the positive forms.
In Islamic sources, the highest level of ĥayā’ is usually described as that in which the divine gaze and individual human self-regard coincide. Thus, Imam ¢Alī held that “the most beautiful, lovely, excellent [aĥsan]21 form of ĥayā’ is ĥayā’ before one’s own self,” which al-Jawziyyah describes as “the ĥayā’ of a noble soul when it detects its own deficiency, or that it has settled for less. It is almost as if one has two souls, one ashamed of the other. This is the most complete ĥayā’, for if people were to be ashamed of themselves, then by greater virtue, they would become ashamed in front of others.”22
Thus defined, ĥayā’ is closely related to the central Qur’anic terms of taqwā (reverent, mindful awareness of God) and iĥsān (beauty, loveliness, excellence), defined in the famous Hadith of Jibrīl as “worshiping God as if you see Him, for if you do not see Him, He sees You.”23 As numerous Sufi commentators have pointed out, the original language of this tradition can also be glossed another way: “for if you are not, [then] you see Him, and He sees you.”24 This realization of one’s nothingness, one’s absolute dependency on or transparency before God, or the perfect polishing of the mirror of the heart reflecting the divine names and attributes (to use another metaphor from the hadith), is known as faqr (poverty) in Sufi literature, in accordance with the Qur’anic verse: “O people, you are the poor towards God, and He is the Rich/Self-Sufficient, the Praised” (35:15). This is one meaning of the Prophet’s statement, “Poverty is my pride [al-faqru fakhrī],”25 symbolized by the crescent moon, whose “horns of glory” come from its hollowness or poverty. Al-Qushayrī records the following saying, “Al-ĥayā’ is the abandoning of all [personal] pretensions before God,”26 and our independent existence is one such pretension; rather, it is the root of all such pretensions.
Thus, ĥayā’ is the humble awareness of our true status before and absolute need of God, even (perhaps especially) in praiseworthy actions and states, as al-Qushayrī relates in the following account of another early Sufi, “Occasionally, I would pray two prayers to God Most High, then come away ashamed as if I have robbed someone.”27 In his celebrated Ĥikam (The aphorisms), Ibn ¢Aţā Allāh al-Iskandarī explains, “An act of disobedience that grants humility and need/poverty is better than an act of obedience that grants pride and arrogance,”28 and,
The source of every disobedience, indifference, and passion is self-satisfaction. The source of every obedience, vigilance, and virtue is dissatisfaction with one’s self. It is better for you to keep company with an ignorant man dissatisfied with himself than to keep company with a learned man satisfied with himself. For what knowledge is there in a self-satisfied scholar? And what ignorance is there in an unlearned man dissatisfied with himself?29
This is the secret of so much of the poetry of Hafez and other great Sufi poets who condemn self-admiration (¢ujb), ostentation (riyā’), and other forms of “self-seeing” (khūd bīnī) as the most dangerous and deadly of faults, constituting the hidden idolatry (al-shirk al-khafī) against which the Prophet ﷺ warned.30 Hafez writes,
As long as you are proud of learning and intellect, you have no real knowledge [ma¢rifat]
Let me tell you a subtle point, see not the self and be saved.31
And even more powerfully:
There is no obstacle between the lover and beloved
You are your own veil, Hafez. Get out of the way!32
Shame makes us want to vanish or disappear from view and, according to many Sufi exegetes, it is precisely this ability to “get out of the way” of God, to realize our own nothingness before the divine reality and be transparent before or reflective of the divine qualities, that makes us capable of being God’s vicegerents (khulafā’), those behind whom God acts.33 From this perspective, shame (ĥayā’) and poverty (faqr) are the very life (ĥayāh) and spine (faqār) of human dignity.
Moreover, perspectives based on this rigorous cultivation of ĥayā’34 can paradoxically have profoundly egalitarian social consequences. For example, al-Qusharyī approvingly quotes the saying of another early Sufi, “Whoever thinks that his soul is better than the soul of Pharaoh has shown pride,”35 and, according to a hadith, “None shall enter the garden who has in his heart a mustard seed’s worth of pride.”36 Similarly, the great eighteenth-century North African Sufi master and scholar Shaykh Aĥmad al-Tijānī declared, “There is no difference between a believer and an infidel [kāfir] in terms of humanity [fī l-ādamiyy].”37 The same shaykh related a prophetic tradition of warning: “Do not exalt yourselves over God by exalting yourselves over His lands and His servants. Whoever exalts himself over the servants (of God), exalts himself over God, thinking himself greater (than God).”38 As another hadith warns, “Al-ĥayā’ and faith (al-īmān) are together. If one of them is removed, the other is removed.”39