Is the understanding in the brain or in the heart?
Posted Aug 15, 2009 by Aboo Thaabit with No Comments
Allah the Most High said:
He knows the deception of the eyes and that which the chests conceal [Suurah Ghaafir Aayah 19]
Shaykh ibn Uthaymeen – may Allah have mercy upon him – said concerning the tafseer of this ayah answering the question, is the understanding in the brain or in the heart?
He said:
This question has troubled many of the “modernists” those who look at things through a secular point of view, not going back to what Allah has said nor what His Messenger has said because in truth this issue is very clear and that is, that understanding is in the heart, and the heart is in the chest.
[Allah the Most High says:]
Have they not travelled the earth, so that they may have hearts to understand with?…[Suurah al-Hajj Aayah 46]
And He said
For surely it is not the eyes that are blind but rather it is the hearts in the breasts. [Suurah al-Hajj Aayah 46]
And He did not say the hearts, which are in the brains.
So the matter is very clear, that the understanding is in the hearts. This is also supported by the statment of the Prophet:
Verily there is in the body a piece of flesh, if it is rectified then the rest of the body will be rectified as a whole. And if it is corrupted then the rest of the body is corrupted as a whole. Verily it is the heart. [Reported by al-Bukhaaree, Kitaab al-Eemaan no. 52 and Muslim Kitaab al-Masaaqah no. 1599]