What is Hirs?
Hirs means greed, specifically, an excessive and consuming attachment to worldly things: wealth, status, comfort, pleasure, and all that the world offers. It is the state of the heart that is so captivated by the dunya that it is oriented toward it constantly and cannot find rest from it.
The distinction that matters is between having worldly things and being enslaved by them. A person can possess wealth, hold a position, and live comfortably without having Hirs, if their heart remains free and oriented toward Allah. Hirs is the condition of the heart, not the contents of the bank account. The person with Hirs is not defined by what they have but by the grip the world has on their heart: the endless craving, the inability to feel sufficient, the constant pursuit of more.
The Prophet ﷺ described the nature of this disease plainly: if the son of Adam were given a valley of gold, he would want a second. If he were given a second, he would want a third. Nothing fills the stomach of the son of Adam except dust. This is Hirs, the insatiable quality of the attachment that no worldly acquisition can cure.
"Love of the world is the root of every wrong."
Hadith of the Prophet ﷺ
The Prison Analogy
One of the most precise images for Hirs is that of imprisonment. A person captivated by the love of the world is like a prisoner. And a prisoner cannot free another prisoner. The person inside cannot help the person inside.
This is why ordinary worldly people cannot cure each other of Hirs. Their advice, their company, their presence cannot lift the love of the world from the heart, because they are themselves inside the same prison. They can point toward freedom but cannot lead someone there, because they themselves have not left.
This is the reason the cure for Hirs requires a specific kind of company. The person of Allah, the one whose heart has genuinely connected to Him, appears to be in the world outwardly. They live, they work, they deal in worldly affairs. But their soul is outside it. Their inner orientation is elsewhere. And that inner freedom is what transfers in their company.
یہ سب کے ساتھ رہ کے بھی سب سے جدا رہے
In the occupations of the world, they remain with Allah
Living with everyone, they remain apart from all
From Islah ul Akhlaaq
The couplet describes the people of Allah precisely: outwardly present in the world, in its markets, its families, its daily work, but inwardly free from it. Their hearts have not been claimed by the world even while their hands are in it. This is the quality that suhbat with them can transmit.
What Hirs Does to Worship
The heart can only be genuinely oriented toward one thing at a time. When the world fills the heart, Allah is pushed to the periphery. The person may still pray, fast, give charity, and perform all the outward acts of worship, but the heart is elsewhere. It is thinking about the next deal, the next problem, the next acquisition, the next step up.
The result is worship without depth. Prayer without presence. Quran recitation without the words reaching inside. This is not hypocrisy, the person is not deliberately putting on a show. It is the natural consequence of a heart whose primary attachment is to the world. Worship has been reduced to a routine performed by a heart that is actually somewhere else.
Salah becomes mechanical
When the heart's deepest concern is the world, Salah becomes a task to complete. The words are said, the postures are performed, but the awareness of standing before Allah is absent. The mind is occupied with exactly what it was occupied with before the prayer began.
Generosity becomes calculation
A heart attached to wealth gives with one eye always on what it is losing. The giving feels like cost rather than pleasure. The deep ease of the person who gives freely, knowing that what is with Allah is better, that ease is unavailable to the person whose heart is gripped by Hirs.
Tawbah becomes shallow
A person who loves the world finds it difficult to make deep Tawbah from the sins the world drives them toward, because making that Tawbah would require giving up the very things the heart is attached to. The attachment and the repentance pull in opposite directions.
The love of the world competes with the love of Allah and goes further. It actively crowds it out. And unlike Hasad or Kibr, Hirs is socially invisible. No one around the person necessarily sees the grip the world has on their heart. The disease is entirely internal.
The Cure for Hirs
The cure for Hirs cannot be achieved by willpower alone or by simply deciding to care less about the world. The attachment runs too deep for that. The approach prescribed here works differently: instead of trying to force the world out, it introduces something greater into the heart that naturally displaces it.
Sit in the gatherings of the pious and renew Muraqaba with Allah
Attend the majalis of the scholars, the people of Allah, those whose hearts are genuinely connected to Him. In their company, regularly renew the awareness of your relationship with Allah, what He is to you, what you are before Him, and what this world actually is in relation to the Akhirah.
When the heart genuinely connects to Allah, even briefly, even imperfectly, the world's grip loosens by itself. The heart does not need to be told to release the world; it releases it naturally when it tastes something greater. Muraqaba is the practice that makes this connection regular.
Zikr of Allah and suhbat of the people of Allah
Only zikr of Allah can cure this disease, and suhbat of the people of Allah is its elixir. There is no other route that reaches the root of Hirs. Worldly reasoning, comparison with those who have less, charitable giving, none of these reaches the part of the heart where Hirs lives. Only the connection to Allah produced through zikr and the company of His people goes deep enough.
The suhbat works through transmission. The person of Allah has a heart that is genuinely free from the world. Sitting with them, listening to them, being in their presence, some of that orientation transfers. The heart absorbs what it is surrounded by.
Reflect on the instability of the world and remember death
Read poetry and reflection about the impermanence of the world. Think about those who had great wealth, high positions, beautiful homes, and where they are now. Visit the graveyard. Look at who is there. Their bungalows, their accounts, their staff, all left behind. Only their deeds came with them.
"When the relationship with Allah becomes known to the heart, the direction of the world will fade from the heart by itself, the heart will become disinterested in the world on its own."
Islah ul Akhlaaq. Arif Billah Hazrat Maulana Shah Hakeem Muhammad Akhtar رحمة الله عليه
Remembering Death and the Graveyard
One of the most direct cures for the love of the world is genuinely remembering what lies at its end. The world feels permanent when you are inside it. Death makes it feel what it actually is: temporary, passing, brief.
Visiting the graveyard is specifically recommended as part of the cure for Hirs. Go and look with your eyes open, not with the half-attention of a routine visit, but genuinely observing. Where are the bungalows? Where are the cars and wealth and servants? Where is the status that felt so solid? Everything is gone. Only their deeds came with them. That is the reality of every person who filled their heart with the world.
On visiting the graveyard, from Islah ul Akhlaaq
معطر کفن تھا نشیں بدن تھا
جو قبر کہن ان کی اکھڑی تو دیکھا
نہ عضو بدن تھا نہ تار کفن تھا
Many times we saw those whose shroud was fragrant and body dignified, when their old grave was opened, neither a limb remained nor a thread of shroud
ہنگامہ حیات کو خاموش کر گئی
Death came and made the conscious unconscious, silenced the noise of life
نہ حسن و عشق کے جھگڑے نہ مال و دولت کے
After death, the world of the nafs grew cold, no more disputes of beauty and love, no more of wealth and riches
اب اکیلے ہی چلے جائیں گے اس منزل سے ہم
Thank you, those who accompanied to the grave, thank you, now we will go alone from this destination
From Islah ul Akhlaaq
The poetry is not meant to produce despair. It is meant to produce clarity. The world that feels so large, so urgent, so necessary right now, look at it from the vantage point of the grave. How large does it look from there? How urgent are the things we are attached to? This perspective, kept genuinely alive in the mind, is one of the most effective medicines for Hirs.
Sometimes go to the graveyard, and observe with your eyes, where are the people who had bungalows, wealth, servants? Now only their deeds can come to use them. That single act of honest observation, done with genuine attention, does more to loosen the grip of the world on the heart than months of abstract resolve to care less about it.
Hirs is not cured by poverty. A person with nothing can have Hirs as intensely as a person with everything, the disease is in the heart's orientation, not in the hands. The cure is not to remove the world from your life but to remove it from the centre of your heart. And the only thing that does that reliably is placing Allah there instead. When that happens, the world finds its proper place: useful, used, but not worshipped.
Next. Blameworthy Character
Ghussa. Anger
Fire from Shaytan, cooled by water. What uncontrolled anger destroys, and the practical steps for bringing it under control.
Ghussa