Sufism

Sincerity (ikhlas) is doing an act for God alone, seen or unseen

This station guards specifically against riya', the wish to be seen and admired for a devotional act, which al-Qushayri's sources treat as a hidden form of dividing one's motive between God and an audience.

Al-Qushayri's chapter on ikhlas defines sincerity as purging any motive for an act besides God, most directly purging riya', the wish to be seen and admired for it, and situates this as serious enough that earlier masters he quotes describe unrecognized riya' as a hidden form of shirk, since it means the act is effectively being offered to two audiences rather than one. He records the classical caution that ikhlas is unusually hard to verify from the inside, since a person can perform every outward marker of devotion while a trace of self-interest, reputation, self-approval, comparison with others, rides along underneath, undetected even by the person doing the act. The chapter treats sincerity as something to be actively guarded rather than assumed, which is why it recurs across Sufi ethical writing rather than functioning as a station completed once and left behind.

Al-Risala al-Qushayriyya

Written about in

• What Sufism says about wanting to be admired

  Qushayri names the disease riya', the wish to be seen and admired for a devotional act, and quotes earlier masters calling unrecognised riya' a hidden form of shirk, since the act is offered to two audiences at once. He also records the hard part: ikhlas is unusually difficult to verify from the inside, because self-approval rides along undetected.