“This world is a prison for the believer and a paradise for the disbeliever. But even in prison, there is a garden — and it is found in the heart. If the heart is at peace with Allah, no prison wall can touch it. And if the heart is absent from Allah, no palace can fill it.”

Ibn Taymiyyah wrote these words, or words close to them, from prison — where he spent several years of his life due to political persecution. The most remarkable thing is not the theology but the biography: he wrote about the garden of the heart from inside a jail cell. His students reported that he said his time in prison was the most spiritually productive of his life. He was not theorizing — he was reporting.

What are you waiting for — what external condition — before you allow yourself to be at peace? What would it mean to find the garden now, in the prison you are currently in?

Identify one external condition you have been waiting for before you feel at peace. Then ask: can I have peace before that condition arrives? What would that require?

“He said the heart has a garden. He wrote it from prison. He was not theorizing.”

— Taqwa Daily