Sincerity is the essence of every minor and major deed. If you were to exclude sincerity from your action, It is as though you have extracted the soul out of the body. Any deed without sincerity is a body without a soul. This is one thing. The important thing in dawah is that an honest believer is the one who works for Allah’s sake. His actions are not done for people, fame or compliments.   A true believer sticks to his sincerity and his words will blossom due to his honest intentions. The amazing thing about Sincerity is that it conveys three characteristics of the heart that no other deed has:
  1. The  Angels “honourable scribes” cannot record or write down the level of Sincerity in you deeds
  2. You as a slave can never know the level of sincerity you have in your actions, hence you can’t gloat about it.
  3. Shaytaan (the devil) can and will never know whether you’ve achieved sincerity  or not, hence he cannot disrupt that action for a slave.
So neither Shaytaan, yourself, nor the Angels can interfere with sincerity, Because Sincerity is one of Allah’s secrets. So whoever seeks the pleasure of Allah in small or major matters, his words come from the heart, and therefore, reaches the people’s hearts. We ask Allah to make us from those who are sincere, in the hopes that we are elevated to the level of the “chosen servants”. Those servants that Shaytaan doesn’t come near them.
Iblis (Shaytaan) have said to Allah swt “Except, among them, Your chosen servants.” (Quran 38:83) And Hence Allah swt said about Yusuf “Indeed, he was of Our chosen servants.” (Quran 12:24)
Allah swt specifically says “Chosen servants” and not “sincere servants”, Because it is an elevated status chosen by Him swt. A servant is sincere at first and then Allah chooses him and purifies him from flaws Therefore, the righteous predecessors used to speak to their “self” (nafs) and say “Be sincere in order to ascend to a higher status”.