Notes from Imam Omar Suleiman’s Podcast on Self-Accountability

Self-accountability requires active, intentional, specific and honest introspection. Weighing your gratitude and awareness of the Greatness of Allah against the ingratitudes of corrupting the faculties God gave us through sins. “Every sin is a misuse of one Allah’s blessings.”

In Islam, community, sahaba, or companionship is so important because it keeps us accountable to our selves when we neglect to hold ourselves accountable. Company helps to “stoke the proper conscience” when you’re not thinking or acting right. Suleiman mentions the importance of being surrounded with “people of knowledge and remembrance” to check us along the lines of shared or right values. 

How to hold yourself accountable:

1. Notice your gratitudes in the mornings every morning. Thank God for all that God has given you already; a bed to wake up in, a healthy heartbeat, a Sun to warm the world. Don’t envy the grave!! When you fail to be grateful with your aliveness, look to the dead with fondness but not the ingratitude of envy. When you envy anyone for what they have, whether they’re living or dead, you’re not recognizing the Source of all Blessings. God is the Source of theirs and your blessings, envy neglects either what God has given you or that God too has given them the blessing you attribute to their holder. 

2. Seek forgiveness at night for the “accumulated sins” of the day. Review your day, all your conversations, all your sins, “the major, the minor, the public and the private.” Imam Soleiman emphasizes the need to get specific with yourself when you investigate how you showed up in the world today, how your actions or words affected others, how you veered from your personal or Islamic values. 

P.S: The Imam also warned NOT to misuse your intellect with self-deceit and the deception of others. I took this to mean, don’t claim for the finger what belongs to the Moon, and for the Moon what only belongs to the Sun.