Thawāb, Sawab, Sevap, Hasanat or Ajr (,
Hindi
Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...
: सवाब ''saʋāb'',
Bengali: সওয়াব ''sôwab'') is an Arabic term meaning "reward". Specifically, in the context of an
Islamic worldview, ''thawāb'' refers to spiritual
merit or reward that accrues from the performance of good deeds and piety based on the guidance of the Quran and the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad.
Pronunciation
The word ''thawāb'' is used throughout the Islamic world, so the spelling and pronunciation is slightly different from one region to another. In
Kazakh society, for instance, it may be pronounced as "''sauap''", by
Bengalis
Bengalis ( ), also rendered as endonym and exonym, endonym Bangalee, are an Indo-Aryan peoples, Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the Bengal region of South Asia. The current population is divi ...
as "''suab''", "''sowab''", or "''swab''", in
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
as "''savob''", in India and Pakistan as "''sawab''".
Among
Kurds
Kurds (), or the Kurdish people, are an Iranian peoples, Iranic ethnic group from West Asia. They are indigenous to Kurdistan, which is a geographic region spanning southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northeastern Syri ...
its pronounced "Sewab". In Bosnian and Turkish the word becomes ''sevap''.
Activities for earning thawāb, or a reward
Usually any and all good acts are considered to contribute towards earning sawāb, but for a Muslim there are certain acts that are more rewarding than others. The primary contributing factor on the extent of the reward is based on one's intention in one's heart – the silent, unspoken one that God is aware of and not the expressed, articulated one. These may be one and the same, but the articulation is not required prior to performing the deed.
The meritorious acts in Islam can be divided into categories – the spiritual good and the moral good. There cannot be moral good without the spiritual good, or at least the moral good will not have a high bearing if not accompanied by the spiritual good.
Spiritual good includes the acts of worship including
prayer
File:Prayers-collage.png, 300px, alt=Collage of various religionists praying – Clickable Image, Collage of various religionists praying ''(Clickable image – use cursor to identify.)''
rect 0 0 1000 1000 Shinto festivalgoer praying in front ...
(obligatory and supererogatory),
remembrance of God in the aftermath of the prayer or at any other time, acts of
prescribed charity (zakat), reading of the Quran, among others.
The moral good comes from treating parents with love and affection, and not with disdain; visiting sick people, keeping ties of kinship, spending money wisely in charitable causes, giving family their due rights, etc.
The relative merits of each act lies with God alone, and is dependent on such factors as the extent of the level of sacrifice, the difficulty endured (or that one would endure from doing the good), intention for benefits in the hereafter, etc.
See also
*
Islamic views on piety
*
Punya – Hindu view of Sawāb/Heavenly merit.
*
Heavenly Merit – Christian view of sawāb.
Hasanāt– from Arabic حَسَنَات
References
Arabic words and phrases in Sharia
Quran
Sharia legal terminology
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