The Crisis of the Heart in the Age of Screens: An Islamic Study of Attention, Tazkiyah al-Nafs, Haya, and Inner Moral Discipline

Abstract

ABSTRACT

This article examines the contemporary screen environment through the Islamic conception of the heart as the center of perception, moral awareness, and spiritual transformation. It argues that the age of screens should not be understood merely in terms of convenience or technological progress, since prolonged digital immersion increasingly affects attention, sleep, emotional regulation, social conduct, and inward discipline. Read through Qur’anic anthropology and Prophetic guidance, this condition appears not simply as distraction but as a deeper crisis of the heart, particularly in light of the verses. The force of this verse lies in its distinction between sensory possession and inward comprehension. A person may see, hear, consume vast amounts of content, and yet remain spiritually unresponsive. This observation has unusual force in the digital age, which often combines abundance of information with poverty of reflection. For that reason, the most adequate Islamic response is neither technophobia nor uncritical celebration of digital convenience. It is disciplined inhabitation. The heart must be protected through dhikr, muhasabah, tazkiyah al-nafs, disciplined sight, guarded time, and renewed haya’ (Qur’an 13:28; Qur’an 24:30; al-Ghazali, 1998; Ibn al-Qayyim, 1996). Only then can the Muslim benefit from technology without allowing technology to become a means through which the nafs is strengthened, heedlessness is normalized, and inward seriousness is lost. The central question of the age is therefore not whether screens are present, but whether the heart remains morally sovereign in their presence.