Riya and the Man Who Died a Martyr for Reputation

A hadith recorded in Sahih Muslim describes three people brought to account on the Day of Judgement whose apparently pious works, martyrdom, scholarship and generous spending, are rejected specifically because each is found to have acted so that people would say of him he was brave, he was learned, or he was generous, and each is told that they were indeed called so, and so have already received in this life the only reward their intention was actually directed toward; Ghazali cites this narration as the starkest possible statement of riya's cost, that even the most outwardly impressive religious acts, up to and including dying in battle, can be entirely voided of reward by an intention aimed at human regard rather than at God. His practical guidance distinguishes several grades of the vice by severity, from performing an act purely for show, which nullifies it outright, down to a lesser case in which someone performs an act sincerely for God but feels pleased when others happen to notice it, a case akhlaq scholars treat more leniently, arguing that being pleased by praise one did not seek is a weaker fault than seeking it, though still worth guarding against through the specific discipline of ikhlas, sincerity, the virtue this vice is most directly opposed to.