The Hadith About Intentions

Sahih al-Bukhari opens with a report narrated from Umar ibn al-Khattab. The Prophet ﷺ says that deeds depend on intentions and that each person receives according to what they intended.

The familiar sentence is therefore not an anonymous maxim. It is part of a named report with a narrator, a collection, and a longer movement of thought.

The report continues with migration. A person whose migration was for Allah and His Messenger has that intention; a person who migrated for worldly gain or marriage has what they migrated for. The outward journey can look similar while its inward purpose differs.

Reading the example prevents the opening line from becoming generic productivity advice. The report is concerned with the purpose carried within an act, not simply with whether a person completed it.

The teaching calls each person to examine intention. It does not give strangers, employers, audiences, or software access to somebody else's private motive. The hadith should not become a tool for announcing that another person's charity, worship, or public act was insincere.

Its force is inward before it is outward. The source asks a person to consider what they meant by an action, while leaving the hidden reality of other hearts with Allah.