"The Mullah cries aloud to Him: and why? Is your Lord deaf?" Kabir's deadpan critique of noisy religion, directed this time at Muslim ritual. The five calls to prayer, the loudness of communal worship — all of it predicated on a God who needs to hear you. The zen-like detail is the anklets of the insect, whose tiny sound God hears. If He hears that, He hears you. The real problem, Kabir says, is the "deadly weapon in your heart" — which is another way of saying: quiet your face, quiet your violence, and skip the loud prayer.Quran 50:16 on God closer than the jugular vein.
A deadly weapon is in your heart. This is Kabir at his most ethically pointed. The outward marks of piety — the beads, the forehead paint, the long locks — are doing nothing while the inside is still armed. Jesus in Matthew 15:11 said almost the same thing: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the heart. The reform Kabir is calling for is not ritual but internal disarmament. You can keep the beads; just take the knife out of the chest.Matthew 15:11; James 3:14 on bitterness and envy in the heart.