When you make an intention, it means to know what you are about to do and why you are doing it.

In Islam, intention plays a very important part in all our duties, because without a clear intention, almost any act is useless.

Imagine that someone was praying Salaat, he could be praying correctly and still his prayer might not be accepted. This is because when we pray, we can be praying for many reasons, some of them are:

a. So that Allah will be pleased with us.
b. So that people will see how good we are.
c. Because if we don't, our parents will get angry.

Obviously, our prayer will only be accepted if we have the first intention.

The Arabic word for intention is NIYYAT. Every act we do should have a good Niyyat. There is a hadith by our Prophet (S) that:

"Actions are governed by their intentions."

This means that the sins or blessings we get for doing something depends on WHY WE DID IT.

Another example is that suppose you gave a lot of money to charity in front of many people. There is nothing wrong in doing that depending on your Niyyat. If you give the money so that everyone will see how rich and kind you are, then that action is not worth anything in the "eyes" of Allah; however if you give the money in front of people so that they can see you and so that they might follow your example, then that action is looked upon very highly by Allah.

So, no matter what we do, we should always have a good Niyyat (intention) about it. We don't have to say anything as long as we know in our mind why we are doing something.

Whatever we do, there should always be one Niyyat that should be in our minds, THE NIYYAT THAT WE ARE DOING SOMETHING FOR THE PLEASURE OF ALLAH.