Tazkiyah


is an Arabic-Islamic term alluding to, meaning 'sanctification' or 'purification of the self'. This refers to the process of transforming the from its state of self-centrality through various spiritual stages towards the level of purity and submission to the will of God. Its basis is in learning the shariah and deeds from the known authentic and applying these to one's own life, resulting in spiritual awareness of God. is considered the highest level of , one of the three dimensions of Islam. The person who purifies themself is called a .
, along with the related concepts of and does not limit itself to the conscious learning process. It is rather the task of giving form to the act of righteous living itself: treating every moment of life with remembering one's position in front of God.

Etymology

originally referred to pruning a plant—to remove what is harmful to its growth. When the term is applied to the human personality, it means to beautify it and remove from it all evil traces and spiritual diseases that are obstacles to experiencing God. In Islam, the ultimate objective of the religion and shariah, and the real purpose of raising prophets from among mankind, is performing and teaching.
The term encompasses two meanings: one is to cleanse and purify from adulterants, while the other is to improve and develop towards the height of perfection. Technically, it conveys the sense of checking oneself for erroneous tendencies and beliefs, turning them to the path of virtue and piety, and developing them to attain the stage of perfection.
The word comes from the same Arabic verbal root, since purifies an individual's wealth by recognition of God’s right over a portion of it. It finds its origin in the Quranic command to: "Take from their property in order to purify and sanctify them". Other similarly used words to the term are , , , , and lastly, , which is an ideology rather than a term, mostly misinterpreted as the idea of sanctification in Islam.

In scripture

In Quran

The word is used in many places in the Qur'an. It is used 18 times in 15 verses of 11 ; in verses 129, 151, 174 of, in verses 77 and 164 of, the verse of 49, verse 103 of, verse 76 of, in the second verse of, verses 3 and 7 of, in verse 14 of, verse 9 of and in verse 18 of.

In hadith

The word is also found in a few hadith, also meaning to purify and sanctify.

Importance

Anas Karzoon said : "is the purification of the soul from inclination towards evils and sins, and the development of its towards goodness, which leads to its uprightness and its reaching."
Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi said in his "Tarikh" on the authority of Jabir that Muhammad returned from one of his campaigns and told his companions: "You have come forth in the best way of coming forth: you have come from the smaller jihad to the greater jihad." They said: "And what is the greater ?" He replied: "The striving of Allah's servants against their idle desires."

Process

The initial awakening to purification refers to recognition that the spiritual search is more important and meaningful than our previously valued worldly goods and ambitions. The process of starts with "Verily deeds are according to intentions" and ends with the station of perfect character,, "Worship Him as though you see Him", the reference being to the first hadith in Sahih Bukhari and the oft-referred hadith famously known as the hadith of Gibril in Sahih Muslim. is the highest level of that the seeker can develop through their quest for reality. This is referred to as ; the reality of certainty and knowing that it brings true understanding and leads to, the true faith of witnessing the signs of Allah's Oneness everywhere. The only higher level of realization is. At this station of perfection, the seeker realizes that Allah is observing them at every moment.
Saudi cleric Khalid Bin Abdullah al-Musleh listed seven obstacles in the way of in his book :
  2. Rejecting and following
  3. Obeying the instinct and ego
  4. Doubt
  5. Negligence
Ha also listed eight ways to maintain :
  1. Reading the Quran
  2. Loving Allah
  3. Doing
  4. and
  5. Supplicate for and purify
  6. Remembering afterlife
  7. Reading the biographies of the
  8. Company of good, honest and pious people

    Maintaining the

Professor A.J. Arberry, in his Sufism said: "the is a stage of spiritual attainment on the pilgrim's progress to God, which is the result of the mystic's personal efforts and endeavor, whereas the is a spiritual mood depending not upon the mystic but upon God." The Muslim philosopher Abd al-Karīm ibn Hawāzin al-Qushayri summarized the difference between the two concepts in his, where he maintained that, "states are gifts, the stations are earnings."
is a continuous process of purification to maintain spiritual health. Similar to the process of maintaining physical health, any lapse in the regimen can cause one to lose their previous gains, and thus caution must always be used to not deviate from the path. Regarding this, it has been related that Imam Muhammad al-Busayri asked Shaykh Abul-Hasan 'Ali ibn Ja'far al-Kharqani about the major seventeen negative psychological traits or which the must avoid in their struggle towards purification. If the does not rigorously abstain from these aspects, their efforts will be wasted. Known as , they are also referred to as the Tree of Bad Manners:

Stages of (inner-self)

There are three principal stations of or human consciousness that are specifically mentioned in the Qur'an. They are stages in the process of development, refinement and mastery of the.
  1. : unruly animal self or soul that dictates evil.
  2. : struggling moral self or self-reproaching soul.
  3. : satisfied soul or the composed God realized self.
    The animal ()
The Sufi's journey begins with the challenge of freeing oneself from the influence of Shaytan and the. Al-Kashani defines it as follows: the commanding soul is that which leans towards the bodily nature and commands one to sensual pleasures and lusts and pulls the heart in a downward direction. It is the resting place of evil and the source of blameworthy morals and bad actions. In its primitive stage the incites mankind to commit evil: this is the as the lower self or the base instincts. In the eponymous of the Qur'an, the prophet Yusef says "Yet I claim not that my was innocent: Verily the of man incites to evil." Here he is explaining the circumstances in which he came to be falsely imprisoned for the supposed seduction of Zuleikā, the wife of the King's minister.
The reproachful ()
If the soul undertakes this struggle it then becomes : this is the stage where "the conscience is awakened and the self accuses one for listening to one's selfish mind. The original reference to this state is in :
The sense of the Arabic word is that of resisting wrongdoing and asking God's forgiveness after becoming conscious of wrongdoing. At this stage, one begins to understand the negative effects of a habitual self-centered approach to the world, even though they do not yet have the ability to change. One's misdeeds now begin to become repellent to them, and one enters a cycle of erring, regretting mistakes, and then erring again.
Tree of good manners
  1. – good character
  2. – truthfulness
    Tree of bad manners
  3. al-ghadab – anger: considered the worst of all the negative traits. It may easily be said that anger is the source from which the others flow. The Prophet states in a hadith: "Anger blemishes one's belief." Controlling anger is called kāzm.
  4. al-hiqd – malice or having ill-will toward others; grows from lusting for what someone else has. You must replace hiqd with kindness and look upon your brother with love. There is a tradition that says "give gifts to one another, for gifts take away malice."
  5. al hasad – jealousy or envy; a person inflicted with this disease wants others to lose blessings bestowed on them by Allah.
  6. al-'ujb – vanity or having pride because of an action, possession, quality or relationship.
  7. al-bukhl – stinginess: The cause of bukhl is love of the world, if you did not love it, then giving it up would be easy. To cure the disease of miserliness, one must force oneself to be generous, even if such generosity is artificial; this must be continued until generosity becomes second nature.
  8. al-tama – greed: excessive desire for more than one needs or deserves. Having no limit to what one hoards of possessions! Seeking to fulfill worldly pleasures through forbidden means is called tama’. The opposite of tama’ is called tafwiz, which means striving to obtain permissible and beneficial things and expecting that Allah will let you have them.
  9. al-jubn – cowardice: the necessary amount of anger or treating harshly is called bravery. Anger which is less than the necessary amount is called cowardice. Imam Shafi says, "a person who acts cowardly in a situation which demands bravery resembles an ass." A coward would not be able to show ghayrat for his wife or relatives when the situation requires it. He would not be able to protect them and thus will suffer oppression and depreciation.
  10. al-batalah – indolence or Sloth : batalah is inactivity resulting from a dislike of work.
  11. al-riya’ – ostentation or showing off: riya’ means to present something in a manner opposite to its true nature. In short, it means pretension, i.e., a person's performing deeds for the next world to impress the idea on others that he is really a pious person with earnest desire of the akhirah while in fact he wants to attain worldly desires.
  12. al-hirsh – attachment and love for the material world, such as desiring wealth and a long life.
  13. al-'azamah – superiority or claiming greatness: the cure is to humble oneself before Allah.
  14. al-ghabawah wa 'l-kasalah – heedlessness and laziness; "the heart needs nourishment, and heedlessness starves the spiritual heart."
  15. al-hamm – anxiety: this develops from heedlessness. The seeker must first understand that Allah is al-Razzaq, and submit and be content with the will of Allah.
  16. al-ghamm – depression: passion conduces to anguish whenever reason is allowed to represent itself as grievous or painful the loss of the suitable or desirable and is, therefore, a "rational affection" that can cause the soul untold suffering and perturbation.
  17. al-manhiyat – Eight Hundred Forbidden Acts
  18. ghaflah – neglect and forgetfulness of God, indifference: those guilty of ghaflah, the ghāfilün, are those who "know only a surface appearance of the life of this world, and are heedless of the hereafter".
  19. kibr – arrogance or regarding one's self to be superior to others. The Prophet states in a hadith: "A person who has an atom's weight of conceit in his heart will not enter Paradise." The opposite of arrogance is tawādu’, which is a feeling of equality.
  20. hubb ul-dunya – love of the material world: Materialism. According to a hadith, Muhammed has said that "love of the world is the root of all evil." If this ailment is treated and cured, all other maladies flowing from it will also disappear.
The sālik must purify himself from these bad traits and rid his heart of the underlying ailments that are at their source. Outward adherence to the five pillars of Islam is not sufficient: he must be perfect in behavior. This requires a program of self-evaluation, purification, seclusion and establishing a practice of remembrance and contemplation under the guidance of an authorized Shaykh of Spiritual Discipline. In this way the seeker is able to achieve a state in which his heart is ready to receive Divine Inspiration and observe Divine Realities.