PURIFICATION (TAZKIYA)

On the Road to Paradise

ACCORDING to the Quran, those people will gain entrance to Paradise who, while in this world, had purified themselves. For instance, the Quran says: “Successful is he who purified his soul.” (91: 9). Elsewhere, the Quran says: “That is the recompense for those who purify themselves.” (20: 76)

What is tazkiya or purification? One can understand this with the help of a Hadith. According to this Hadith, every person is born on an upright nature, but due to the influence of his environment he adopts an unnatural life. (Sahih al-Bukhari). This means that by birth every person has a purified personality or an upright nature, but because of the conditioning of his environment he becomes an artificial personality. In this context then, tazkiya or purification is for one to properly understand this problem and to de-condition himself and thereby make himself once again, a person on true nature. It is this personality that would be regarded as a purified personality.


By birth every person has a purified personality or an upright nature, but because of the conditioning of his environment he becomes an artificial personality.

De-conditioning is, in other words, the name for the process of self-correction. This task of self-correction or de-conditioning is not something that someone else can do for another. It is each one's own responsibility. The first duty of every person is to engage in introspection and carefully search out every notion that was not present in them by birth but that later became part of their personality because of the conditioning of their environment. If one seriously engages in this sort of deconditioning oneself, one’s natural personality will emerge, having been purified. This is the meaning of a purified personality. 

United we Stand
Those who are intellectually
awakened have the power to
convert their disunity into unity.