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The Purification of The Soul Part 1

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim

All praise is for Allah. We praise Him and seek His assistance. We ask for His forgiveness and take refuge in Him from the evil within ourselves and from the evil of our deeds. Tonight, I’m attending the talk about the purification of the soul. The speaker is Muhammad El Arbi from USA. This is the second meeting for this topic. I’m always coming late because I have to do something else until isya prayers.

Subhanalloh, hearing this talk even just a few minute is always touching my heart. The famous quotation ‘What comes from the heart goes to the heart’ is true.  In this note, I just want to summarize what I got from the speaker and the handbook. The book of the purification of the soul is compiled from the works of Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, and Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. 

The first chapter is talking about sincerity. It is defined as the freeing of one’s intentions from all impurities in order to come nearer to Allah. It is to ensure that the intentions behind all acts of worship and obedience to Allah are exclusively for His pleasure. We have to remember that sincerity is a condition for Allah’s acceptance of good deeds performed in accordance with the sunnah of the prophet. Allah only accepts actions that are intended purely for His pleasure.

The authors placing sincerity in the first chapter remind us that the first thing we have to keep is our intentions. The prophet said ‘actions are only by intention and every man shall only have what he intended’. Related to that hadist, some of our predecessors said that many small actions are made great by the intentions behind them. Many great actions on the other hand are made small because the intentions behind them are lacking. The excellence of intention is explained further in second chapter followed by the excellence of knowledge and teaching.

The third chapter, that the speaker is talking about tonight, is regarding the three types of heart. These are the healthy heart, the dead heart and the sick heart. In defining the healthy heart, the following has been said; ‘ it is a heart cleansed from any passion that challenge what Allah commands, or disputes what He forbids. Its services are exclusively reserved for Allah, willingly and lovingly, with total reliance, relating all matters to Him, in fear, hope and sincere dedication’. 

The dead heart is the opposite of the healthy heart. It does not know its Lord and does not worship Him as He commands, in the way which He likes, and with which He is pleased. It clings instead to its lusts and desires, even if these are likely to incur Allah’s displeasure and wrath. While the sick heart is a heart with life in it as well as illness. The former sustains it at one moment, the latter at another, and it follows whichever one of the two manages to dominate it.

Finally, may Allah purify our soul. All praise is for Allah and all power is His. He is our lord and to Him is the end of all journey. See you next meeting, wassalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarokatuh.

Kuala Lumpur, 3 November 2012.

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