Tazkiyat al-nafs: The Qur'anic Paradigm

In the Qur'an it is stated categorically that it is God who created the human being and more specifically, his soul (nafs) and, in addition, that this very same soul may be subject to either purification (tazkiya) or defilement (tadsiya), as Q. 91:9 and 10 explain. This former term, tazkiya, has been used in conjunction with the term nafs by Muslim scholars to denote a form of spiritual development and purification which seemingly has its basis in Islam's primary, revelatory text, and which has normally been dealt with within the sphere of Sūfism. However, rather than rely on the expositions of this topic in Sūfism's vast literature, as they are considered innovative in the pejorative sense (bid'a), a trend has recently arisen amongst some contemporary writers which aims at re-examining this term and reclaiming it, in an attempt to provide a more 'orthodox' alternative in discussing the spiritual element of Islam. It is within this context that the current article aims to explore the concept of tazkiyat al-nafs in the Qur'an and, rather than present a specific theological position as other works have done, to reconstruct this concept as it manifests itself within both the Qur'anic text and a variety of classical Muslim source texts, so as to produce a working understanding of this concept from what is, quintessentially, a Qur'anic perspective.