The Cure Prescribed for the Nafs

Doctors prescribe tablets or injections, to be taken regularly, for the cure of physical disease; only a qualified physician, a ḥakīm or ṭabīb, may prescribe them. In the same way, the prophets of Allah, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) and, after him, the inheritors of the prophets, warathat al-anbiyāʾ — the noble scholars, the true scholars, al-ʿulamāʾ al-ḥaqq — have prescribed medicines for the nafs al-ammārah drawn from the Qur'an and the Sunnah, and have established disciplined paths, turuq or ṭarīqah, proven over time to work upon it and curb its desires. Any ṭarīqah that adheres purely to the Qur'an and Sunnah is upheld within the Sharīʿah; anything that departs from them is not a ṭarīqah that is recognised at all. This particular discipline, concerned with the purification of the heart, is called taṣawwuf or ʿilm al-iḥsān, and it has nothing to do with the spiritual exercises of other traditions — the feats performed by Hindu gurus upon ropes or through fire, for instance. As Imam Rabbānī observes, even such gurus can, by some accounts, walk or fly through the air, and Greek mystics are said to walk upon water; yet these are nothing beside the true karāmah, which is simply to follow the steadfastness, the istiqāmah, of Muhammad Muṣṭafā (peace be upon him) in every aspect of life. Nothing else compares to it, and anyone who claims otherwise is a charlatan, an impostor, to be avoided.