Jerrahi Midwest

The 68 Blemishes of the Nafs

To clean the nafs of the 68 blemishes listed below is the beginning of good adab. This is the heart of Islam and Tasawwuf.

1. Ujub – to be arrogant about one’s spiritual accomplishments.
2. Riya – to show off
3. Kibr – arrogance
4. Hasad – envy and jealousy
5. Bukhul – miserliness
6. Kin – to be vengeful
7. Kufr – faithlessness
8. Bid’at- to distort religion and tradition
9. Kufran-i ni’met – to not appreciate or belittle God’s blessings
10. To complain about one’s condition
11. To cease to have hope for Allah’s Mercy
12. To be sure of Allah’s punishment
13. To condone tyranny and help tyrants
14. To speak against decent people
15. To keep the heart attached (preoccupied) to this world
16. To keep wanting to be a leader / To want to rule over others
17. To expect approval and compliments
18. To fear criticism
19. Inability to control one’s desires
20. Blind imitation in place of seeking knowledge
21. To fawn over people for personal benefit
22. To be happy about disasters that fall upon people, even your enemies
23. To be a coward
24. To be angry
25. To be a tyrant
26. Not to keep one’s word
27. To believe in bad luck
28. To think unjustly about people
29. Falling in love with one’s property
30. To be overly concerned with the world
31. To be excessively ambitious
32. To lead an irresponsible life
33. To mix oneself into affairs that do not concern one
34. To be undignified
35. Not to keep the time of one’s devotions due to laziness
36. To be shameless
37. To lament the loss of possession
38. To gossip
39. To be stubborn
40. To be an egoist
41. To be a hypocritical
42. To cheat
43. To be brutish
44. To be dishonorable in relations with women
45. To be lustful
46. Not to accept one’s error and continue insisting on it
47. To be afraid of poverty
48. Not to believe in destiny
49. To make oneself depressed
50. To take pleasure in belittling others
51. To be indiscriminately happy
52. To be insincerely kind and fawning over rich people
53. To be disdainful of the poor
54. To boastful about one’s past
55. To show off one’s physical prowess
56. To belittle others
57. To like to talk long unnecessarily
58. To be self centered in conversation
59. To ignore one’s own shortcomings and be preoccupied with that of others
60. To remove the fear of Allah from the heart and rely on the nafs
61. To make excuses during distress and to rely on and encourage the nafs
62. To decline to help on the path of God
63. To pretend to be friends with one’s enemy
64. To cheat in one’s work
65. To set traps for others
66. To identify with the world to the extent of forgetting Allah
67. To take pleasure in people’s suffering
68. Not to suffer because of one’s mistakes

These are the thorns that grow in a barren field. They are the undesirable attributes of the heart. Avoid them and beautify yourselves  with the opposite of every one of these faults. This is Adab – the beautifying prayer that pleases Allah and brings you closer to Him.