Jihad al-Nafs: Choosing Yourself

The word jihad often calls to mind distant battles and clashing armies, yet the truest battlefield is within. Jihad al-nafs is the quiet struggle against the ego, the fears, and the desires that parch the heart. It is a daily challenge, more decisive than any war fought outwardly.

"Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves."(Ar-Ra`d 13:11)

Picture your mind as a garden. If the soil is thick with anger, pride, or envy, nothing can grow. Every negative thought is a weed, choking the seeds of peace, gratitude, and sincerity.

True jihad is tending the soul: uprooting what corrupts, watering what nourishes, and quietly watching the tender blooms of the heart awaken.

To choose yourself is to tend each seed with care : every choice, every habit, every emotion is a sprout. Feel the wind shaking your convictions, the rain soaking your doubts, the sun warming your hopes. Listen to your inner stem: it knows where to grow, how to bend without breaking, how to unfold its petals to the light of Allah/God.

The Qur’an is the gardener’s guide—not a list of rules to follow blindly, but a map for transforming ourselves, purifying the soil of the mind, and letting fitrah, our innate nature, blossom fully.

"He who purifies himself will succeed."(Surah Al-Shams, 91:9)

Every day, jihad al-nafs asks: will you remain in the dry earth of indifference, or walk the flowering path of inner truth? It is a battle with no applause, no spectators, yet more real than any victory won outwardly.

When you choose yourself, you choose Allah—not because He commands, but because the heart, made for peace and light, recognizes its origin. Step by step, seed by seed, the garden of the soul comes to reflect the perfection of the One who sustains all.

Those Who Remain

“We will surely test you with fear and hunger, with the loss of wealth, lives, and fruits. But give glad tidings to those who remain patient.”

Surah Al-Baqarah (2:155–156)

Another Friday arrives, and almost without realizing it, we breathe out in relief. Another week has passed. Not perfect. Not easy. But endured—and that alone speaks volumes.

To survive does not mean we did everything right, nor that we were always strong. It means we are still standing despite the weariness, the burdens, the uneven days. It means we held on when letting go would have felt simpler.

And through all of this, God was there.

He was present in the full days and in the empty ones. In the moments when answers came easily, and in those when only questions remained. Sometimes His presence was unmistakable; other times quiet and hidden—but never absent. God never promised a life without trials, yet He promised His nearness, week after week.

Friday thus becomes more than an ending. It becomes a pause for gratitude, a recognition that reaching this point was not achieved by strength alone, but by a grace that carried us—even when we were unaware of it.

To survive with God is to learn trust, to keep moving forward even when energy is scarce, knowing we do not walk alone. It is to close the week with gratitude and to open the weekend with hope.

And then, gratitude deepens still further—even when some trials feel unfair.

Do not lose heart: Allah—God—the Creator—is with those who endure patiently. Even what feels heavy, even what presses from within, carries a future. Entrust yourself to the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and you will find peace beyond the trial.

Surah An-Nūr (24:19)

“Allah knows, while you do not know.”

Masks Will Slip Away on a Friday

Masks are like flowers and last only one season. You can flee anywhere, but they will chase you, because they know you need them to cover the worn spots on your face.

During Carnival, you can hide your identity and social status, blending like a chameleon among the crowd of other jesters, but in reality, it is much harder: the mask will always lose its brilliant petals and leave you like a withered stem in the Garden.

This happens when the mask itself grows tired of supporting you and its colors begin to drip into a garden of lies.

Hiding behind tulips is useless. The garden, guardian of Its Nature, knows Creation and the laws that govern it. Wearing a face that is not yours devours the energy of body and spirit, diverting it from the other plants of the Garden. It turns you into a toy without roots, more puppet than human, and condemns you to feed the lie endlessly to sustain a place that does not belong to you.

By doing so, the surrounding vegetation withers, and sometimes the price the Garden pays is life itself, because some botanical species lack the strength to regrow after being altered.

The events of the twentieth century have not disappeared; they repeat under new names. The dramas that once unfolded in aristocratic neighborhoods and feudal palaces now take place in digital squares, exposed without the veil of privacy. The mask, which once protected, has become a spectacle; pretense has become a measure of legitimacy.

The more one performs, the more one is recognized as authentic. Hiding is no longer an act of shame but a survival strategy: it avoids the moral lynching administered by judges who answer to no law.

In this sense, social media are the new public squares: places of display and condemnation, not so different from those where, between the 17th and 18th centuries, witch burnings were celebrated.

You can hide behind a fiction for a set time, but the Day will come when no algorithm, strategy, or image will protect you, because on that Day, what will be judged is not what appears, but what is kept in hearts, as it is remembered:

"And do not hide from your Lord, who knows the secret and what is even more hidden" (Ṭā-Hā 20:7).

Man desires to appear different, to be approved and pleased, perhaps because he loves illusion and often mistakes it for life, thus changing his face without fear, with flesh or with symbol, parading as if he were always at the Venice Carnival.

But the Qur’an reminds:

"Every community has a term appointed; when their term comes, they cannot delay it for an hour, nor advance it" (Al-A‘rāf 7:34).

Judgment does not come immediately, not because God is absent, but because His mercy precedes the reckoning, and He grants time so that man may return, not so that he may persist in error:

"Whoever does good, it is for the benefit of his own soul; whoever does evil, it is against it. Your Lord is not unjust to His servants" (Fuṣṣilat 41:46).

Many claim not to perceive the presence of God when in need, yet it is the very disguise that hides His presence:

"Do they not travel through the land, so that their hearts may thus learn wisdom? Not their eyes" (Al-Ḥajj 22:46).

Then comes the Hour, and the Hour asks no permission: tricks fall away and vision sharpens. No camouflage will be carried onto the Scale, for deeds will be laid out one by one, and even the weight of a speck will be assessed:

"So whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it, and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it" (Az-Zalzalah 99:7–8).

Those who built upon appearances will discover they have no support, and those who mistook God’s patience for absence of judgment will understand, too late, that the time granted was a test, for:

"He knows what is apparent and what is hidden" (Al-Ḥajj 22:46).

Then the Venetian masks, so beautiful to display, adorned with gold and vivid colors, will begin to melt like snow in the sun, their pigments blending until they turn into indistinct mud, and what seemed art will reveal itself as merely a fake painting. In the face of Truth, in the silence of the Garden, no shapes or decorations remain, only what man has truly carried within himself.