Purifying the Soul, Your Role in Shaping It, and What Comes after Ramadan

Occasion: Transcription of a Fajr khatira delivered on 21 March 2026 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

The Doctor opened his khatira with a supplication that Allah grant us the good of this day, the good of what is in it and the good of what comes after it, and protect us from the evil of this day, the evil of what is in it and the evil of what comes after it; that He set right for us our religion, our worldly life and our Hereafter, grant us right guidance in our affairs, bless us in what He has provided for us, protect us from the punishment of the Fire and turn away from us the causes of punishment in this world and the next; then: O Allah, we ask You for the things that necessitate Your mercy, the resolutions of Your forgiveness, a share of every righteous deed, safety from every sin, success in attaining Paradise, and deliverance from the Fire.

Then he said: Perhaps the two surahs recited in the Fajr prayer, Sūrat al-Shams and Sūrat al-Layl, are among the dearest surahs to my heart; glory be to Allah, one can hardly restrain oneself from what one loves. I ask Allah, glory be to Him, the Exalted, to make us among their people. But the pivot of the matter lies in purifying the soul: ﴿قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَن زَكَّاهَا﴾ (“He has succeeded who purifies it.”)^[1]. This is the meaning, the purification of the soul: cleansing it from its depths, from within, and working to correct the inner directions of travel in the depths of this soul.

Where Did You Come From?

You know, may Allah the Exalted preserve you, that every person has sources he drinks from and orientations. He has origins from which he springs, he has formative axes he passed through, and he has outputs that appear from him from time to time or show in the bearing and pattern of his personality. The origins we came out of are what was left to us by those who raised us, and they too were raised with the cultures, temperaments, habits, traditions and customs of an environment, and so on, which they planted in us with whatever abilities they had.

I never asked my father to do with me what I see my daughter doing now with her child, for she proceeds with resources, technology and training courses. My father practiced “baraka” in his life; sometimes he would hit, sometimes he would call out, sometimes he would calm down, sometimes he would flare up, and life went on according to the energy he had, his patience with his days and his endurance of the situations he faced. At times he acted on his anger with us, at times he held his temper, and at times he helped us get past the stages. I never asked more of him than that. I was raised and went out into the world to raise those after me with what I inherited, what harmonized within me and what came out of me.

So we have three axes that I am emphasizing again. What are the origins and constants that were fixed in you? Where did you come from? What did you learn? What was the environment we came out of? Did these people preserve their religion to a degree that makes me ashamed before myself when I compare my prayer with my father's prayer, and my fasting with what my father used to practice? Do I earn what is lawful as much as he was careful to, with precision in work, mastery, effort, sacrifice, sleepless nights? Do I practice the same level of performance, or is it different for me, even relatively? So: where did I come from, what took shape inside me, and do we have the ability to reshape ourselves or not?

You Have a Hand in This Project

When the Noble Qur'an comes down in this form and says: ﴿قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَن تَزَكَّىٰ وَذَكَرَ اسْمَ رَبِّهِ فَصَلَّىٰ﴾ (“He has succeeded who purifies himself, and remembers the name of his Lord and prays.”)^[2], it may at first glance give the impression that he “purified himself” through some making of his own that he prepared. But when I say here: ﴿قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَن زَكَّاهَا﴾, you had a hand in this project of bringing out this human soul. From here you can address some souls who excuse the mistake they commit by saying that this is how we were raised. And we know the expression: ﴿إِنَّا وَجَدْنَا آبَاءَنَا عَلَىٰ أُمَّةٍ وَإِنَّا عَلَىٰ آثَارِهِم مُّقْتَدُونَ﴾ (“Indeed, we found our fathers upon a way, and we are following in their footsteps.”)^[3]. People used to make excuses with what their fathers and grandfathers did and what they bequeathed to them. And the Noble Qur'an cancels this idea. Why? To give me the ability, or the sense of the powers available to me, that I can make something in myself.

And here I can grasp, in some way, the role of worship. Why did worship come? It did not come to deal with my father who died, for he has departed, nor with all our dead, and it did not come to deal with those who raised and those who came before; it came to deal with me, to reshape your form, to reset your level of readiness for the future, and to restructure the pattern and the mental maps in the human mind.

So you see that the prayers place you in a disciplined pattern of movement and regularity, and when you gather the texts that have come down about prayer you see that you learn discipline in it, you are purified inwardly in it, you come into harmony with yourself in it, and your soul is purified to reach the Lord of Might, glory be to Him, the Exalted: prostration, bowing, remembrance and all these things; and in the texts the prayer is likened to a river in which a person bathes five times a day^[4], many texts and many intimations. Then you come to fasting, and the matter of abstaining by choice, not by compulsion, because you are worshipping by choice in the first place, so you worship Allah by choice; to have the ability to exercise control. If the one who raised me was a thief, or an aggressor, or someone who overstepped the limits, or whatever he was, I now have the opportunity to take hold of the reins of my soul and restrain it, so I do not imitate someone who was in a bad position, but must discipline myself on the straight path.

Falāḥ, Not Success

It draws your attention: ﴿قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَن زَكَّاهَا﴾; so that you see that purification, which is a kind of cleansing of the soul, is tied to falāḥ. Whenever we mention this word, we distinguish between falāḥ and success: success is passing a stage, but falāḥ is reaching the summit. And the summit for us is not merely the comfort that will be in Paradise; rather, the summit for us is that whenever the Lord of Might, glory be to Him, the Exalted, the All-Knowing, the All-Aware, looks upon you, He finds you and He is pleased with you. That is falāḥ, that is the aim of hope. And it will not be so in the Hereafter unless it is attained in this world. So whoever wants falāḥ there, let him be an object of Allah's pleasure in his worldly life.

So grasp it once more: we have three stages; the stage of foundation, the stage of shaping, and the stage of production. Where are we in these three stages? A second and a third time: what have we come out with from the noble month?

After Ramadan

Today I wanted to remind myself that the path of purifying the soul was never limited to the time bounded by Ramadan; rather, Ramadan was an opportunity to launch into what comes after it: a training course defined by times, schedules and formal rules, and when you finish it you are ready to deal with society.

Who among you woke up fasting today? This is a question we should ask ourselves, unless we are bound by honoring our families and gatherings, in which case breaking the fast is a kind of honoring others; otherwise, then abstain, for your soul is still fresh from fasting, and do not set off with a craving for food that makes us forget or occupies our minds from what is coming. As for the branching questions about fasting the six days, the white days, whether it benefits us to fast Mondays and Thursdays, whether we fast an obligatory or a voluntary fast, we answer all these questions, but perhaps they are a kind of procrastination that Satan brings to some of us, not all, so that we forget the matter of fasting after a while and do not complete a sunnah that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ laid down for us.

So whoever woke up fasting today among you, excellent; and whoever did not form the intention before night, then we are in a voluntary fast, and we can form our intention to fast if we have not taken anything after the Fajr adhan.

And I ask Allah, Blessed and Exalted, to complete these blessed days for us, to purify our souls, to increase us in understanding of ourselves, and to inspire us with right guidance so that we walk upon His straight path. O Allah, amen, O Lord of the worlds.

--- ^[1]: Sūrat al-Shams: 9. ^[2]: Sūrat al-Aʿlā: 14–15. ^[3]: Sūrat al-Zukhruf: 23. Editor's documentation: In the transcript it reads “muhtadūn muqtadūn”; its counterpart in the previous verse (22) has “muhtadūn”, and “muqtadūn” was retained as in the wording of verse 23. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: The speaker alluded to many texts without specifying them, and what he mentioned about the river in which a person bathes five times a day derives from a ḥadīth narrated by Muslim in similar wording; the transcript is garbled at this point, so it was retained by meaning without quotation.