Nafs al-Ammara: The Soul That Commands Evil

The Quran tells us that whoever purifies the soul is saved: “By the soul and the One who formed it, and inspired it with its wickedness and its God-consciousness. Whoever purifies it has succeeded” (Surah al-Shams 91:7-9). According to this verse, a person is saved to the degree that they cleanse the nafs of unbelief and bad character. But no one can cleanse what they do not know. This is why tasawwuf begins by getting to know the nafs. Drawing on the Quran, the masters of tasawwuf say that the nafs has seven stages, and the first of them is nafs al-ammara. In this article we will look at this first stage. For all seven, see the article on the stages of the soul.

Nafs al-Ammara in the Quran

Ammara means “one that constantly commands.” The term is taken from this verse of Surah Yusuf: “I do not absolve my own self. The soul is ever commanding evil, except where my Lord has mercy” (Surah Yusuf 12:53). Commenting on this verse, the Turkish exegete Elmalili Hamdi Yazir writes that the human soul, left to itself, inclines toward wrong and uses all its strength in that direction, because this leaning is part of how it was made. A person left alone with the nafs is dragged into wrong. Only those to whom God shows mercy are saved from this.

It is worth noticing who speaks this verse. A prophet who has come through a great trial with his honor intact still says, “I do not absolve my own self.” This side of the nafs is in everyone, and the task is to be aware of it.

The Signs of This Soul

Nafs al-ammara is the soul that puts the demands of the body before everything else. Pleasure and comfort come first, and the voice of the heart and the conscience stays in the background. A person at this stage carries out the whisper of Satan as though it were an order. Their anger erupts before thought. They see the wrong they do as normal, feel no regret, and do not remember death. Lying, backbiting, and mockery come easily to them, and another person’s pain does not concern them, because in their eyes there is no one but themselves.

In a saying reported by al-Qushayri in his Risala, Junayd of Baghdad describes this soul briefly: it is the soul that calls a person to ruin, helps the enemy, and follows its own desires. The enemy here is Satan, and nafs al-ammara is his partner inside the person rather than outside.

The most dangerous feature of this stage is that the person in it does not accept that they are in it. The nafs makes everything it does look good to itself. The person finds excuses for their faults and does not see themselves as bad. This is why someone at the stage of nafs al-ammara usually thinks of themselves as a good person.

Self-Admiration

The masters of tasawwuf see a single root beneath all these signs: being pleased with oneself. Ibn Ata’illah al-Iskandari writes in his Hikam: “The root of every sin, of heedlessness and of appetite, is being pleased with the self. The root of every act of obedience, of wakefulness and of restraint, is not being pleased with it.” A person who is pleased with themselves does not question themselves, and a person who does not question themselves does not improve.

The Prophet says the same thing in other words: “The wise person is the one who keeps their soul in check and works for what comes after death. The helpless one is the one who follows the desires of the soul and still hopes for good from God” (Tirmidhi, Qiyama 25). The one called helpless here is the person who follows the nafs and still believes they are saved.

The Remedy

Nafs al-ammara is not a person’s fate. The Quran leaves the door open to anyone at this stage: “Whoever does evil or wrongs their own soul, then seeks forgiveness from God, will find God most forgiving and most merciful” (Surah al-Nisa 4:110). The first step, then, is repentance.

After repentance the Sufi tradition points to the following. A person makes the remembrance of God, dhikr, part of the day. They keep away from the friends and the settings that lead to sin. They stay close to righteous people whose faces bring God to mind, and they attend gatherings of sohbet, because just as food is the nourishment of the body, worship and the company of good people are the nourishment of the heart. They also take care not to be alone too much, because nafs al-ammara speaks loudest in solitude. Al-Ghazali describes this training at length in the Ihya, and in Anatolia the Muzakki al-Nufus of Eshrefoglu Rumi has taught the same road in Turkish for centuries.

Once a person begins to walk this road, the nafs does not change at once, but the person begins to change. The moment they become uneasy about the wrong they do and start to reproach themselves, they have stepped into the second stage. That stage is called nafs al-lawwama, and we will take it up in a separate article.

Sources

• The Quran, al-Shams 91:7-9; Yusuf 12:53; al-Nisa 4:110
• al-Tirmidhi, Sunan, Qiyama 25
• Elmalili M. Hamdi Yazir, Hak Dini Kur’an Dili, commentary on Yusuf 12:53
• al-Qushayri, al-Risala, trans. Süleyman Uludağ, Dergâh Yayınları
• Ibn Ata’illah al-Iskandari, al-Hikam al-Ata’iyya
• al-Ghazali, Ihya’ Ulum al-Din, “Kitab Riyadat al-Nafs”
• Eshrefoglu Rumi, Muzakki al-Nufus, ed. Abdullah Uçman, İnsan Yayınları, 2007