Depth · The inner work
Purification of the heart
"Truly, in the body is a morsel of flesh: if it is sound, the whole body is sound... truly, it is the heart." The scholars built a whole medical literature on that hadith: diagnosis and treatment of the inner diseases. Here is the classical clinic, in plain English. Read one; recognise yourself; start there. Everyone has at least two.
Anger · ghadab
Anger · ghadab
Diagnosis
The heat that hijacks the tongue and hands, then bills you later. The Prophet ﷺ, asked repeatedly for counsel, repeated only: "Do not get angry." Not the feeling itself (he felt it, for the sake of justice) but the surrender to it.
Treatment
His prescriptions were physical and immediate: seek refuge in Allah from shaytan; stay silent; change posture (standing? sit; sitting? lie down); make wudu, water on fire. Then the deeper cure: remembering that Allah's power over you exceeds yours over the person who angered you, and that pardoning is His favourite flex: "those who restrain anger and pardon people, Allah loves the doers of good" (3:134).
Envy · hasad
Envy · hasad
Diagnosis
Grief at another's blessing, and the quiet wish for its removal. The tradition calls it the first sin (Iblis, toward Adam) and warns it "devours good deeds as fire devours wood". Modern name: comparison culture; envy now has infinite scroll.
Treatment
Rewire the reflex with du'a: when the pang hits, say "Allahumma barik", asking blessing on the very thing, out loud if you can. Envy cannot survive praying for its object. Root cure: certainty that provision is apportioned by wisdom ("do not wish for what Allah has favoured some of you over others", 4:32), plus gratitude inventory: envy counts others' blessings; the cured heart counts its own.
Pride · kibr
Pride · kibr
Diagnosis
The Prophet's ﷺ definition is surgical: "rejecting the truth and looking down on people." Not confidence, not good clothes (a companion asked; he answered "Allah is beautiful and loves beauty"): the disease is the sneer, and its stakes are the highest on this list: "no one with an atom's weight of pride enters Paradise."
Treatment
Deliberate deflation: remember your origin (a drop of fluid) and destination (the grave), serve with your own hands as he ﷺ did (mend the sandal, carry the shopping), accept correction from anyone including your juniors, and prostrate long: the forehead on the floor is the posture pride cannot survive. The sujud is the treatment plan in one movement.
Showing off · riya
Showing off · riya
Diagnosis
Worship performed for the audience: the prayer that lengthens when someone watches, the charity that needs a caption. The Prophet ﷺ called it "the hidden shirk" and feared it for his ummah more than open disbelief, because it rots deeds from inside while they still look alive.
Treatment
Bank secret deeds: keep at least one regular act of worship that no living person knows about; it becomes the control group proving to yourself who your audience is. Refresh intention before, during, and after acts ("actions are only by intentions", the collection's first hadith). And when praise comes, route it onward: "alhamdulillah", His, not yours.
Heedlessness · ghafla
Heedlessness · ghafla
Diagnosis
Not a vice you commit; a fog you drift into. Days on autopilot, prayers on fast-forward, the phone as the first and last act of the day. The Quran's description: "they know the outer surface of this world's life, while of the Hereafter they are heedless" (30:7).
Treatment
Interrupt the loop with remembrance embedded in the day: the morning and evening adhkar, Bismillah before acts, one slow prayer daily where you translate every word you're saying (the tafsir page exists for this). Visit graves occasionally; the Prophet ﷺ prescribed it explicitly as the cure for the fog. Death-awareness in Islam is not morbidity; it's the alarm clock.
Attachment to dunya · hubb ad-dunya
Attachment to dunya · hubb ad-dunya
Diagnosis
The root the tradition puts under the other diseases: "love of the world is the head of every fault." Symptoms: acquiring what you don't use, anxiety scaled to your possessions, and a heart that flinches more at losing money than at missing Fajr.
Treatment
Not renunciation of things but of their grip: earn honestly, own freely, and give until giving is reflexive; sadaqah is the direct antidote and the only wealth the hadith says you actually keep ("what you ate, wore out, or gave"). The calibration verse: "the Hereafter is better and more lasting" (87:17); the calibration practice: be in the world "as a stranger or a traveller on a road" (hadith 40 in the collection).
Malice & grudges · ghill
Malice & grudges · ghill
Diagnosis
The archived anger: accounts kept, greetings withheld, the replayed injury. The Prophet ﷺ warned that deeds are presented to Allah each Monday and Thursday and every person is forgiven, "except two between whom there is rancour: leave these two until they reconcile."
Treatment
The tradition's hard, specific medicine: be the one who greets first ("the better of the two is the one who begins with salam"), pray for the person by name (hypocrisy-proof: the heart follows the tongue eventually), and remember the trade on offer: pardon in exchange for pardon, "let them forgive and overlook; do you not love that Allah should forgive you?" (24:22). The du'a of the believers is the target state: "our Lord, place no rancour in our hearts toward those who believe" (59:10).
The classical text behind this page is on the reading list. The outer counterpart: the ethics of Islam.