{"title":"Nafsanalysis: The Problem of Refinement in Sufi Ethics","authors":"Muhammad Osama Imran","doi":"10.1111/etho.70043","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>The <i>nafs</i> is the spirit in its ordeal of embodiment. It is the veil through which separation from God becomes the condition of relation to Him. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork among practitioners of the Naqshbandia Awaisia Sufi order in Pakistan, this article approaches the <i>nafs</i> as the site of enjoyment that survives refinement by investing itself in piety, renunciation, and in the spectacle of its own defeat. I introduce “nafsanalysis” as an analytic for reading how practitioners interpret their conduct in relation to the enjoyment of the <i>nafs</i>. By approaching “spiritual unveiling” and “psychocorporeal disturbance” as internally implicated modes of experience between which the subject cannot finally adjudicate, this article develops an account of Sufi ethical life in which sin may preserve God-orientation, discipline may nourish the desire it seeks to extinguish, and the veil may protect the intimacy it appears to obstruct.</p>","PeriodicalId":51532,"journal":{"name":"Ethos","volume":"54 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.1000,"publicationDate":"2026-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/etho.70043","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Ethos","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/etho.70043","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2026/8/29 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract
The nafs is the spirit in its ordeal of embodiment. It is the veil through which separation from God becomes the condition of relation to Him. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork among practitioners of the Naqshbandia Awaisia Sufi order in Pakistan, this article approaches the nafs as the site of enjoyment that survives refinement by investing itself in piety, renunciation, and in the spectacle of its own defeat. I introduce “nafsanalysis” as an analytic for reading how practitioners interpret their conduct in relation to the enjoyment of the nafs. By approaching “spiritual unveiling” and “psychocorporeal disturbance” as internally implicated modes of experience between which the subject cannot finally adjudicate, this article develops an account of Sufi ethical life in which sin may preserve God-orientation, discipline may nourish the desire it seeks to extinguish, and the veil may protect the intimacy it appears to obstruct.
期刊介绍：
Ethos is an interdisciplinary and international quarterly journal devoted to scholarly articles dealing with the interrelationships between the individual and the sociocultural milieu, between the psychological disciplines and the social disciplines. The journal publishes work from a wide spectrum of research perspectives. Recent issues, for example, include papers on religion and ritual, medical practice, child development, family relationships, interactional dynamics, history and subjectivity, feminist approaches, emotion, cognitive modeling and cultural belief systems. Methodologies range from analyses of language and discourse, to ethnographic and historical interpretations, to experimental treatments and cross-cultural comparisons.
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