anxiety, and loneliness are common problems today. Envy, greed, and materialism invade our hearts and poison our relationships and lives. Racism, warfare, and economic deprivation—the symptoms of a greater spiritual weakness—are destroying our world. What is the solution to all of these problems? We need a spiritual awakening, a healing of the hearts that can heal the world. We need to rediscover our iman.

This book attempts to revive authentic Islamic spirituality—based on the Quran and Sunnah—by collecting and explaining forty hadiths on the diseases of the heart and the purification of the soul. It is a book of tazkiyah, a self-help book, and a project for changing your life and increasing your iman. In it, you’ll find practical advice on how to cleanse your heart and bring change into your life. If we fix our hearts, we can fix the rest of our lives.

Read this book with the goal of changing your life and the world around you. If you are going to counselling, are struggling with issues that no one knows about, or simply long for a more spiritual life, this book may help you. Believe that Allah will aid you, ask Him for help, and He surely will.

Let me say, with full conviction, that there is no chance for us, nor for any nation, to occupy a respectable place among the advanced nations without raising our cultural awareness – we are living in the age of knowledge, and we cannot do without information and books. Therefore, raising children who are really fond of reading is our first and foremost challenge – and it will take all our commitment to succeed there. Having this in mind I propose to tackle this issue in a book; and, as in the previous volumes in the series, I try to come upon solutions for the difficult dilemma – giving special attention to being true to the requirements of accuracy and reliability; maintaing, at the same time, an accessible and smooth reading. In which I hope to bring these concepts within the comprehension of a wide readership as possible.

The present volume of our series deals with adolescence and adolescents. It is true that much of what applies to a five-year-old applies to a fifteen-year-old, but it is equally true that adolescence does involve some real difficulties that are unique to this stage. It is as if an adolescent is passing through a violent storm that needs special training and skill on the part of the adults around him/her.

An adolescent is a child that is approximating or has gone beyond puberty. More specifically, adolescence covers three sub-stages: early-, middle-, and late-adolescence. Early adolescence starts at twelve or thirteen; middle adolescence starts at fifteen or sixteen; and late adolescence lasts until twenty one or twenty two. After this, an individual is a young adult. You can say that adolescence parallels three educational stages: middle school, secondary school, and college.