Note: The following transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds.
Peace and blessings be upon the most honored of the prophets and messengers. Our Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him and his family and his companions. Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh to all the brothers and sisters who are tuning in at home to another episode of Abdus Sabeel.
Once again, I'm blessed to be joined by Ustad Muhammad Simhambu. Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. How are you doing today? Very good.
So we previously did an episode on da'wah. We spoke about some of the conditions, the do's and don'ts of da'wah. And da'wah itself can almost be like a double-edged sword.
If you do it right, there's potentially a lot of rewards and a lot of khair that can come out of that. And if you do it wrong, then there's potentially a lot of damage, both for yourself as well as the person giving da'wah to. Today we're going to be talking about a topic that no Muslim should be watching, thinking, am I qualified enough to do this? Should I be doing this or not? This is something that all of us should be engaging on a regular basis.
And that is the topic of At-Tawbah. And of course, within that, we'll probably touch on Al-Istighfar as well. So repentance and seeking forgiveness.
So where would you like to begin InshaAllah? I would like to begin, first of all, with the praise of Allah and asking Allah Azza wa Jalla to exalt and mention and grant peace to our Messenger Muhammad ﷺ and his family and his companions. I would like to begin by the very first step in Istighfar and Tawbah, before everything else, is that Al-I'ti'Allah fu'udhu. That a person recognizes that I commit sins.
And people might say, how can you start with this? Everybody knows, we all know we commit sins. But it's surprising how often you hear people who, one way or another, subconsciously or otherwise, don't fully recognize how many sins they commit. So, of course, the evidence for this, the famous hadith of the Prophet ﷺ, كلُّ بَنِ آدَمَ خَطَّاء وَخَيْرُ الْخَطَّاءِ أَتَّوَابُونَ Every single one of the children of Adam are Khattaa.
Now Khattaa, he didn't say Khatih or he didn't say someone who sins or is a sinner. Khattaa, he makes mistakes all the time. This is Seerat Mubalighah, it's in the form of a word which indicates that this is something which is very frequent.
And in some of the ahadith it's mentioned that you sin Bil-Layli Wal-Nahar, all day and night. And what worries me sometimes is I sometimes meet people and they're practicing people. They're people who are practicing the religion of Islam, Inshallah Ta'ala, and who have made a great commitment to Islam.
And when you talk to them they say things like, Alhamdulillah, I don't have many sins. Or Alhamdulillah, as a practicing person, you say Istighfar, they say of course, I ask Allah's forgiveness. But Alhamdulillah, we don't do that many sins or we don't do any big sins.
And Wallahi, this is what we call Jahalun Murakab, it's compound ignorance. It means not only are you ignorant of this issue, but you don't know that you don't know it. You haven't realized that you don't know what you don't know yet.
This is so, so dangerous. Because if you look at the Prophet ﷺ and they said, We used to count the number of times the Prophet ﷺ used to seek forgiveness in one single saying. And we used to count it 70 times in one sitting.
You and me, how we're sitting in the car, in one sitting he would ask Allah's forgiveness and repent to him 70 times. This is the Prophet ﷺ, the one whose sins have been forgiven, the past and what was to come. Everything has been forgiven for him.
This is subhanAllah something that we need to realize that we are people who sin. And we sin all the time. And I want to just explain some of the ways that we sin.
Not specific sins, but the ways that we sin. So there are two major ways that you can sin. You can sin by doing something, but you can also sin by not doing something.
So people tend to think, well, today I didn't kill anybody. I didn't sign up for any riba. I didn't, let's say for example, I didn't use foul language with someone.
I didn't get angry. And they're thinking about certain sins and they're thinking about things that they did in terms of things that they were required not to physically do. And they didn't physically do them.
That's one aspect. And in reality, the sins that you get for not doing things are also huge. For example, that there were relatives of yours that had a right over you and you didn't make salah with them.
You didn't reach out to them. That there was a parent who needed something and you weren't there for them. That there was a right of Allah over you and you didn't fulfill it.
That there was something that Allah gave you and you didn't show gratitude. I mean just gratitude alone. Just one thing alone.
Just gratitude to Allah. Every single joint in your body has a right upon you to show gratitude to Allah for every single day. That's 360 joints in your bones and what have you.
And every single one of them, it is a right upon you to Allah to show gratitude for it. And that you can think about all the other things Allah has given you. If you try to count the blessings of Allah, you won't be able to reach them.
And not showing gratitude for them. There are so many things that we do which we abandon. Let's talk about another one.
الأمر بالمعروف والنهي المنكر How many times we walk past. Forget walk past. We are present in the practice of a munkar.
That if the sahaba radiAllahu anhu saw it, they would have... Perhaps Umar would have reached for a stick and they would have rebuked the person for it severely. And subhanAllah, we let it go completely. People do things in front of us that are completely haram and we don't stop it.
We meet non-Muslims and we don't make any effort to share it, to tell them about Islam, to stop them from doing what they're doing, to take them out from the darkness into the light by the permission of Allah. There are so many things we don't do. So that's one aspect which is all the things that we don't do that we're supposed to do.
And it's so true. People don't realise that they're sins. They don't realise that it's not something that they're doing.
I didn't sign a contract for river today. I don't do major sins. That's the first thing.
The second thing is the sins that you do that you're not aware of. So for example, many, many times we sin and we're not conscious of it. And one of the greatest blessings Allah can give you is to give you the blessing of realising when you sin.
For example, backbiting. How many people? The whole day. The whole day and they're backbiting.
Knowing that backbiting, and there are no sources that indicate, that backbiting is worse than riba. Allahu Akbar. And we backbite like it's normal.
You know, like you meet somebody and the first thing is to talk about someone else. And you know, there are sins you don't realise that you do. And then I want to talk about a third category of sins that these are maybe the most dangerous.
They're more dangerous even than the sins of the tongue. And the sins of the tongue are dangerous. And the Prophet ﷺ told us that whoever guarantees for me what's between his two jaws, مَا بَيْنَ لَهِ وَبَيْنَ تَخِذَي أَدْمَن لَهُ الجَنَّةِ Whoever guarantees for me what's between his two jaws and between his two legs, I guarantee for him paradise.
There's a category of sins that are more dangerous than this. And they are the sins of the heart. Because the worship of the heart is greater than the worship of the body.
That doesn't mean the worship of the body is not needed. It's an essential part of Iman. But the sins of the worship of the heart is greater.
Al-ikhlas, sincerity for the sake of Allah, loving Allah ﷻ, loving what Allah loves, hating what Allah hates, fearing Allah, hoping in Allah. These actions of worship are greater in the sight of Allah than, generally speaking, than the actions of the limbs. And that means the sins associated with them are far more dangerous than the sins that you do with your limbs.
So this is not fearing Allah as he deserves to be feared. Not being conscious of Allah ﷻ. Not loving what Allah loves truly. And not hating what Allah hates truly.
These type of sins, you know, not showing off, for example. A person showing off for sharing their intention with others. These sins, I mean showing off, it's termed, right, as shirk.
أَخْوَفُ مَا أَخَافُ عَلَيْهِمَا شِرْكَ الْخَفْيُّ The thing I fear for you the most is hidden shirk. What did Allah say about shirk? إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَغْفِرُ أَيُّ شَرَكَ بِهِ Allah does not forgive you to make shirk. And Allah did not say, شِرْكٌ أَكْفَرُ He said shirk.
You show off in something you're doing, Allah does not forgive it. إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَغْفِرُ So of course if you die upon that without repenting... That's when you die upon it. We're going to talk about that issue later as the issue of that, what does it mean that Allah doesn't forgive it? But here, so what it means by Allah doesn't forgive it is that if you don't repent for it, and you die with it, you will not be forgiven.
Now that doesn't mean that you will be with the kuffar في نار جهنم خالدين فيها forever because that's for shirk al-akbar. That's for when you make an act of shirk which takes you out of Islam. But this shirk al-khafi which is the smaller shirk, the shirk that doesn't take you outside of Islam, it means that there is a guaranteed punishment.
There is no forgiveness for it. If you die without tawbah, and how many times do we show off? How many times? Just not unconsciously. SubhanAllah, a person... I'm just mentioning a few things, and a person says, I don't do that many sins.
And this is why they say, the scholars see their sins as a mountain about to crush them. And the regular person, or the sinner even, even the disobedient person, or the regular person, they see their sins like a fly that they swat away. فسبحان الله The scholars do less sins than that person.
And they see their sins to be worse. And that person does more sins, and they see their sins to be less. For this, it is really important for a person to think about how much they sin, and the fact that they sin in things that there are whole categories of sins that we don't even know.
We don't even understand properly. This leads me to an important point, that to recognize your sin, apart from the tawfiq of Allah, which we'll talk about, and that is the greatest thing, that Allah gives you success, to know that you made a mistake. There is an aspect here that we need to talk about, and that is that to really understand your sin, you have to be like Hudhaifa, رضي الله عنه, when he said, كان الناس يسألون رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم عن الخير وكنت أسأله عن الشرب مخافة أيضا He said, the people used to ask the Messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم about good.
How do I get Jannah? What are the deeds that will bring me to Jannah? And I used to ask him about evil. How do I stay away from the hellfire? What are the sins? What are the worst sins? Because I was frightened of what happened to me. And so for us to really succeed in الاتراف, in confessing our sin to Allah, we have to really understand and seek knowledge and know what is wrong.
And that doesn't mean you have to test it out. And I say that just as a disclaimer. Because there are some brothers who have this idea, اللهم ستعين, that you should, you know, if you want to keep away from a sin, you should dabble in it, you know, so that really this is so common that you hear people have this mentality.
You mean like in the sense that, it would always be on my mind, what is it like to not do it? They say, for example their kids, they say let them have a little bit of freedom to keep them away from the bigger thing, you know, like let them dabble in a little bit of haram. This will keep them away from the major haram. For example, if you talk to them about Freemasonry, let them look but not touch.
You know, this is so common, this mentality. It's shocking how many people have this idea. And it's completely the opposite to what Islam says.
Islam tells you that the more you expose yourself to even a tiny thing, that tiny thing then leads to that which is worse. And in any case, you will be exposed to sin anyway. The hadith of the Prophet ﷺ, كل ابن آدم كُتِبَ عَلَيْهِ حَضُّهُ مِنَ الزِّنَةِ لَا مَحَالَ أو كَمَا قَالَ Every single son of Adam is going to commit zina and they have to do it.
This is a hadith, it's shocking. Every single son of Adam, meaning every human being will commit zina, لا محالة, it is impossible for them to escape. Then the Prophet ﷺ explained, وَالْعَيْنُ تَزْمِنُ The eye commits zina and the ear commits zina.
But the point I wanted from the hadith, is the end of the hadith from the Prophet ﷺ. He said, وَالْفَرْجُ يُصَدِّقُ ذَلِكَ أَوْ يُكَثِرُ أو كَمَا قَالَ He said, then the private parts follow through or they don't. فَسُبْحَانَ اللَّهِ How is it that if a person, this hadith shows you that your eye, your ear, your hand, your foot, they take you closer and closer and closer to Haram? Not like, let him, you know, let him just stay, you know, a little bit, let him experience something that he doesn't, you know, fall into a greater sin. It's not a vaccination.
Really, Wallahi, this is, it's not that you don't, you don't give a little bit of the sins so that you don't fall into the big sins. You run from that. يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا قُوْ أَنفُسَكُمْ وَأَهْلِيكُمْ نَارًا Or you will believe, save your family, protect your family, and yourselves and your family from a fire who steals men and stones.
This idea that, because I really see, it's very common, this idea that people say, you know, if, for example, a lot of people will criticise if a practising people or a practising person falls into sin, you know, openly, they'll say, you see, look, this is why, you know, they were, because they had too much, they were oppressed too much, you know, like they had too much, they had too much, they were too religious and too restricted. And then they went and did a big sin. But if they just, you know, did a little bit of a sin, they'd be okay.
It's like when you're on a diet and you're trying to avoid chocolate and you're like, let me just have a little bit, and that way then it won't be, it's easier than going cold turkey and not having anything at all. But of course, once you have a little bit of chocolate, you want the whole box. And that's human nature, you know, and that's, Islam never ever told us in any way, in fact, many of the evidence, I provide a couple, but there are many evidences that suggest that exposing yourself to even the smallest amount of sin, it leads, and I'll give an example of that, the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he says, إياكم ومحقرات الدموع He said, keep away from the sins that people think are insignificant.
فإنها يجتمعن على الرجل حتى يهنئن أو كما قال They gather upon a person until they destroy him. And then he gives such a, the most amazing example. The example of a people who gather together in a desert and they bring food.
And when the food comes, there's no fire. So each man goes and brings one twig. And they go and bring a twig and they put it on the pile.
They go and bring a twig and they put it on the pile. They go and bring a twig and they put it on the pile. And another twig and they put it on the pile.
حتى جمعوا سواجا They brought together a big pile of, a big, big pile of twigs. And then they فأججوا نارا And then they set it on fire and it became a great, a huge fire. أو كما قال صلى الله عليه وسلم So the issue is really serious.
The small sins and the small things you do that lead to the bigger things. So of course in Islam we have sins that are كبائر and sins that are صغائر. The صغائر doesn't mean they are small.
It just means they are, they didn't reach that level of the كبائر. So the كبيرة, the sin which is a كبيرة, because this is our next stage and we have to know what the sin is, right? So to confess to our sin we have to know sin. So the basics of sin is that there are two categories of sin.
كبيرة and صغيرة. The صغيرة sometimes they call اللَّمَر in the Qur'an, the small sins and so on. So the كبيرة is any sin which we have and evidence that specifically mentions punishment, curse, anger, the hellfire.
It mentions that the sin is great, that it is severe—anything like that. So, any text that we have which mentions that this sin has a punishment, such as: فَلَهُ عَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌ (he will have a painful punishment), or any sin that says: فَعَلَيْهِمْ لَعْنَةُ اللَّهِ (the curse of Allah is upon them), or: غَضِبَ اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِمْ (Allah is angry with them), or anything where Allah says it is: عَظِيم or وَهُوَ عِندَ اللَّهِ عَظِيم (it is great in the sight of Allah), or anything which Allah ﷻ or the Prophet ﷺ said is major—such as: إِنَّهُمَا يُعَذِّبَانِ وَمَا يُعَذِّبَانِكُمْ كَبِيرٌ (they are being punished, and they are not being punished for something considered major by you)— anything that threatens the Hellfire or contains those parameters or anything similar to that is considered a kabīrah (a major sin).
And the kabīrah isn't forgiven just by doing good deeds. What that means is: when you commit a kabīrah, it requires you to repent—it requires you to turn back to Allah, and to consciously ask Allah’s forgiveness.
It’s not like you just give charity to people and Allah forgives you, or you do something kind to someone and Allah forgives you, or you pray your prayer and Allah forgives you, or you make wudu (ablution) and Allah forgives you, or you go to ‘Umrah and Allah forgives you, or you go to Jumu‘ah (Friday prayer) and Allah forgives you.
These actions are for the small sins—or for major sins only along with recognition, tawbah (repentance), and istighfār (seeking forgiveness).
But there are two, or rather one, particular type of major sin that is among the most dangerous, and that is:
A major sin which is actually a minor sin in itself, but it is done continuously.
Because a minor sin that you do continuously becomes a major sin.
So, it’s not the sin itself. Let’s take something very minor—something that doesn’t have any specific threat of Hellfire tied to it.
Let’s say, for example, bad language. Not terrible things—not like insulting people or cursing Allah—but someone who just uses crude or inappropriate language.
The fact that someone does it again and again and again—it shows that they don’t take that sin seriously. And that attitude is what turns it into a kabīrah—not the sin itself.
The sin itself doesn’t have to be a kabīrah.
For example, someone stubs their toe and says something they shouldn’t have said. They didn’t curse Allah or anything, they just said a bad word.
But the person who constantly speaks like that—the fact that they do it continuously without caring— that’s what uproots it. It becomes a kabīrah—something that the person deserves punishment for, and it’s not forgiven just by being a good person or praying their ṣalāh (prayers) or making du‘ā (supplication).
They are not forgiven by that.
They have to recognize it, turn to Allah, and repent—they have to ask Allah to forgive them.
So, this is really dangerous—and it ties back into the first point about recognizing the sin.
There are a lot of minor sins that we commit continually. We just keep doing them again and again and again, telling ourselves:
“Look, it’s a minor sin. I know it’s wrong. I’m not saying I don’t care—it’s wrong, and in shā’ Allāh (God willing), one day I’ll get rid of it.”
But the fact that the person does it continuously and regularly—that now gets upgraded to a kabīrah, and that’s a big problem.
Because now people are walking around with kabā’ir (major sins) that are not forgiven just by righteous actions. They now require tawbah and istighfār.
So, we talked about recognizing the sin. There’s one more prerequisite to tawbah, and this one is really something that brings relief.
I think what we’ve said so far was quite scary and worrying, but this is something to bring hope.
And that is: The second prerequisite is to know that Allah forgives.
And this alone can get you out of so many problems.
There is a ḥadīth in which the Prophet ﷺ narrates from Allah:
أَذْنَبَ عَبْدٌ ذَنْبًا — “A slave of Mine committed a sin.” And this slave says: يَا رَبِّ اغْفِرْ لِي ذَنْبِي — “My Lord, forgive me my sin.”
It doesn’t mention that he made a full tawbah nasūḥah (sincere repentance), or that he was crying in the last third of the night. He simply said:
“My Lord, forgive me my sin.”
And Allah says:
عَلِمَ عَبْدِي أَنَّ لَهُ رَبًّا يَغْفِرُ الذَّنْبَ وَيَأْخُذُ بِالذَّنْبِ — “My slave knows that he has a Lord who forgives sins and punishes for sins.”
That’s all he did—he recognized that Allah forgives, and Allah can punish.
Then the person commits the sin again, and says again:
“My Lord, forgive me.”
And Allah says again:
“My slave committed a sin and he knows he has a Lord who forgives and punishes.”
Then again, he does the sin a third time, and again says:
“My Lord, forgive me my sin.”
And again Allah says:
“My slave knows he has a Lord who forgives sins and punishes for them.”
And then Allah says:
فَلْيَعْمَلْ مَا شَاء، فَقَدْ غَفَرْتُ لَهُ — “Let him do what he wishes, for I have forgiven him.”
In some of the narrations: "قَدْ غَفَرْتُ لَهُ فَلْيَعْمَلْ مَا شَاء" — I have forgiven him, let him do whatever he wants. Allah ﷻ forgave him even though he didn’t stop. He kept doing the sin, but each time he really just asked Allah, “O Allah, forgive me.” And he knew that he has a Lord who forgives, and he knew that he has a Lord who punishes. "فَلْيَعْمَلْ مَا شَاء" — Let him do what he wants.
Every single person can say: "أَيْ رَبِّ اغْفِرْ لِي" — My Lord, forgive me my sin, knowing — but the condition is what?
"يَعْلَمُ أَنَّ لَهُ رَبًّا يَغْفِرُ الذَّنْبَ وَيَأْخُذُ بِالذَّنْبِ" — He knows that he has a Lord who forgives sin and also takes people to account for sin.
Just by knowing that attribute of Allah ﷻ — that Allah ﷻ is the one who is always forgiving, the one who perpetually forgives, the one who always accepts the repentance of those who repent — just by knowing your Lord, and knowing that Allah is severe in punishment, Allah ﷻ can forgive you for that knowledge, along with just istighfar.
And I think before we talk about tawbah, we should talk briefly about istighfar in this sense — that istighfar is really asking Allah to cover up the sin and to cancel out the consequences of that sin. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you, at that moment, stop the sin. This is going to come later when we talk about the shurūt al-tawbah — the conditions of repentance.
It doesn't necessarily mean that you’ve totally left that sin, or that you are so regretful that you cannot even bear to show your face or something like that. It doesn’t mean that. It just means that you know your Lord forgives and punishes, and you ask Him, “O Allah, don’t punish me. Forgive me for it.”
Sorry to interject — you know, this concept of knowing that Allah forgives and punishes, I think it’s really important to go into this in a little bit more detail. Because many people actually fall on one of two extremes.
That’s very true. For example, they either believe: “My sins are so many and so bad that Allah will never forgive me.” Or some people feel like: “I can do whatever I want. Allah is Kareem — He’s going to forgive me for whatever I do. It’s fine.”
But knowing this — knowing that Allah is the one telling you — telling the person who feels like their sins are so heavy, that Allah can forgive you. And telling the person who feels like their sins are not an issue at all, that Allah can punish you as well.
Knowing this, internalizing this — that this is coming from Allah, the one who created you, the one who is going to judge you on the Day of Judgment: "وَمَنْ أَصْدَقُ مِنَ اللَّهِ قِيلًا" — Who is more truthful in speech than Allah?
He’s the one telling you. So don’t let anybody trick you or deceive you — not Shaytan, not another human being — into thinking that either your sins are too heavy for Allah to forgive, or that you can do whatever you want and Allah will not punish you.
And that’s why, you know, there’s something amazing Allah ﷻ said: "إِنَّمَا التَّوْبَةُ عَلَى اللَّهِ لِلَّذِينَ يَعْمَلُونَ السُّوءَ بِجَهَالَةٍ" — Tawbah, in the sight of Allah, or Allah accepting your repentance, is for those people who do evil out of ignorance.
And what I want from this ayah is not to talk about tawbah yet — but to talk about the word بِجَهَالَةٍ — ignorance.
Everybody who sins, sins out of ignorance of their Lord. They don’t know that Allah has a right over them. And if we knew the right of Allah ﷻ over us, we would behave in a very different way. And if we knew Allah’s names and attributes properly, it would have a profound — or it should have a profound — effect upon the way that we behave.
And as you mentioned, there are two aspects to knowing Allah in terms of forgiveness. One is knowing that Allah ﷻ forgives — that He is الغفور، الغفار، التواب, that Allah ﷻ is الرحمن، الرحيم.
Allah ﷻ said: "قُلْ يَا عِبَادِيَ الَّذِينَ أَسْرَفُوا عَلَىٰ أَنفُسِهِمْ لَا تَقْنَطُوا مِن رَّحْمَةِ اللَّهِ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَغْفِرُ الذُّنُوبَ جَمِيعًا ۚ إِنَّهُ هُوَ الْغَفُورُ الرَّحِيمُ"
He said: “O My servants who have transgressed against themselves! Do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Allah forgives all sins. He is always forgiving and always merciful.”
Allah ﷻ told us that He forgives everything. There is no sin that is greater than Allah ﷻ.
Allahu Akbar. Allah is the Greatest.
There is no sin that is too great for Allah ﷻ to forgive — no matter what it is. Even the sin that Allah ﷻ said He will not forgive — shirk — even that sin, Allah ﷻ forgives it if you repent before that time comes.
"إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَغْفِرُ أَنْ يُشْرَكَ بِهِ" — Indeed, Allah does not forgive associating partners with Him.
And just on that topic — and it’s super important — think about how serious shirk is. That Allah ﷻ, who is Al-Ghaffar, the one who is the perpetual forgiver, said “I will not forgive this sin”, but still Allah ﷻ forgives it for the person who repents from it in this life, before they die. SubhanAllah.
So a person needs to realize that believing “I have sins Allah will never forgive” — this is actually a sin in and of itself. It’s a kabīrah min kabā’ir al-dhunūb — it’s from the major sins — and that is: سُوء الظَّنِّ بِاللَّهِ — having evil thoughts about Allah.
Allah ﷻ said about those who have evil thoughts about Him: "وَيُعَذِّبُ الْمُنَافِقِينَ وَالْمُنَافِقَاتِ وَالْمُشْرِكِينَ وَالْمُشْرِكَاتِ الظَّانِّينَ بِاللَّهِ ظَنَّ السَّوْءِ ۚ عَلَيْهِمْ دَائِرَةُ السَّوْءِ وَغَضِبَ اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَعَنَهُمْ وَأَعَدَّ لَهُمْ جَهَنَّمَ ۖ وَسَاءَتْ مَصِيرًا"
Those who think evil thoughts about Allah — upon them is the evil consequence, and Allah is angry with them, and He has cursed them and prepared for them Hellfire.
SubhanAllah — the anger, the curse of Allah, Jahannam — because they thought badly of Allah. They didn’t think well of Allah ﷻ. And part of that is thinking: “Allah will never forgive me,” or “I’ve done too many sins.”
But on the other side, you see people with that same kind of complacency — the classical line you hear in the Arabic-speaking world is: “Allah Kareem” — Allah is generous.
But Allah is also: ذُو ٱنتِقَامٍ — the possessor of vengeance, سَرِيعُ ٱلْحِسَابِ — swift in taking account, شَدِيدُ ٱلْعِقَابِ — severe in punishment.
Allah ﷻ destroyed people. Allah destroyed nations. SubhanAllah. If you think about the end of Surah an-Najm, when Allah ﷻ goes through all the nations that He destroyed — Quraysh was so scared when they heard these ayat that they fell in sajdah. The kuffār of Quraysh — they thought Allah ﷻ was going to send His punishment upon them right then.
Because He mentioned Nuh, ‘Ād, Thamūd, the people of Lut عليه السلام — and the Anbiya عليه الصلاة والسلام.
And one by one, Allah mentioned how He destroyed them, and He destroyed many that He didn't tell us about — subhanAllah. Individuals, even Qarun: خَسَفْنَا بِهِ وَبِدَارِهِ الْأَرْضَ — the earth opened up and swallowed him. Did he say, "Allah Kareem, Allah will... Allah, it's okay, Allah will forgive me"? Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala opened the earth and swallowed him and destroyed him.
And mind you, a person who cannot... Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is always telling us that you have to fear Allah — not just... I mean, how many times does this idea of الخشية والخوف والتقوى come in the Qur'an? That fear, and doing good deeds, you know, to protect yourself from Allah's punishment — the Hellfire:
يَوْمَ نَقُولُ لِجَهَنَّمَ هَلِ امْتَلَأْتِ وَتَقُولُ هَلْ مِن مَّزِيدٍ — On the day that Jahannam... on the day that Jahannam, Allah will say to Jahannam, "Are you full?" and Jahannam will say, "Is there not more?" Until Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will put His foot upon Jahannam. Jahannam will not... it will not stop being full of people — subhanAllah.
This is not to be taken lightly: "Allah Kareem, Allah will forgive me." Allah is Kareem — هو كذلك — Allah is Kareem, and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is al-Ghafoor, al-Ghaffar, al-Tawwab — no doubt.
And Allah is also... part of Allah's perfection is that — this is... you know, where did this come from, this "Allah Kareem" thing? It came from Christianity, really — wallahi, it came from Christianity. That's what I believe firmly — that this belief came from Christianity.
And that the Murji'ah in general, and the people getting... who kind of take out actions from iman, and you know, that, you know, all these sins you do don't affect your iman — "I've got iman" — and that's a whole new topic: "Iman is in my heart." You know, "This sin, it doesn't matter, iman is in my heart." Iman is in your heart and your actions, and your heart... your actions reflect your heart.
But these people took it from Christianity. They took it from Christianity. And if you see Christians, it is the same thing — "God loves you," you know... mass murder? "God loves you," you know, like, "Don't worry, you'll go to Paradise, you'll go to Heaven. Just accept the basics of faith," you know? Just accept a concept of faith — "You believe" — then you'll go to Jannah. It doesn't matter what you do.
And that's not what we're told in Islam. We're told about people — subhanAllah — they were with the Prophet ﷺ, and the Prophet ﷺ said, for example, about the one who was said to be shaheed — "This man is a shaheed" — and the Prophet ﷺ said, "Perhaps he's something else." And that person went to the Fire.
And the people who were with the Prophet ﷺ — and when the Prophet ﷺ passed by those two graves, he said: إنهما يعذبان وما يعذبان في كبير — "These two people are being punished, and they're not being punished for a major sin."
The people that were with the Prophet ﷺ — this is not like... A person has to be balanced. If they feel themselves getting too far ahead of themselves, where they start to just feel really relaxed — and you know, "I feel this way every time I make du‘a. I feel so... just, Allah forgive me, Allah will not do anything, Allah will not punish me" — this is the wrong way of thinking.
And the person needs to remember that people who had a higher position than you were punished. And people were punished for things they did not think were big in the sight of Allah.
Perhaps a person says a single word — they don't think about it — and it takes them into... it takes them into Jahannam — 70 years deep into Jahannam — because of one word they said. They didn't think about it — one single word they said. They didn't think what they were saying, and it took them into Jahannam — 70 years deep.
So a person needs to be balanced. But if a person starts to feel despair — "You know, I just feel my sins are too much. How can I be forgiven?" — no. The person, at that point, you think of the ayat of forgiveness.
You think of the hadith of the people who were forgiven — A man who had 99 scrolls as far as the eye could see, and the only good deed that he found with him is a bitāqah, like a card, which had written on it lā ilāha illallāh — and that outweighed all of his sins, and he went to Jannah.
And that hadith, for example: وحق العباد على الله أن لا يعذب من لا يشرك به شيئاً — That the right of the people over Allah is that He will not punish the one that doesn’t make a partner with Him.
Look at then what Mu‘adh said when he heard this: أفلا أبشر الناس؟ "Shall I not go and tell the people?" — that, you know, if you don't make a partner with Allah, Allah is not going to punish you. The Prophet said: لا تبشرهم فيتكلوا — "Don't go and tell them about this, because if you tell them, they might become reliant on it and they'll stop doing good deeds."
And then the punishment of Allah is very, very severe. And you see the people that were with the Prophet...
So one of the things that always strikes me when I think about the punishment of Allah — and I think about the blessings that Allah has given us — is to think about Banu Isra'il. And I think there's a lesson in that — in the statement of the Prophet ﷺ: لتتبعن سنن من كان قبلكم — You're going to follow the ways of the people before you.
When you think about the fact that Allah gave them so much — Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave them blessing upon blessing. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala preferred them over all of the people. Allah chose them out of all of His creation. And yet — subhanAllah — when they disobeyed Allah, Allah’s punishment was very severe upon them.
Some of them, Allah turned into animals. Some of them, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala put upon them al-maskana — that Allah put... Allah put humility and humiliation. Allah humiliated them. And Allah put al-maskana — poverty — upon them. And Allah sent against them someone who is going to torture them throughout time — generation after generation — that Allah is going to torture them — subhanAllah.
And they were the best of the people. They were people that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala chose over all of... And Allah gave them prophets. And Allah gave them scripture. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala chose them.
But when they disobeyed Allah, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala — His punishment was severe. So a person... and then you have the Prophet say you're going to follow them. You people will follow them. So a person really must take it so seriously — that the punishment of Allah is something which is very real. It's something which happens.
And even sometimes, the punishment of Allah — one of the things that scares me the most is al-istidrāj — That Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala talks about how He takes the person unaware. The person never ever realizes that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is leaving them. And they call this istidrāj — and Allah is taking them step by step by step into punishment, because that person disobeyed Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and turned away.
And Allah ‘azza wa jall gives them a horrendous punishment by the fact that He doesn't make them realize what they've done. They don't taste the consequences of their sins.
And one of the things Allah gives to the believers — and to the people in general — is opportunities to repent, opportunities to ask Allah's forgiveness: وَلَنُذِيقَنَّهُم مِّنَ الْعَذَابِ الْأَدْنَىٰ دُونَ الْعَذَابِ الْأَكْبَرِ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْجِعُونَ — "We give them some small punishments instead of the big punishment, so they may return to Allah in repentance."
So if you're someone who is suffering from some of your sins, and you know — you can see that — well, thank Allah. Show gratitude to Allah that Allah ‘azza wa jall didn’t do what He did to the other people — and He just took them like that, you know?فَلَمَّا نَسُوا مَا ذُكِّرُوا بِهِ فَتَحْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ أَبْوَابَ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ حَتَّىٰ إِذَا فَرِحُوا بِمَا أُوتُوا أَخَذْنَاهُمْ بَغْتَةً فَإِذَا هُمْ مُبْلِسُونَ Allah subḥānahu wa ta'ālā said that when they forgot what Allah had given them as a reminder, Allah opened the dunya for them—every single thing from the dunya came to them. And then, when they were happy with what they were given, Allah seized them suddenly, and they were cut off from all chance—they had no chance to do anything. And Allah subḥānahu wa ta'ālā told us about this: استدرجهم من حيث لا يعلمون —"We will take them into a punishment when they don't realize it."
So, it's really a blessing that Allah subḥānahu wa ta'ālā makes you realize your sins. It's a blessing that you suffer some consequences of those sins in the dunya, to make you turn back to Allah.
And on another topic—but also related—is that things that people don't realize is that sinning itself, and this idea of recognizing and knowing Allah, this is the reason why—or one of the great wisdoms in why we sin. The Prophet ﷺ told us that if we didn't sin لَذَهَبَ اللَّهُ بِكُمْ, Allah would have removed you from this earth. And Allah would bring a people, and they would sin, and they would ask Allah’s forgiveness, and Allah would forgive them.
One of the great wisdoms that Allah subḥānahu wa ta'ālā has made us sin for, and has put sin on this earth for, and has given us—has decreed for us—the conditions through which we sin, and the circumstances through which we sin, is that we recognize Allah and we ask His forgiveness. And if we didn’t do that, لَذَهَبَ اللَّهُ بِكُمْ, Allah would have taken you and got rid of you and brought you—وَلَجَاءَ بِقَوْمٍ—and Allah would have brought a people يُذْنِبُونَ—they sin—يَسْتَغْفِرُونَ اللَّهَ فَيَغْفِرُ لَهُمْ—then they ask Allah’s forgiveness, and then Allah forgives them. أو كما قال صلى الله عليه وسلم
I really want to touch on the point that you mentioned about people who might be going through difficulties in their life right now, and not realizing that that is an opportunity for you to get closer to Allah—whether it be through du‘ā’, whether it be through istighfār, whether it be through tawbah.
Someone might be watching this at home and really going through a difficult time, and this is an opportunity. Our nature sometimes is like this, right? Sometimes if things are going well, we forget about Allah. And it’s only when things are going bad that we start turning to Allah and we start thinking about Him, and “Oh Allah, help me out of this situation.”
This could be a blessing—this difficult thing that someone’s going through could be a blessing for them. If it brings them closer to Allah, it definitely is a blessing for them.
So this is the question people ask: "Am I being punished or am I being tested?" And the answer to that is that the answer—as to whether you're being tested or punished—is not dependent upon your suffering. It's dependent upon what you do with that suffering—your reaction. That’s what makes whether you’re being tested or punished.
If your suffering is taking you away from Allah, then this is a time to be scared. It's not a time to say “this is the punishment of Allah,” because this is the small punishment that Allah gives you—to make you realize. But if you're going away from Allah because of your suffering, then that’s a sign that you need to come back to Allah and repent.
And if it's the case that you're getting nearer to Allah, then this suffering is maḥḍ faḍlillāhi wa ni‘mati—it’s a pure blessing from Allah and a grace from Allah because it’s bringing you near to Him.
And that’s sunnatullāh—that’s Allah’s way with His creation. We are a people—the more you give us, the more we disobey Allah. SubḥānAllāh, this is human nature.
Nothing fills the stomach of the children of Adam illā turāb—you know, the only thing that will fill that person’s stomach is the dust when they’re buried in the grave. There’s nothing else that will fill that person’s stomach. You constantly want more.
And you can’t—and this—the dunya, generally, if you become too attached to it, it causes you to forget your sins. And this is really where we’re linking together some of the things that we’ve said.
When we start talking about zuhd, it’s not about being poor. Nobody asks us to be poor. Allah didn’t ask us to live in poverty. And Allah didn’t praise poverty. You don’t find a single hadith where the Prophet ﷺ asks for poverty—“O Allah, Allāhumma aj‘alnī faqīrā," “O Allah, make me a poor person.” Gather me together with the righteous—but nobody asks to be poor.
But—to not become fooled by this world and attracted to it to the extent that you actually start to forget why you’re here. And then you forget that you’re sinning. And then you forget Allah. And you forget to make (du‘ā’), and you forget the one inevitable thing in this life—which is death.
And we’ve just gone through two years of COVID, where many of us might have seen family members. Many of us might have seen friends. Heard of people in the community who passed away. And yet, I feel like—myself included—I’m so desensitized to death.
I remember when I was growing up, if there was someone who passed away in the community, it would be a really big thing. Now it’s like, “Innā lillāhi wa innā ilayhi rājiʿūn. What’s for dinner tonight?” It’s like it’s brushed off so easily.
And we don’t realize that death ultimately is going to come. And that’s when your Day of Judgment starts. It’s not about looking at the signs of the Hour and “this sign hasn’t happened.” Your Day of Judgment will begin when you die.
If that comes before (the major signs), because there’s nothing for you—there’s no chance for you after that, except what you put forward in this life. Whether even ṣadaqah jāriyah—you had to have put it forward in this life. And knowledge that people benefit from. And the righteous child who makes du‘ā’ for you—to help you.
Not just being desensitized to death—being desensitized to sin. And this is another thing that I really worry about. And I see it in myself. And I see it in—generally—living in a world where, almost everywhere in the world, it’s very hard to live in a place where people all around you are practicing. You see a lot of sin, and you become desensitized to it.
It’s not that you believe it’s right, or you start to believe that it’s ḥalāl—because that’s really serious. Istihlāl is kufr, right? It takes you out of Islam. But you just become desensitized to it. You stop really caring.
How many times do you pass by—whether it’s the billboard or the people in the street not dressed properly, or music playing from somewhere—and it’s like, “This is my daily life. We pass this 500 times a day.”
And when it shocks you is when you see somebody who doesn’t live that life. For example, we had some of our mashāyikh, they flew to the UK, they reached their duty-free, they got out of the airport, they turned around, they bought a ticket and flew back. Said, “I cannot be in this place. This is not—I cannot be in a place like this. I cannot.”
So literally came out of the airport, took it, said “I’m sorry, I can’t,” took a ticket, and took the next flight back.
And we wouldn’t even consider anything wrong. And we would just be like—we just walk past. If somebody asked you, you would say, “Yeah, it’s ḥarām, you know. There’s alcohol, and cigarettes, and pictures of people, and whatever. Yeah, it’s haram, but, you know, it’s life. You see it all the time. What can you do? Lower your gaze. Try to avoid it.”
Don’t shop there, you know, like—but you don’t feel the pain of it. And that leads us nicely onto the topic of Maktouba, which we haven’t got to yet. Yeah, we haven’t got there yet. It would have been an introduction, but yeah, we haven’t got there yet.
Why it leads us nicely onto the topic of Maktouba is—we talked about feeling the pain. And Maktouba has three fundamental pillars to it, or three fundamental conditions that have to be there, okay? And these three things, I personally like to think about them as relating to past, present, and future.
Okay, so as it relates to the past: feeling regret for what you’ve done. As it relates to the present: stopping your sin. And as it relates to the future: intending never to do it again. We’re going to talk about each one of those in a little bit of detail, in shā’ Allāh.
The first thing is feeling regret, and Allāh ﷻ describes the Tawbah that has these three things as Tawbatan Nasūḥā:
Yā ayyuhā alladhīna āmanū tūbū ilā Allāhi tawbatan nasūḥā O you who believe! Repent to Allāh with sincere repentance.
And you know this word nuṣḥ, and naṣīḥah, and naṣūḥā—they all come around the meaning of acting sincerely, right? Behaving in a sincere way—a sincere repentance.
And we’re not talking about mujarrad istighfār, we’re not just talking about Astaghfirullāh or Rabbighfir lī—we’re talking about three fundamental things. A person feels really, you know, true regret in their heart. It really hurts them, and it pains them to think about that sin they did.
And this, subḥān Allāh, is something that is really hard to achieve. I personally believe it’s hard—it’s not easy to achieve. It requires knowledge of Allāh—knowing Allāh ﷻ. It requires knowing His greatness and knowing how bad it is to disobey Him. It requires knowing your religion, knowing the sin, and knowing what’s wrong in your religion. And knowing that when Allāh ﷻ told you that something is ḥarām, He didn’t tell you to make it hard for you.
Allāh doesn’t want to put in your religion any ḥaraj. Allāh doesn’t want to make things hard for you. If something is ḥarām in Islām, it’s really bad for you. And it’s ḥarām because it’s really bad for you. And people, subḥān Allāh, think so badly of Allāh. They’re like, “Oh, it’s so difficult what we’ve been asked to do.” And you know, they make it that the thing that Allāh made ḥarām, it’s a burden on them—but it’s actually for their best.
Allāh ﷻ made this ḥarām raḥmatan fīkum. And I’ll give you one example that everyone can recognize and admit to: alcohol. Alcohol is ḥarām. Everyone knows that. You won’t find two Muslims who disagree about it, in shā’ Allāh, that alcohol is ḥarām.
And look at the people who it’s not ḥarām for them, like, for example, the Christians, who, you know, they claim it’s not ḥarām for them. You know, they even drink it in their churches or whatever.
And just—you know, I mean—I come from Newcastle, which is a city that is known for heavy drinking. I remember I came back to the train station one night, and it was my fault, because I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t thinking straight. The train station is in the middle of town, and it was late. It was late Saturday night or Friday night. And I just didn’t—like, I was wearing my thawb, you know? And Allāh ﷻ saved me.
Because I walked out, and there were bodies—like, there were bodies just lying on the floor. And you would think that there’s been some attack. They’re just drunk—rolling around, like, throwing up on the floor. Somebody’s taken their clothes off, and they’re like falling over. Someone is punching somebody else. Someone’s—you know—and this is just, you know—it’s not—the police are not even doing anything because they’re just like, “This is welcome to Newcastle on a Friday night.”
People are, like, staggering around, giggling, screaming. Somebody’s, like, taken their shoes off and dancing in the middle of the road. You know—they lost all—you know, that’s why they call it khamr, right? Because yukhammiru al-‘aql. It’s like the khimār, right? What’s a khimār? Like ḥijāb, right? What the woman puts on her head—we call it khimār, right? Because it covers her head. They call it khamr and yukhammiru al-‘aql—like, your ‘aql is completely gone.
And you see these people—and the worst thing is not that the guy’s rolling around in the drain that someone has—you know, akramakum Allāh—used the bathroom, and the other guy is rolling around on the floor where this guy’s just used the bathroom. It’s not that. That’s not the worst thing.
The worst thing is: they’re going to come back. They’re going to wake up with a terrible hangover, throw up again, and then go the next night and do the same thing.
And al-ḥamdu lillāh, Allāh saved me from that. Wallāhi, I came out and I just—al-ḥamdu lillāh—one thing is Allāh put ar-ru‘b in their hearts. Allāh put terror in their hearts. When they saw me with my thawb and my rucksack—Allāhumma sā‘id—they thought that the Qiyāmah came for them. They ran from me.
Otherwise, I was terrified. I thought, “Oh my—yā Rabb, what have I put myself in?” But al-ḥamdu lillāh, they got really scared and they ran. They all gave me terrified looks like, “What is this guy doing?” I mean, probably some of them thought this is like—I mean, people think that you’re a monk, you’re a priest, they don’t even know. You know, some of them thought I was there to hurt them. Whatever. They ran, But wallah, one brother who was doing taxes—may Allah take him out of that job and give him a better job—he saw me and he skipped the taxi queue and he pulled up and he said, “Salamu alaikum.” He said, “Akhi, ta’a ta’a, come in.” I said, subhanallah, I didn’t think—I just took the train back from a lecture and I didn’t even think that the train is arriving at like eleven o’clock at night or ten o’clock at night—and you cannot describe the scene. Not even animals behave like this.
And then you think that Allah made this haram… Allah made it haram to take away your enjoyment? Laa wallah. Allah made it haram to save your honour. I mean, these people—you look at them and you think, “Akhi, if someone took a picture of you and showed you when you were sober, what would you say?” I mean, there is no izzah, no honour, no dignity, nothing. You wake up, and you don’t even remember what you did the night before.
And then to top it all off, the person goes the next night and does the same thing again. And all of that you’ve spoken about so far—about the intellect and the honour—you’re talking about an individual, let alone the impact it has on the society.
On the society, and all the difficulty for the hospitals—you just see there’s a row of ambulances. The ambulances are just parked up like taxis. There are more ambulances parked in a row than taxis. Drink driving, which leads to people losing their lives. Akhi, it's just—how many of them wasted their lives? Wallah, wasted.
Not talking about religion—let’s not talk about that they wasted their lives by turning away from Allah, that’s certainly true—but they wasted their lives, like even their careers, their life, their happiness, their relationships. They don’t even remember their relationships. They don’t know who they were with the night before. He wakes up and he’s like… Allah ‘azza wa jal saved you.
And look at this issue, for example. Allah made zina haram, and people will say, “Oh you know, why can’t—there’s nothing wrong with this issue of having a relationship or boyfriend/girlfriend.” Look at the lack of izzah. Look at what these people go through. “He dumped me,” “She left me,” tears—like no rights for anyone, no protection.
This woman is bringing up kids on her own—she doesn’t even know who the father is. The kids grow up like that. Subhanallah, nikah is not so hard. Nikah takes all of 15 seconds: zawajtuka binti, qabilt, na’am, khalas, ya’ni like—nikah takes all of 15 seconds.
Allah ‘azza wa jal honoured you with Islam. Nahnu qawmun a'azzan Allah bil Islam—we are a people Allah gave izzah to through Islam.
When something is haram, it’s not haram to make life hard for you. It’s haram because that thing is really bad for you. And it’s not bad for you in like this kind of abstract way. It’s directly, tangibly bad for you. You know—in every way.
So this is really important—for a person to recognise that. They have to feel that regret.
And I think, if someone asked me to describe this, I would say—you know, some sins that you’ve done, when you think back on them, it hurts. You can’t even think about it. Like, you even go back and you're like, “Yeah, I can't—my mind has even blotted it out,” because of how much it really hurts me to think about it.
And this is what we are trying to achieve—this feeling of regret. Like I know, you know, whatever I was thinking at the time—when I think back on it, I’m embarrassed, I’m sad about it, I’m regretful about it, I feel horrible about it, I feel just—you know, just terrible. Your heart hurts. Your heart hurts from it.
And I think everyone watching this can identify with that—that in some things that they've done, inshaAllah bi-idhnillah, in some things they’ve done, they can—“Yeah, I know what that feels like.”
The goal is to increase that—to feel that about more of the bad things that we’ve done. And not just the really, really bad things that we’ve done—but to feel it about more of the things that we’ve done.
And to do that requires—it really does require—knowledge of your religion. It really does. Because you know, for someone who doesn’t have knowledge of their religion, for them, there are a handful of things that are really bad. Like, it’s really bad to kill people, and it’s really bad to drink alcohol—and they have like a handful of things.
But you know subhanallah—a person might commit shirk and not even think that that’s something—you know—it’s not that bad. Or miss a prayer, for example—so common. Yeah, miss prayers.
You know, like, people have really—subhanallah—one or two sins, and sometimes you just find people like that. Like, you find people, for example, they will do all sorts of sins, but there’s one sin they will not do. Like halal halal halal.
And I’ve actually physically seen—with my own eyes—I saw somebody come into my friend’s takeaway completely drunk, absolutely drunk, and say that, “I will not eat the food unless the chicken is halal.”
And you know subhanallah, I’m not even going to—I’m going to say that perhaps Allah ‘azza wa jal will guide that person through that. That they have one sin—it’s better that they have that than nothing at all.
Yeah, perhaps Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala will save them from that because they have something in their heart that is still sacred about—you know—they have some part of Islam to them that is still sacred, even though they’ve got themselves mixed up.
Because halal meat is nowhere near the issue of alcohol.
And that’s what we’re trying to identify here—it’s not the fact that—it’s about understanding the priority—not the priority, but understanding the weightiness of each sin.
Missing a prayer, for example, in the UK or even in my community—it’s so common. But it would be very, very rare to see someone eat non-halal meat or even drink alcohol.
It’s like in my community—no way. But missing a prayer? Yeah, what’s the problem? It’s no issue. Exactly.
And the person would still think that, “I am—you know—reasonably, I’m a reasonably good Muslim. You know, my faith is strong in my heart,” and things like that.
And wallahi, I wanted to highlight this again—one of the dangers and the really horrible things that this belief of irja’ of the Murji’ah brought to us.
This false belief that was taken from Christianity and imported by the Murji’ah, is this idea that your iman is in your heart and there is no effect in what you do.
And that person—how will they ever make tawbah? How are you going to make tawbah when you believe your iman is complete in your heart, and you’re doing—there’s nothing to make tawbah for.
According to you, you’re just making tawbah—what’s the word—you’re making nominal, like a nominal tawbah, right? You’re making just a nominal tawbah—just like, “I’m sorry that my hand did something haram, but alhamdulillah my heart is full of iman.”
“There is a piece of flesh in the body—if it is upright, the whole body will be upright. And if it is corrupt, the whole body will be corrupt.”
Reverse that understanding—if your sins are corrupt, something’s wrong with your heart. Your heart is corrupt. There’s something fundamentally wrong with your heart.
And it’s really—because I see so many people sin because of this. They’re like, “My heart is—my heart—no no, iman is in my heart. You know, my iman—I will never let go of my iman. I don’t pray at all. Fast? I don’t. I do this, and that, and the other—but I will never let go of my iman.”
That’s not iman—that’s just ma’rifah. You just know Islam, and you know Islam is the truth. That’s all. Ma sha Allah, you said “my iman”—that’s not—nobody in the shari’ah calls this iman.
This is just recognition that Islam is the truth—the same as the likes of Abu Talib, who recognized that Islam is the truth. “There is no religion better than the religion of my nephew.” And you know that he praised Islam in his poetry.
But this—you know, this is no different, with the fact that you just kind of have something in your heart. That iman is, “I believe Islam is true.”
If you don’t implement it and you don’t practice it—we’re not going to say that, you know, a person who has sins is not a Muslim. That’s another extreme. We don’t declare a Muslim to be a disbeliever because they’re doing major sins.
But we’re talking about someone who is mu’rid—they’ve turned away from the religion in everything. And they’re not practicing anything from the religion at all.
And then they’re like—they really believe their heart is completely full of iman.
So this is really important—to recognize that just because you recognize Islam is true, that’s not, in Islam, iman.
Iman has conditions. And it has—and iman is what you believe, and what you say, and what you do. And all of those have an influence on it.
So that’s all part of recognizing the sin, knowing how bad sinning is in Islam, and feeling regret.
And I want to emphasize again on feeling regret—that the greatest part of feeling regret is knowing Allah. The more you know Allah—and that’s why Ibn al-Qayyim, he has a statement, if I remember it correctly—he said:
مَن كَانَ بِاللَّهِ أَعْرَفْ كَانَ مِنْهُ أَخْوَفْ وَلِعِبَادَتِهِ أَطْلَبْ وَعَنْ مَعْصِيَتِهِ أَبْعَدْ
He said: Whoever knows Allah more, fears Allah more, and worships Allah more, and sins and disobeys Allah less.
Wow. And this is just knowing Allah—subhanallah—and His names, and His attributes, and His actions. It really does.
And that’s why the Prophet ﷺ was the one who feared Allah the most and did istighfar the most.
And someone will say: Why do istighfar the most? The one with the least sins—he has no major sins at all. Any small error that he ever fell into is instantly forgiven. Any future error that he ever falls into is instantly forgiven.
And yet he makes istighfar more than everybody else—because he knows Allah more.
إِنَّمَا يَخْشَى اللَّهَ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ الْعُلَمَاءُ
The ones who truly fear Allah are the ulama, the scholars—the ones who know Him.
And this here—the word ulama here—even sometimes the word scholar here can be deceptive, in the sense that people think that it means the mujtahid or the great scholar of fiqh.
Here the word ulama means someone with ilm. The more ilm you have, the more you fear Allah. And you don’t really fear Allah until you are a person of knowledge.
And so that’s to do with feeling regret And I think it’s also really helpful to have things that you listen to—lectures, or even āyāt of the Qur’an, particular sūrahs that you read—that you know will get you into that mode of thinking, like a mawʿiẓah, like an admonishment. Something which really touches your heart, and you realize...
Because I remember when I started practicing—I accepted Islam when I was 14, and I started practicing a bit later—I was struggling to practice when I first became Muslim. And when I started practicing, there were a few things that I just wouldn’t leave.
And I remember, generally speaking, I used to listen to a lot of really good lectures—lectures about Jannah, the secrets of Jannah, the mercy of Allah. But sometimes, you need a bit of fire and brimstone. You need somebody to give you a mawʿiẓah that makes you shake, you know?
And this actually brings me to an āyah in Sūrah al-Mu’minūn, when Allah ʿAzza wa Jall said:
{وَالَّذِينَ يُؤْتُونَ مَا آتَوا وَقُلُوبُهُمْ وَجِلَةٌ أَنَّهُمْ إِلَىٰ رَبِّهِمْ رَاجِعُونَ}
"Those people who give what they give while their hearts are trembling, knowing that they are going to return to their Lord."
ʿĀ’ishah, she misunderstood the āyah. She said to the Prophet ﷺ that this āyah must be about the person who commits zinā and steals. She mentioned some sins, and she got the impression that this āyah has to be about a person doing major sins—and their heart is trembling because of those sins.
And the Prophet ﷺ said to her:
لَا يَا بِنْتَ الصِّدِّيقِ "No, O daughter of aṣ-Ṣiddīq."
This āyah was revealed about the one who prays, fasts, and gives charity—the person who prays five times a day, they fast, they pray extra prayers, they give charity, and yet they're so scared that Allah will not accept it from them.
And from this, for example, is to listen to a mawʿiẓah, or a lecture, about things like:
{إِنَّمَا يَتَقَبَّلُ اللَّهُ مِنَ الْمُتَّقِينَ}
This āyah has to be among the scariest āyāt in the Qur’an. It’s one of the āyāt that just leaves you terrified:
"Allah only accepts from the righteous."
It is possible that someone could do the actions of the people of Jannah, and Allah doesn’t accept a single one of them—because they weren’t righteous enough for it.
These kinds of things—they really make a difference. And among them is what we mentioned earlier about remembering death.
That’s why they said: what did ʿUmar have written on his ring?
كَفَى بِالْمَوْتِ وَاعِظًا "Death is enough as an admonition."
If you want something to admonish you and make you scared—if death doesn’t make you scared…
كَفَى بِالْمَوْتِ وَاعِظًا "Death is enough of a reminder for you."
And really, we need to take lessons. When we stop taking lessons from people—when people pass away—and it doesn’t affect us, this is a really bad sign. When you become desensitized to death…
So this all ties into feeling regret for the sins that you’ve done. Imagine if you were really on your deathbed at this moment, and the Angel of Death came to you—how much regret would you feel?
Wallāh, you would regret even the makrūh, even the mustaḥabb that you didn’t do. Even the extra dhikr you didn’t do.
{رَبِّ ارْجِعُونِ} "My Lord, return me [to this world]..."
Just give me one more moment on this earth. The person would be full of regret.
But Shayṭān decorates and beautifies your sins for you in your heart—until you don’t even feel regret for them.
So this is regret, and now we move on to talk about stopping doing the sin.
This is really important, because for instance—this is the present now. We’ve spoken about the past, and now we’re talking about the present. These are all actions someone does in the moment.
The action—no, no—you’re right, the action relates to the past or the present or the future.
So relating to the past: the person, when they think about the past, it hurts them. They feel an-nadāmah or an-nadam—real sorrow—and it really hurts them.
In the present, they stop doing that sin. And when we say “stop,” we mean—they stop doing it right away.
And the Prophet ﷺ, he said: "إِذَا أَمَرْتُكُمْ بِشَيْءٍ فَأْتُوا مِنْهُ مَا اسْتَطَعْتُمْ، وَإِذَا نَهَيْتُكُمْ عَنْ شَيْءٍ فَاجْتَنِبُوهُ." He said: "If I tell you to do something, do as much of it as you can. And if I tell you not to do something, then immediately stop it." The scholars said: Why did he put استطاعة (ability) in the commands and he didn't put ability in leaving the sins? Because generally, leaving a sin doesn't require—there are very rare situations where you cannot leave a sin. Leaving a sin is something you are capable of doing. You're the one doing it; you're the one who can leave it. Whereas praying standing up—not everybody can pray standing up. Going to Hajj—not everybody can go to Hajj financially, right? But leaving a sin—this is not something generally that is attached to استطاعة. Generally speaking, what you need is توفيق from Allah. But the actual ability not to do something wrong is something that everybody has, بإذن الله تعالى. You need Allah's help to stop doing it. You need Allah's help.
And we did a nice, you know, a nice video with some of the young kids as part of the "Seat at the Table" in a reunion, where we talked about addictions with them. And we talked about—like, because okay, a lot of people can understand leaving sin as in occasional sin, but the one everybody struggles with is addictions. How do I leave the sin that I just keep doing again and again? And you know, I think the first thing that maybe the brothers were expecting—they were thinking that maybe I'm going to start telling them about techniques to leave the sin. Actually, the first thing is: realize you cannot leave the sin like that. You يا عبد الله, you cannot leave the sin أبداً. You cannot leave unless Allah gives you توفيق. إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ وَإِيَّاكَ نَسْتَعِينُ — You alone we worship, and You alone we ask for help. O Allah, if You don't help me to leave this, O Allah, I will never leave it. So you need Allah's help to make tawbah. You need Allah's help to leave the sin. You need Allah's help not to do it again. So this idea of stopping what you're doing—it has to have determination (عزيمة) and hard work, that you are determined. And it comes from regret, right? If you really do regret, then you're determined—like, that's it. Stop. But what you can't do is be doing the sin, and while you're doing the sin, you believe that you made tawbah. You can make استغفار. You can be doing a sin and say: "أستغفر الله — O Allah, don't punish me for it." But you can't make tawbah. You can't make that sincere tawbah while you're still doing that sin. The sin itself has to stop in the present. You have to actually stop it. And then, when we talk about the future—you have to intend not to do it again. Now, you don't have to guarantee that you'll never do it again, but you have to intend it. That at this moment in time, I really, genuinely intend that in shā' Allāh, I will never do this sin again. I'm never going to do it again, in shā' Allāh taʿālā. It's gone. Never going to do it again. And Allah knows what's in your heart. It's not like when you say to yourself: "I'm never going to do it again," but in the back of your mind—yeah, exactly. And that's—a lot of people—they deceive themselves, right? They kind of tell themselves that, yeah, I'm not going to, but in their heart… And I believe to a certain extent that still comes from regret. You know, like with enough regret, you will never, ever want to do that sin again. And that's why it's narrated about the young man who came to the Prophet ﷺ and asked permission to commit zinā. He said that when I came to the Prophet ﷺ, there was nothing in my heart more desirable to me than zinā. And when I left the Prophet ﷺ, there was nothing in my heart more hated to me than it. And if you have that hatred for it in your heart, in shā' Allāh, you won't do it again. And if you do it again, then you will be quick to repent from it.
The problem with the future and leaving the sin is, for a lot of people what happens is—they fool themselves with تمنِّي (hopes) and with—you know: "It's okay, I'll make tawbah, I'll make tawbah." And you know the classical one we give—there are lots of variations—is: "I'll go to Hajj next year. I'm going to Hajj." I mean, first of all, we said: Hajj doesn't wipe out the major sins without tawbah. So your Hajj without tawbah is not going to help you in that regard. Of course, it's going to make you near to Allah, in shā' Allāh, you'll get Jannah, but it's not going to wipe out that sin unless you make tawbah for it. Because the major sins are not wiped out by just performing good deeds—whatever those good deeds are.
So this idea that "I'm going to make Hajj next year, I'm going to repent…" And we all do it on a daily basis. Forget this—I mean, we kind of smile when people say it. You know, like we despair inside but—subḥānAllāh—you know, when someone says that: "You know, in shā' Allāh next year I'm going to make Hajj, so when I make Hajj, I'll be better." But we do this on a daily basis: "Tomorrow I'm going to stop doing this." "You know, later on today I'm going to stop doing this." "You know, in shā' Allāh, one more time and that's it—I'm done," you know, like— And that, subḥānAllāh, that insincerity—it shows later on. And Allah—subḥānahu wa taʿālā—rarely does Allah give somebody tawfīq to make tawbah when they have that feeling of—of the fact that "I will make it in a bit, in a while." They don't rush.
And that's why Allah subḥānahu wa taʿālā said: ثُمَّ يَتُوبُونَ مِنْ قَرِيبٍ The one that Allah accepts their tawbah—we said: لِلَّذِينَ يَعْمَلُونَ السُّوءَ بِجَهَالَةٍ ثُمَّ يَتُوبُونَ مِنْ قَرِيبٍ فَأُولَئِكَ يَتُوبُ اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِمْ —those who do evil through jahālah (out of ignorance), then they make tawbah soon after, those are the ones whom Allah accepts their repentance.
Some of the scholars said: "مِنْ قَرِيبٍ" means before you die. But even if it means before you die, the word "مِنْ قَرِيبٍ" just means in the near future, in the near time. But some of the scholars of tafsīr said: "مِنْ قَرِيبٍ" means before you die. But here—when will you die? We don't know. We don't even know if we're going to make it to the end of this video. You don't know.
So act now, because your death could be coming very soon. So if "مِنْ قَرِيبٍ" is when you die, then this is even more emphatic than if "مِنْ قَرِيبٍ" means quickly—because you don't know that you are not going to die in the next one minute, in the next few seconds.
So: "ثُمَّ يَتُوبُونَ مِنْ قَرِيبٍ" — make tawbah before you die. And if you haven't thought about that, then ask yourself the question: When are you going to die? And if you don't have an answer, then make tawbah now. Because otherwise—you don't know.
That's really interesting because when you first hear that tafsīr, you might think that it's giving someone the thought and the mentality that "I can delay it." But actually, you're right—it’s more emphatic to actually act now. And when you bring it to the other ayah, that Allah does not accept the tawbah: وَلَيْسَتِ ٱلتَّوْبَةُ لِلَّذِينَ يَعْمَلُونَ ٱلسَّيِّئَاتِ حَتَّىٰ إِذَا حَضَرَ أَحَدَهُمُ ٱلْمَوْتُ قَالَ إِنِّى تُبْتُ ٱلْـَٔـٰنَ — The tawbah is not accepted by Allah from those who do evil deeds until, when death comes to one of them, he says: "Now I repent." Allah doesn’t accept it.
The Prophet ﷺ told us that tawbah is accepted مَا لَمْ يُغَرْغِرْ—as long as the soul hasn't reached the throat. And that's why some of the ʿulamāʼ, they mentioned this as a fifth condition of tawbah. And we've mentioned three. They mention it as a fifth one. I'm coming to number four because number four is a big one. But they mentioned it as a fifth one—that for tawbah to be valid, it has to be done في زمن التوبة—in the time when tawbah is accepted. And the time that tawbah is accepted is: مَا لَمْ يُغَرْغِرْ—until the soul has reached the throat. Or the sun has risen from the west. And from this is the ayah in Surah al-An‘ām, in which Allah subḥānahu wa taʿālā told us:
يَوْمَ يَأْتِي بَعْضُ آيَاتِ رَبِّكَ لَا يَنفَعُ نَفْسًا إِيمَانُهَا لَمْ تَكُنْ آمَنَتْ مِنْ قَبْلُ أَوْ كَسَبَتْ فِي إِيمَانِهَا خَيْرًا —On the Day that some of the signs of your Lord come, no soul will benefit from its faith if it had not believed before or earned some good through its faith.
These ayat that we're talking about here are: أَن تَتْرُعَ الشَّمْسُ مِنْ مَغْرِبِهَا — that the sun rises from the west.
On the day the sun rises from the west, there is no tawbah. The door of tawbah is closed. For those who are still alive at that time, the door of tawbah is closed, and Allah will not accept the tawbah of the people on that day. That's it — the chance for tawbah is gone. Now, what you've done, you've done.
But for an individual, the moment of death — ما لم يغرغر — until the soul reaches the throat.
So now we came to this fourth condition. We've talked about the past, present, and future. So, the person looking at the past, they feel regret. That regret drives them to stop doing it and to commit never to do it in the future. If they do it again in the future, they quickly repeat the process.
But there is a fourth one. And this condition is that if you did a sin that relates to the rights of other people — the rights of creation (حقوق العباد) — then you have to make up for those rights. And this is a topic...
You've done a sin that relates to not only the rights of Allah — every sin relates to the rights of Allah. Every sin you do is an infringement on Allah's rights, even if it's against the creation. It's also against Allah. But Allah is غفور, غفار, تواب, كريم. Allah forgives and overlooks. Allah is Al-Ghaffar.
But the person you did this sin against is not Al-Ghaffar. That individual — that human being you transgressed against, or you took something of theirs, or you committed backbiting or slander, or you lied about them, or you spread a rumor about them, or you got into a fight with them, or you spoke to them in an evil way, or you didn’t fulfill their rights — they are not Al-Ghaffar. They are not Tawwab. They are not maybe even Rahim. Or their rahmah, if they are Rahim, their rahmah is not even comparable — not even the tiniest amount — to the rahmah of Allah ﷻ.
So now we’ve talked about all of this, and we are worrying about Allah’s forgiveness. But how much worse is it when your forgiveness is tied not to Allah, but to somebody else?
And that’s why these are sins... and that’s why the scholars say the sins are three:
- ذنب لا يُغفر — A sin that will not be forgiven. And that is shirk if you die upon it.
- ذنب لا يُترك — A sin that will never be left. Allah will not just leave it and let it go. And that’s the sin you do towards somebody else. Because from the justice of Allah, Allah will not leave it. Somebody committed a sin against you, Allah will not just say, “Okay, never mind that one, I’ll let you off.” There’s no let-off for that one. You will have to answer for it — either you sort it out in this dunya or in the akhirah. But there is no way that it will be left.
- ذنب يُغفر له ويُترك — A sin that is forgiven and overlooked. And that is the sin that is less than shirk — that is between you and Allah, that doesn't involve the rights of other people.
This one — even though we’ve been talking about how dangerous it is — is still nothing compared to the issue of حقوق العباد. Why? Because you are relying on Allah’s mercy alone when it comes to that sin. It’s less than shirk. You’re a Muslim and you’ve lived your life as a Muslim. Now you are relying upon the rahmah of أرحم الراحمين — the Most Merciful of those who give mercy.
What are you going to do when your forgiveness is attached to Abdullah, and Fatimah, and Muhammad, and Maryam? How do you survive that? Because they do not have that rahmah.
And you know — people don’t have rahmah with you in the dunya, so how will they have rahmah with you in the akhirah unless Allah ﷻ inspires them to have mercy?
That’s your only tiny hope — that Allah ﷻ inspires them to have mercy. But Allahumma — there is one solution: fix it in the dunya.
And again, this is where knowing the sin is so important. How many times did we sin and we sinned against people and we didn’t even know? We didn’t even know. SubhanAllah. We’re driving on the road — we don’t know. SubhanAllah — you fall in front of a car, or somebody took their place in the queue. Any small thing. On Yawm al-Qiyamah, this person can come before you and say: “This is my haqq — you took it from me. Haqq. Give me something for it.”
What will you give them Yawm al-Qiyamah for it? You can only give them your good deeds, or you can only take their sins. And some of these people have big sins.
And this is also another way of thinking about it — if you can’t think about it like this, you want a different way of thinking about it — why? That person might have kabā'ir — big sins. This person who is a mujrim — a criminal — and they did really evil things, and their criminality becomes worse because you oppressed them in something.
Really, this issue of حقوق العباد is a big problem. Because now your tawbah being accepted is conditional upon you either having made up for the sin or that person forgiving you.
And yes, we can make du‘a for Allah to inspire them to forgive us. And there are some du‘as or istighfar which imply that Allah ﷻ forgives you for even the things you don’t remember, you don’t recognize. For example:
اللَّهُمَّ اغْفِرْ لِي ذَنْبِي كُلَّهُ، دِقَّهُ وَجِلَّهُ، أَوَّلَهُ وَآخِرَهُ، سِرَّهُ وَعَلانِيَتَهُ O Allah, forgive me for all of my sins — the small of them and the large of them, the early ones and the later ones, the hidden ones and the open ones.
The small ones — or the ones that are difficult to perceive — and the ones that were huge. The ones that I did early on, and the ones that I have yet to do. And the ones that I did secretly, and the ones that I did openly.
And there is another one:
اللَّهُمَّ اغْفِرْ لِي مَا قَدَّمْتُ وَمَا أَخَّرْتُ، وَمَا أَسْرَرْتُ وَمَا أَعْلَنتُ، وَمَا أَسْرَفْتُ، وَمَا أَنْتَ أَعْلَمُ بِهِ مِنِّي، أَنْتَ الْمُقَدِّمُ وَأَنْتَ الْمُؤَخِّرُ، لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا أَنْتَ O Allah, forgive me what I have done and what I have yet to do, what I did in secret and what I did in public, when I transgressed all the limits, and what You know better than me.
And here, the meaning is: the things that you don’t recognize you did, and Allah ﷻ knows you did.
So you can ask Allah to forgive you for things that you don’t even remember. But here now, there is a condition — and that is: when you do remember one, you have to now behave as though you remember it. And you have to now say tawbah and make up for things.
And I believe, insha’Allah ta‘ala, if a person genuinely, every time they oppress somebody, they try to make up for it — Allah ﷻ will inspire the people that they forgot about to forgive them. Allah will inspire those people to forgive them, if they are really sincere about making up for what they do remember.
And making up for what you do remember now is... how do we start to explain the way that you make up for what you have done to somebody?
So the first one is the easier one, and that is if you have taken something physically — like something tangible. So we’re not talking about the person’s honor now. We’re talking about — you infringed on their honor — but you’ve taken something tangible from them. Money that you shouldn’t have, or whatever it might be.
Here, you have to return that to them. And you have to return that to them even if they don’t know that you are the one who returned it, or you are the one who took it. Because at the end of the day, we don’t want to make the situation worse.
You don’t have to come to the person and say: “You know, I took from you this.” But you have to make it up. And this, remember, is something that came in my mind, It's not just about what you've taken, like you stole something, but even work. How many times at work do we not fulfill our contract to our employer? It is true, wallah, it's true. You know, we're contracted to work seven hours, eight hours a day, and the person does six hours. The person answers their own email, does one of their own projects in that time without the permission of the employer. Now you've taken something from someone — that was their money, that was their haqq — you took it as if you had taken it from their bank account and stolen it. You've taken it from them now.
So now you don't have to go back to them and say to them that, you know, yesterday when I was at work and I was supposed to work eight hours for you, actually, you know, I spoke to my friend for an hour on the phone. But what you do have to do is make that time up — give them that hour back, give them that time back. And it's especially true of people working from home, where it becomes even — like, if you're in the office at least you've got some kind of element of control. Your boss is there, people are there. If you're working from home, it's very easy to fall into it. It's very easy. Even in the office it happens. Even in the office it happens — sometimes the whole office does it. The whole office just goes off on a tangent.
So that's one thing — physically giving it back. But even in this, just apologizing and asking for forgiveness. You don't have to be specific about what you did — like, you don't have to say to them that, you know, yesterday at 6:55 — you know, AM or PM or whatever. But just to say to them, "Look, you know, we all have times where we fall short, and I fear that there are times where maybe I didn't, you know, fulfill my contract with you or my agreement with you. Forgive me for it, you know? If I did anything — I've always tried my best, and if I fell short, I've tried to make it up, and, you know, forgive me for it."
And if someone asks you for forgiveness for something — whatever it is, backbiting, slander — wallah I urge you to forgive them, because this is how you get Allah's forgiveness:
وَلْيَعْفُوا وَلْيَصْفَحُوا ۗ أَلَا تُحِبُّونَ أَن يَغْفِرَ اللَّهُ لَكُمْ
Pardon and overlook — do you not want Allah to forgive you?
This tells us that Allah's forgiveness to you is also according to how much you pardon other people. But someone comes — and wallah, when someone comes, it's beautiful, wallah — the person is really sincere to come and say, "Look, I did something wrong, forgive me for it. If I went over a limit, if I said something you didn't like, forgive me for it."
Now we come on to the intangible issues — things that you can't measure, you can't return back — like someone's honour: backbiting, slander, a rumour about them. This is so severe and so dangerous, but so easy to do.
Here now, the issue is: how do I make up for it?
So the first thing is — there is a way you can partially return that honour to them, and that is by mentioning them in good where you mentioned them in bad, and reversing the rumour if it's a rumour, and telling that rumour is not true, or saying good things about them in their absence, defending them when people say bad things about them, and so on. You can — that doesn't return the honour completely, because you know, they've still — their honour has still been infringed — but still, you have partially gone some way towards fixing the problem.
So somebody falls into backbiting — and let's remind ourselves that backbiting is to mention about your brother or your sister in Islam that which they would not like you to say, with it being true. While it is true. So you say, "Oh, I saw that brother the other day, he's put on weight." That's right — he's put on weight. You said that about him in his absence. This is backbiting — even if he knows you said it. And that's what the scholars take from it — that ghibah can include that which the person knows about.
So it's not like, "Oh no, I've said it to his face. You know, when I saw him, I said, you know, you're fat." Like, that you said it to his face — but then the fact you said it to his face is backbiting. Even if you say, "He gave permission, he doesn't mind, he gave permission" — did Allah give permission? Allah did not give permission.
أَيُحِبُّ أَحَدُكُمْ أَن يَأْكُلَ لَحْمَ أَخِيهِ مَيْتًا فَكَرِهْتُمُوهُ
Would one of you like to eat the flesh of your dead brother? You would hate it.
So backbiting — here now you said something about someone — mention, find those people you spoke to and mention him in good. Mention what you — you know — "Such a lovely brother, may Allah bless him. What I said about him is not even true, you know, I don't..." Or even if you can't get away with "it's not even true," mention him in good in the best way you can.
Say, "What is that thing to say about him?" — which of us, for example, it's weight — you say, "Which of us doesn't put on weight? Isn't it true? And he looks really good for himself, may Allah bless him, may Allah give him good health." You mention — you undo all. And it's a bit embarrassing, because you have to now undo the things you said, and you have to crawl back and, you know, unwind that thing that you've done. So it's not easy — but you have to make a habit of it, because if you don't make a habit of it... it will come back. So you have to make that habit of mentioning that person in good, speaking about people in good.
When people gossip — just idle chat — idle chat, I don't think you can survive even two minutes of idle chat without doing something haram. You know, like, it's just gonna — it's gonna come out. Backbiting, lying, slander, gossip — something is gonna come out, just talking like that. It's just a person, you know, correcting themselves, and so on.
So now you — no no, go for it. Because some people might ask: "Is it still backbiting if they're doing it on their keyboard or their phone and it's online?"
Very true. This comes under, again — the scholars say, ghibah is with the tongue, and kināyah — symbolic — is in a symbolic way. And symbolism includes writing. So writing about them, pointing at them, rolling your eyes, sniggering behind their back — all of it is backbiting. La‘natu al-ghāyib is for the person who backbites by speech or action — that's the meaning of ghāyib. Waylun lilhumazati lumazah — he said Wayl is a valley in Jahannam — a valley in Jahannam — for who? For the one who backbites people through speech and action. So it's a severe thing.
And you said backbiting was when it's true. When it's false — it's worse — it's slander. And slander is worse than backbiting.
So this issue here now — we fixed it in a way, in a portion — by every person that I could find that I said that bad thing to, I said good about that person. And subḥānAllāh, you know, the difficult thing is — with your friends it's relatively easy to recover from backbiting in that way. But it's pretty difficult when it's an enemy of yours, someone you don't like, someone you have beef with, problem with — you know, like you've been fighting — they've said horrible things about you, and then you said something horrible about them. Now you have to backtrack — even if it is somebody who has this enmity between you and them.
So now this issue of backbiting — you mention them in good to try to undo some of the harm. But now the problem is — that hasn't undone all of the harm. You now have to ask them to place you — to place you, like they say, to take this burden from you. Again, you don't have to mention what you said. But you come to them and say, "You know, all of us — we have times where our tongue gets ahead of us. And I was sat the other day and I was intending to mention you in good, and I think nothing but good of you, and I said something — wallah, after I said it, I thought that perhaps you wouldn't have liked it. So forgive me for what I said."
And again, the person should forgive — if they want Allah to forgive them, they should say, "I forgive you — and forgive me if I had said something about you," and so on. It's a good opportunity to get that.
You know the other way around—forgive me as well if I said something. The only time you are permitted not to say that is if by saying it you genuinely believe the situation will become worse, that it will bring a greater evil.
Now, I think some people, for example, may hear the statement of Shaykh Rasul Allah ﷺ who spoke about not saying this to people when it causes a greater evil and greater harm, and they kind of get themselves out of it. They’re like, "Look, Ibn Taymiyyah said don’t do it," and you know, because they convince themselves. They convince themselves.
But if you genuinely believe that it’s not going to cause a problem, فَهذَا هُو الأَصْل — this is the basic principle: when you go to someone and say, "You know, Akhi, wallah all of us—SubhanAllah, I was talking the other day and I had no intention to say something bad, and SubhanAllah I said something, and I thought you wouldn’t have liked me to have said that. So forgive me."
Likewise, you could say, "You know, we were in a group and someone said something bad about you, and I didn’t speak up about it. SubhanAllah, I wanted to, and the Shaytan overcame me and I didn’t. Forgive me for what I said."
And tell them: "I’ve gone and I’ve mentioned you in good to those people. Forgive me for what I said."
And inshaAllah, the person will forgive you. And even if they don’t forgive you, perhaps Allah will inspire them to forgive you because you did the best that you could.
If you really believe—you know the person—and you know that it’s going to cause big problems, maybe there’s already been a big rift between you and it’s on a knife’s edge, and you know that just this will really create—maybe even will cause family to split, or will cause relatives to break up, then in this case you are permitted to leave that and to go to the third thing.
And the third thing you should be doing anyway, and that is to make du'a for them and maybe even to give sadaqah on their behalf until you feel that you have made up for what you did.
And that’s why it’s always good to be good to people, right? It’s always good because you don’t know ever if you’re going to do a zulm to them. At least, I think you can—like even though al-a‘mal bin-niyyat—so it doesn’t help you that much—but the habit of just being good to people and helping people out and saying, "You know, SubhanAllah, if I ever oppress a person, I want to be somebody who, inshaAllah, I can go to them and say, ‘Forgive me, akhi,’ and in my heart I know I tried for them. I tried to do something good for them, du'a for them."
And most of us can’t even do du'a for the people we oppress. You know, even generally, to ask Allah: "Oh Allah, if I oppressed someone, raise their rank in Jannah."
The Prophet ﷺ said this, right? He said: "Oh Allah, anyone that I insult—anyone that I insult—make it a cause for the raising of their darajah, make it a means of nearness to Me."
SubhanAllah, can you imagine the Prophet ﷺ insulting someone that he doesn’t—SubhanAllah—but he said that if I insult somebody, make it a means of nearness to Allah or, as he said, a means of raising their rank.
It has a nice story to it, and that’s the story of Mu'awiyah (radiAllahu ‘anhu) when the Prophet ﷺ called him and he was eating. So he didn’t know—SubhanAllah, ḥāsha wa kallā—that he knows the Prophet ﷺ wants him and he will refuse—he’s eating. And another Sahabi called him back: "Come," and he said, "I'm eating." Then the Prophet ﷺ said, "Call him again," and he was eating. So here the Prophet ﷺ said about him, "May Allah not make his stomach—may Allah never make his stomach full, may Allah never make him feel satisfied."
Mu’awiyah said, "This was a blessing for me. Since the Prophet ﷺ said this to me, I can survive on a small amount of food and I don’t feel the need to overeat like I did before."
SubhanAllah, the Prophet ﷺ said it as a rebuke—you know, a gentle rebuke—to him: that eating still—"May Allah never make his stomach satisfied." And Allah answered the Prophet ﷺ, that anyone that I—anybody that I say a rebuke to or I say something too harshly, then make it a means of minnah and a means of raising their rank.
And Mu’awiyah himself talks about the benefit of this in him—that after that he did not feel hungry or he did not feel that he needs to eat too much after that time.
So SubhanAllah, a person should ask Allah: "Oh Allah, the people—I'm not going to say 'if I oppress people,' because I oppressed them. I know I oppressed them—that whoever I oppressed, forgive them, raise their rank in Jannah, answer their du'a."
Until you feel that you have done something to repay that. That doesn’t excuse you going to people and asking forgiveness, but at least it starts to get you going in the right direction.
And there are some people you cannot ask their forgiveness because you’ve lost contact with them. You know, people you cannot—like I’ve oppressed somebody and I don’t have a way to contact them.
You know, I’m just asking people for forgiveness—even asking for forgiveness from Allah and from people—for things that you maybe even haven’t done.
What do you mean by that?
So people, you know, asking Allah’s forgiveness—the Prophet ﷺ, in a single majlis, asks Allah’s forgiveness 70 times. There is no way the Prophet ﷺ did 70 sins. The Prophet ﷺ didn’t sin in the first place.
Allāhumma illā, you know what we said—the inadvertent mistake that Allah ﷻ reveals in the Qur’an straightaway—and how many times did that happen?
The Prophet ﷺ is not sinning in that majlis, but the Prophet ﷺ is asking Allah’s forgiveness generally. And also even if you’re not sure, "Did I do something wrong?" Astaghfirullah. Even a thought, you’re not sure—"Was it wrong?" Astaghfirullah.
You know, and you make a habit of istighfar and tawbah even if you're not—like even if it’s not—you could argue for yourself that, "No, I don’t know, did I do something wrong? Was that wrong what I did?"
Don’t wait to ask yourself, "Was that wrong what I did?" Ask Allah’s forgiveness. Even with people—you might have said something, you're not sure. Even if it’s backbiting, like people will say to me, they’ll send me a question and say, "Did I—is that backbiting?"
Why are you waiting?
Just go and ask the person. Just go and say to the person, "You know, forgive me. I’m not even sure that I said something you wouldn’t like, but I’m frightened maybe I did. Forgive me."
So yes, it’s good to ask if it’s backbiting because they’ll learn from it in the future, but like, there’s nothing wrong with being cautious. We call it al-wara’—like being cautious out of the fear of Allah.
Just, you know, make istighfar a few more times. Ask Allah’s forgiveness. Where—if you think you might have done something somewhat—apologize, even if you didn’t do it. That’s such good etiquette, when you see people like that. And the person says, "I’m sorry, wallah, did I…?" And you didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t do anything wrong at all.
So it’s just a habit that will allow you to recognize more mistakes that you make and inshaAllah will stop those ones slipping through the net that you don’t recognize.
So this issue of making up for things—and there are some complicated masa’il in that. People talk about, for example, the one that comes to mind is—people talk about, "You know, I obtained my qualification in my job fraudulently. And now I have a job based on that qualification. And all my income is from that job, and my income is from that job. But what is the situation here?"
So this one, it has to see depending on the circumstances. We, first of all, ask the person, "Are they able to do the job effectively and responsibly? And are they able to fulfill their contractual obligations?"
And if that’s the case, then bi’idhnillāhi taʿālā, they make tawbah for what they did, they repent for what they did, and inshaAllah they can remain within that employment and they’re able to fulfill that job.
But it gets more complicated when the person says, "Actually, you know, I actually can’t fulfill that job—” So then the question is: are they able to gain those skills subsequently? Can they? For example, someone asked Shaykh Ibn Baz about an imam in the masjid. He’s the imam of the masjid, but he can’t recite the Qur’an properly. He didn’t obtain the proper recitation—it just happened that he was made the imam of the masjid through some means, but he can’t recite the Qur’an properly.
So the Shaykh answered him that you can learn—you don’t need to quit your job. You just need to learn it in order to fulfill your role.
But then, you have some people who are in positions where they’re actually a danger to others. Like someone who has a job as a doctor but isn’t qualified. You know, there was a story—Allah knows best about its authenticity—about someone who was a pilot but wasn’t actually a qualified pilot. They had obtained their degree in a false way.
Now you’re putting people’s lives at risk. Every time you get in that seat and fly that plane, you're endangering people’s lives. That person has to leave that job.
But there are more difficult situations like that—where it’s better, instead of taking an answer from a video, for a person to ask about their specific situation: “This happened to me...”
There are two things I really want to mention about sins:
1. Don’t expose your sins.
SubḥānAllāh (سُبْحَانَ ٱللَّٰه), I don’t know why people do this. Even when asking a question—why do you have to mention that it’s you?
“Ustadh, I’m writing to you because last week I did this...” I’m thinking: No! Not just last week—when you wrote this email, you were sinning. Why did you tell me about it?
Say instead: There was a brother, or I know someone... You know yourself.
Don’t expose your sins. The Prophet ﷺ said:
"All of my Ummah will be forgiven except those who commit sins openly..."
"...A man commits a sin by night, and Allah conceals it. Then in the morning, he says, 'O so-and-so, I did such-and-such last night,' when Allah had concealed it for him the whole night."
People do this on social media. They post their sins—like they did something ḥarām (حرام - forbidden), then they post a picture or talk about it.
And it’s usually followed by istighfār (ٱسْتِغْفَار - seeking forgiveness), like: Astaghfirullāh (أستغفر الله), last night I did...
Leave it between you and Allah. Allah is As-Sittīr (السِّتِّير - the One who conceals sins).
There's the ḥadīth (حديث - narration) about Yawm al-Qiyāmah (يوم القيامة - Day of Judgment), when Allah is alone with His servant. Allah takes His slave privately and says:
"Did you not do such and such sin?" And the person says: Yes, my Lord. Until the person believes they are doomed. Then Allah says: "I concealed it for you in the dunya (الدنيا - the worldly life), and I forgive it for you today."
Allah covered your sin in the dunyā, meaning that in order to receive that hidden forgiveness, the sin must have remained concealed (mastūr مستور).
So why would you go and remove the sitir (سِتْر - covering) that Allah put over you? Allah gave you a blessing—you sinned, and He covered it up. That’s why some of the righteous used to make du‘ā’ (دعاء - supplication):
"O Allah, don’t allow me to see the mistakes of my shaykh or my teacher."
Even to that extent—subḥānAllāh.
So, the idea of covering—Allah covered it for you. Why are you taking off the cover that Allah put over you?
2. People whose good deeds are destroyed
There’s the ḥadīth about the people who come on Yawm al-Qiyāmah with mountains of good deeds, but all of it turns to dust.
These are people about whom the Prophet ﷺ said:
"Qawmun idhā khalaw bimā ḥāram Allāh intahakūhā" (قومٌ إذا خلوا بمحارم الله انتهكوها) They are people who, when alone with what Allah made harām, fall into it.
Now, someone might say: “Don’t all of us sin in private?”
Yes, for sure. But this is about the person whose nature is that in public, they’re extremely careful not to sin—but in private, they don’t care at all.
It's not just about sinning in private, because we all may fall into that. It’s about not sinning in public only because people are watching, but not caring in private—meaning you’re more afraid of the people than of Allah.
But Allah sees you in both situations.
This happens to everyone—we naturally become more cautious when surrounded by good people, and that helps us stay away from sin. But don’t let your nature become:
When no one’s around: “Yalla (يلا - let’s go), let me do all the sins.” And then when someone’s nearby: “Stop it all—no more bad speech, no bad actions.”
Because you’re worried about your ‘ird (عرض - honour/reputation) in the sight of people, not your status in the sight of Allah.
Those are the people whose good deeds are turned to dust.
So it’s really important we avoid these two things. And have you noticed—they’re kind of opposites?
- The person who sins in secret and then goes on to expose their own sin.
- The person who avoids sin in public but doesn’t care about sin in private.
These are two things that destroy your deeds:
- Telling everyone about the sins you did.
- Being someone who, when alone, sins freely without concern.
The Prophet ﷺ said:
"Qawmun idhā khalaw bimā ḥāram Allāh intahakūhā" A people who, when alone with what Allah made ḥarām, fall into it.
Wallāh (والله - by Allah), that covers a lot of things.
This is your life—asking Allah’s forgiveness, making mistakes, and seeking to make up for them. This is such a fundamental life lesson.
Every day, every night, it’s just that cycle—sinning, disobeying Allah, and returning to Him. So you need to have the skill of tawbah (توبة - repentance).
How to make tawbah, how to seek forgiveness.
And if I were to come back to one main point—it’s this:
You can’t make tawbah without Allah’s help.
Everything mentioned in this video—you and I could walk away and try to practice it, or we could leave this car and continue practicing Islam.
And it shouldn’t just be that tawbah comes only after you commit a major, terrible sin. Like we mentioned—there are so many sins we commit hourly, even every minute.
Sometimes I think of it like this—I’ve got a background in finance—so I think of my life like a P&L (profit & loss).
- Good deeds are revenue.
- Bad deeds are costs.
- The aim is to maximize revenue and minimize costs, so you have net profit at the end.
A lot of corporate companies overly focus on the revenue line and neglect the cost line, until something like COVID hits. Suddenly, there are mass redundancies, cuts, and crisis management.
And I feel like I’m like that too in my dīn (دِين - religion). It’s all about: “What good deeds can I do?” But I don’t necessarily focus on minimizing the sins—the "cost line."
It’s only when you fall into something really serious that you realize, “Oh, I need to make tawbah.”
But if companies monitored their costs properly, they wouldn’t need to panic when hardship hits. And that’s how life is.
It’s a scary way to live—because ultimately:
If Allah forgives you, If you seek forgiveness and make tawbah, And Allah accepts it— You don’t need to worry about being judged.
That’s the real result of tawbah.
The result of tawbah isn’t just that Allah forgives you. That’s one thing. But:
"The one who repents from sin is like the one who never sinned."
And that’s not even the biggest one, The biggest one is that Allah turns your sin into a good deed, so you get two things out of tawbah (repentance). The first is: it’s like you never did the sin, to the point that some of the scholars said — and it's a mas'ala khilāfiyyah (a matter of scholarly disagreement) — some of them said you will not even find that sin written in your deeds on the kalāmah (scroll). It’s not there at all. You will not see it written. Some of them said: you’ll see it, but you’ll not be affected by it — you’ll see it, but it will be greyed out; you see it, but you're not held to account. Others said: you will not see it at all, as if you never did the sin.
Then Allah said: "Allah will take their sins and replace them with good deeds." So you come, and all these sins you've done are ḥasanāt (good deeds). All these sins you've done are all good deeds.
And Ibn al-Qayyim said something amazing just on this topic. He said — and I don't want to misquote him — but approximately, what he said is that a person may do a sin that is more beneficial to them than a thousand good deeds. Now here it doesn’t mean it’s “better” — like, better because it’s a sin — but the outcome of it was more beneficial to them than if they had done a thousand good deeds. Because it was the sin that made them wake up. You know, it was the one that said to them: "Wake up and realise what you're doing."
And we know some people — and subḥānAllāh (glory be to Allah) — what we see of them, we see good. And we know that in the past, they lived a different life. And subḥānAllāh, maybe it was one sin they did that made that change.
But no doubt we should recognize even the small ones — but sometimes that big one, in itself — at least if you’re going to do something with it… At least, at least, if you’re going to do something with it: turn it into a good deed and make it the turning point in your life.
We also need to mention the advice of the Prophet ﷺ when he sent Mu‘ādh to be a judge and dā‘iyah (caller to Islam) in Yemen. He said:
"اتَّقِ اللَّهَ حَيْثُ مَا كُنتَ، وَأَتْبِعِ السَّيِّئَةَ الْحَسَنَةَ تَمْحُهَا، وَخَالِقِ النَّاسَ بِخُلُقٍ حَسَنٍ" "Fear Allah wherever you are, and follow up a bad deed with a good one — it will erase it. And treat people with the best of manners."
Let’s explain this in light of what we've already said:
- "Fear Allah wherever you are" — that means to shield yourself from sin, to shield yourself from punishment by doing as many good deeds as possible, and keeping away from as many sins as possible. Being scared of sins, scared of the Fire — shielding yourself from Allah’s punishment by doing good deeds and keeping away from sins. We've spoken about that.
- "Follow up the bad deed with a good deed" — this is so easy. It’s not even about regret or crying. You did something wrong? Now do something right. Do something good.
Ibn Taymiyyah رحمه الله said that if you can do it in the same vein, the same type of deed as the one you sinned in — this is even better. That person, for example, sinned by — let's say — they spoke about Allah without knowledge. So then they go and seek knowledge and speak about Allah with knowledge. Now exactly what they did wrong, they do right — if you can.
But it's not necessary to be exact. They could have spoken about Allah without knowledge and then given ṣadaqah (charity). But ideally, in the same vein — the same type or sort of deed that they did — they try to do it right immediately after.
وَأَتْبِعْ — the Prophet ﷺ said “follow it up.” He didn’t say, "after a while, do good." He didn’t just say, “fear Allah wherever you are, do good deeds.” He said follow up the bad deed — straight away — one after the other. You did a bad deed — now do a good one.
"وَخَالِقِ النَّاسَ بِخُلُقٍ حَسَنٍ" — "Treat people with the best of manners." And this is where we talk about: be careful about people’s rights — ḥuqūq al-‘ibād. Treat people in the best possible way. Don’t be someone who oppresses people. Because oppression — this is the muflis.
تَدْرُونَ مَنِ الْمُفْلِسُ؟ — The Prophet ﷺ said to the companions: “Do you know who the bankrupt one is?” They said, “Yes, the one who has no dinar or dirham — they have no money.” The Prophet ﷺ said: “The muflis (bankrupt) is the one who comes on the Day of Judgment…” And then — because of all the oppression they committed:
- سَبَّ هَذَا — he insulted this one
- شَتَمَ هَذَا — he reviled this one
- أَخَذَ مَالَ هَذَا — he took the wealth of this one
- ضَرَبَ هَذَا — he hit this one
Each of those people comes and takes from his good deeds. And when his good deeds run out — they give their bad deeds to him. And then he is thrown into the Fire — because he didn’t bring any good deeds, and now has a record of bad ones — because of the people he oppressed.
So خَالِقِ النَّاسَ بِخُلُقٍ حَسَنٍ — it’s not just about manners, but being someone who does not habitually oppress others. And that requires acting upon the statement of Allah:
"خُذِ الْعَفْوَ، وَأْمُرْ بِالْعُرْفِ، وَأَعْرِضْ عَنِ الْجَاهِلِينَ" "Take to pardoning, command what is good and turn away from the ignorant." Be someone who doesn’t hold grudges. Command what is customary and good. Turn away from people who only bring argumentation and oppression.
That’s the topic — and honestly, it’s huge. We could go on for hours.
One more thing I want to add is the issue of ta‘dīl, or divine rectification. This ta‘dīl that Allah ﷻ does. These āyāt (verses) I think give so much hope to people who think: “I'm never going to be forgiven for this.”
These are the verses at the end of Sūrah al-Furqān, where Allah talks about ‘Ibād al-Raḥmān (the servants of the Most Merciful):
"وَالَّذِينَ لَا يَدْعُونَ مَعَ اللَّهِ إِلَٰهًا آخَرَ، وَلَا يَقْتُلُونَ النَّفْسَ الَّتِي حَرَّمَ اللَّهُ إِلَّا بِالْحَقِّ، وَلَا يَزْنُونَ ۚ وَمَن يَفْعَلْ ذَٰلِكَ يَلْقَ أَثَامًا، يُضَاعَفْ لَهُ الْعَذَابُ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ وَيَخْلُدْ فِيهِ مُهَانًا، إِلَّا مَن تَابَ وَآمَنَ وَعَمِلَ عَمَلًا صَالِحًا فَأُولَٰئِكَ يُبَدِّلُ اللَّهُ سَيِّئَاتِهِمْ حَسَنَاتٍ ۗ وَكَانَ اللَّهُ غَفُورًا رَّحِيمًا" "And those who do not invoke with Allah another god, nor kill a soul whom Allah has forbidden except by right, nor commit fornication. And whoever does this shall meet a penalty. The punishment will be doubled for them on the Day of Judgment, and they will abide therein in humiliation. Except for the one who repents, believes, and does righteous deeds — for them, Allah will replace their bad deeds with good deeds. And Allah is Ever-Forgiving, Most Merciful."
This is one of my favourite passages in the Qur’an.
Allah mentions the worst of deeds: shirk, murder, and zinā (fornication). So subḥānAllāh, if someone says: “I don’t think Allah can forgive me…” — Allah told the one who committed shirk, murder, and zinā that He will replace their bad deeds with good.
On what condition? "إِلَّا مَن تَابَ" — except the one who repents. They have to make tawbah. They have to have īmān (faith). And they have to follow it up with ‘amal ṣāliḥ (righteous actions).
It’s not just: “I believe in my heart, I’m a good Muslim inside.” No — you need tawbah, īmān, and righteous deeds. Allah could’ve just said تَابَ وَآمَنَ — but He emphasized the actions because they’re key to wiping out the sins.
This is linked to the hadith of Mu‘ādh, where the Prophet ﷺ said:
"وَأَتْبِعِ السَّيِّئَةَ الْحَسَنَةَ تَمْحُهَا" "Follow up the bad deed with a good deed — it will wipe it out."
Because "إِنَّ الْحَسَنَاتِ يُذْهِبْنَ السَّيِّئَاتِ" "Indeed, good deeds wipe away bad ones." And Allah will replace those bad deeds — shirk, murder, zinā — with ḥasanāt.
Not just wiping them out — that would be enough of a mercy — But turning that mountain of sins into a mountain of good deeds.
It’s also amazing that in the same āyāt, we see both extremes:
- The one who thinks: “Allah can never forgive me.”
- And the one who says: “Allah is merciful, I’ll be forgiven no matter what.”
Allah warns:
"وَمَن يَفْعَلْ ذَٰلِكَ يَلْقَ أَثَامًا" — "Whoever does that will face punishment." "يُضَاعَفْ لَهُ الْعَذَابُ" — "Punishment will be multiplied." "وَيَخْلُدْ فِيهِ مُهَانًا" — "They will remain in humiliation."
There’s also a linguistic benefit here. The word مُهَانًا (humiliated) comes from the root هاء - واو - نون (hā - wāw - nūn). At the start of the passage, Allah describes ‘Ibād al-Raḥmān:
"وَعِبَادُ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الَّذِينَ يَمْشُونَ عَلَى الْأَرْضِ هَوْنًا" "The servants of the Most Merciful are those who walk humbly on the earth."
Same root letters: هاء - واو - نون — used for humility and also humiliation.
So either you humble yourself in this world, and Allah honours you in the Hereafter — Or you seek honour in this world and get humiliated in the Hereafter.
You will get humility — the choice is when and how.
SubḥānAllāh — these āyāt are truly profound.
You know, someone might say regarding tawbah — they’ve understood the importance of it, but they still have this issue of commitment. We touched on it earlier. But commitment — it’s over and over and over again.
Should they wait until they’re better? In a better state of īmān?
Or should they just make tawbah every time?
Make tawbah every time.
And even if you can’t make tawbah — even if you’re so into it that you can’t even feel regret for it — do some of the shurūṭ of tawbah. And if you can’t bring all of them, bring some of them. And bring istighfār. Because we said istighfār doesn’t require those shurūṭ.
But when we say istighfār doesn’t require those conditions, it doesn’t mean you don’t need to do any of them.
When somebody says, for example, “I just can’t bring myself to regret it. But I’m not going to do it. I’m intending not to do it again. I just can’t bring myself to hate it — I just can’t bring that regret into my heart.” So, I’m just going to make istighfār, and I’m intending not to do it again.
You bring whatever you can, because that’s how you’re going to get tawfīq from Allah to be able to truly make tawbah later on.
So you make it — even if it’s a partial tawbah, or somewhat of a tawbah — where you say: “Look, I’m not sure if I’m never going to do it again, but I am going to stop doing it now. And I’m going to ask Allah to forgive me.”
That is how you get tawbah.
You don’t get tawbah necessarily by perfectly bringing all of these different conditions, as if it’s just so easy. Instead: “Right now, I’m going to stop. I’m not sure if I’ll never do it again — I’m going to try. I’m asking Allah to cover it up. I’m asking Allah to forgive me. I’m asking Allah to purify me and not make it happen to me again. Purify my heart and so on — don’t make it happen again.”
And then I’m working towards not doing it again. And then, as I’m learning, I’m working towards building my feeling of regret.
You know, it’s not this case where we wait until our īmān is at such a level where we have total regret, total everything. By that time, you’ve already reached your destination — you’ve already reached your goal.
Instead, you’re working towards it. So it’s a constant struggle. And it’s a constant… maybe someone says: “Look, I can’t even say I’m stopping it now, but I am really intending not to do it again.”
Okay, now you haven’t brought full tawbah, but you’ve brought some of it. So make istighfār. Ask Allah to forgive you. And now let’s work on stopping. Make istighfār, ask Allah to forgive you. Recognize you have a Lord who forgives and punishes.
And until you can do it like that — until Allah subḥānahu wa taʿālā blesses you and has mercy on you, and honors you with the ability to make tawbah naṣūḥah — true and sincere tawbah…
As-salāmu ʿalaykum wa raḥmatullāhi wa barakātuh.
I think I’ve personally benefited the most from the concept of not really recognizing how many sins we commit — and how we so easily fall into them.
And some of the ones that we easily fall into are the ones that require that fourth condition of tawbah — the ones where it’s against the creation, the makhlūqāt, against other human beings.
And they are so easy to fall into — and so easy to not even recognize. You’re just talking amongst friends, and then that biting, that slander...
We’ve already benefited from that.
Fariq Rafiq. Seyit Mubarak. BārakAllāhu fīkum. In shā’ Allāh, we’ll try and do another episode at some point.
BārakAllāhu fīkum.
As-salāmu ʿalaykum wa raḥmatullāhi wa barakātuh.
