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Tauba
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God sent down His Apostles into the world and revealed His Books through them so
that men may learn to distinguish good from evil, virtue from vice, and earn for
themselves Divine approbation and deliverance in the life to come by abstaining
from the wicked and the unlawful and adopting what was good and virtuous. Thus,
those who reject the faith and refuse to believe in the Prophets and the Divine
guidance with which they had been raised up, their whole existence, so to speak,
is one of defiance and transgression. They are totally indifferent to the message
sent down by Allah. They will have nothing to do with it. Unless they believe in
the Messengers and Apostles raised up by God and in the holy Scriptures revealed
by Him, and, particularly, in the Last of the Prophets, Prophet Mohammad, and the
Divine Book he brought, i.e., the holy Quran, and accept his guidance they can never
hope to attain the good pleasure of God and success and salvation in the Hereafter.
The denial of God, His Apostles and His Books is not pardonable. It cannot be condoned.
This fact has been made abundantly clear by every Prophet of God during his time.
In any case, it is essential for the salvation of the Apostates and Polytheists
that they first of all renounced Apostasy and Polytheism and took to the path of
Faith and Monotheism. Without it salvation is not possible. Those who believe in
the Prophets and affirm their intention to live according to their teachings also
sometimes fall into error. They are misled by the Devil or by their own baser instincts
and impulses into committing a sin. For such defaulters God has kept the door of
Tauba (Repentance) open. Tauba means that if a person many slip into folly and be
guilty of a sin or an act of transgression against the law of God he should feel
genuinely sorry and ashamed over it, and resolve sincerely not to do so again, and
seek the forgiveness of God with all his heart. It is stated in the Quran and the
Traditions that by doing only this much a man's sin is forgiven and he succeeds
in winning the pleasure of the Almighty. It is essential to know that Tauba is not
vocal penitence. It is not at all a matter of uttering so many words of repentance.
The sorrow must be sincere, the shame must be felt in the heart and the resolution
not to repeat the folly and be guilty of the sin again must be totally genuine.
It is like this. Suppose in a fit of temper or in a moment of acute depression a
person swallows poison with the intention of killing himself. But when the poison
begins to work and a thousand knives begin to tear his intestines into pieces and
he knows that death is near, he repents his folly and cries out in desperation for
medical relief. Now, at that time, his first thought will be that if he survived
he would never touch the poison again or think of committing suicide. This exactly
should be the state of the man who repents after sin. His heart should be seized
by the fear of Divine Chastisement, the resolution not to do the thing again should
be an honest resolution and so also his entreaties to God for forgiveness. If such
a state of feeling is realized by a person in any degree he should be sure that
the stain of sin has been washed away and the gates of mercy have opened for him.
After such a Tauba the sinner is completely absolved of his sin, he is thoroughly
sanctified and becomes even dearer in the sight of God than he was before, so much
so that sometimes a person succeeds in attaining, through Tauba, a place which would
be hard to reach even after a hundred years of prayer and fasting. All this that
we have said on the subject of Tauba was derived entirely from the twin sources
of the Quran and the Traditions. We are going now to consider some of the relevant
verses of the Quran: O ye who believe! Turn to God with sincere repentance: In the
hope that your Lord will remove from you your ills and admit you to Gardens beneath
which rivers flow. (LXVI: 8) Why turn they not to God, and seek His forgiveness?
For God is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful. (V: 77) When those come to thee who believe
in Our Signs, say: “Peace be on you! Your Lord hath inscribed for Himself (the rule
of) Mercy: Verily, if any of you did evil in ignorance, and thereafter repented,
and amended (his conduct); lo, He is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.” (VI: 54) Also,
look at the following Traditions: “God says, ‘O My Creatures! You commit follies
day and night and I can forgive them all. So, seek My forgiveness. I will forgive'.”
“God extends the arm of Mercy and Forgiveness every night so that the sinners of
the day may repent and seek His pardon and every day so that the sinners of the
night may repent and seek His pardon and it shall be like this with God till the
sun rises from the West near the Doomsday.” “A man committed a sin and then he prayed
to God, ‘O Lord, I have sinned. Forgive me'. Upon this, the Lord observed, ‘My servant
knows that there is a God who can punish him for his sin as well as forgive. I have
forgiven the sin of My servant. The person abstained from sin as long as the Lord
wished after which he again went astray and fell into transgression. He once again
prayed to God, ‘O Lord, I have sinned. Forgive me.' The Lord observed. ‘My servant
knows that there is a God who can chastise him for sinning as well as forgive. I
have forgiven the sin of My servant'. He remained free from sin as long as the Lord
wished and then was again guilty of it. Once again he prayed to God, ‘O Lord, I
have sinned. Forgive me'. The Lord observed, ‘My servant knows for certain that
there is a God who can punish as well as forgive him for his sin. I have forgiven
the sin of My servant'.” “One who seeks Divine forgiveness after sin becomes like
one who has never been guilty of a sin”. These Traditions show how Merciful and
Oft-Forgiving is the Lord. To get emboldened by them and to start indulging freely
in sinful activities on the strength of Tauba is not worthy of a Muslim. Such verses
and Traditions should, on the contrary, lend greater strength to the love of God.
They should make one feel that it really was the height of meanness to act against
the wishes of such a Compassionate and Benevolent Lord. If a master be of a most
kind and affectionate nature, would it become his servants to pay back his kindness
and affection by violating his wishes and disobeying his commands? What these verses
and Traditions seek to convey is that should a person succumb to the temptations
of the Devil or to his own ignoble desires and inclinations and commit a sin he
must not despair of the mercy of the Lord and lose all hope of salvation. He should,
on the other hand, turn his back immediately on the lapse and try earnestly to remove
its stain through Tauba, by begging God, in all sincerity, His forgiveness. The
Almighty, in His Infinite Mercy, will forgive and instead of being angry with him,
He will become even more pleased for regretting sincerely what he had done and turning
to Him hopefully for remission. A Tradition states: “When a man turns to God after
sin and repents sincerely for his folly it makes God even happier than a rider whose
mount may have thrown him down in a vast desert and fled away with all the journey's
provisions laden on its back, and, when the rider may have resigned himself to his
fate and sat down under a tree to wait for his death, the animal may return, all
of a sudden, with the provisions intact and the rider may catch hold of it and blurt
our (stupidly) in sheer joy, ‘O God, Thou, indeed, art may slave and me thy Master;.”
If, after knowing these verses and Traditions, someone still fails to seek Divine
forgiveness and approbation by offering repentance for his sins through Tauba and
resolving not to fall into error again he, emphatically, is most unfortunate. Many
people are inclined to take a most complacent attitude towards Tauba. They say,
“We are healthy and strong, so what's the hurry? We will do Tauba before dying.”
Brothers, this is an extremely dangerous deception, which the Devil practices on
us. Deprived as he has himself of Divine Mercy and Beneficence and earned a permanent
adobe in the Hell, he wants us also to go his way. No one knows when death may strike.
Thus, we should consider every day to be the last day of our lives and lose no time
in begging the forgiveness of God if and when we have been guilty of an evil. This,
alone, is the path of wisdom. It is stated candidly in the Quran that. God accepts
the repentance of those who do evil in ignorance and repent soon afterwards; to
them will God turn in mercy; for God is full of knowledge and wisdom. Of no effect
is the repentance of those who continue to do evil, until death faces one of them,
and he says, “Nor of those who die rejecting faith: for them have We prepared a
punishment most grievous. (V: 17-18) We should catch time by the forelock and realize
the value of life that is left to us. We should not put off Tauba by a moment; we
must not procrastinate. We ought to set about, at once, reforming our ways. God
alone knows when death is going to make its call on us, and, then, it may be too
late. Who can tell whether, at that time, we will get the opportunity to offer Tauba
or not? Brother, we all have seen people dying. The general experience is that a
person dies in the same state in which he has led his life. It does not happen that
a person may have spent all his days in folly and negligence and, he, suddenly repented
and turned into a saint a day or two before his death. Hence, a man who wants to
die in a state of piety, for him it is necessary to become pious in his lifetime.
Then alone can he hope to die as a good Muslim, by the grace of God, and to be raised
up with the faithful and the righteous in the Hereafter. If after offering repentance
for a sin a person may be guilty of the same sin again there is no need for him
to feel so frustrated over it as to lose faith in Divine Mercifulness. He should
offer Tauba quickly again, and if again he may break it he should not hesitate in
offering it once more even if it be a thousand times. Whenever he will repent with
a sincere heart it is the promise of God that He will accept his repentance and
forgive him. The Benevolence of the Lord, lie His Paradise, is Infinite. Words of
Tauba Form the forgoing it would have been clear that in whatever words or language
a person may offer Tauba God will listen and accept his penitence. But the holy
Prophet has laid down certain specific phrases or prayers in this regard which he
used to recite himself. These prayers, surely, are most pleasing to Him. We are
reproducing some of these here for you to learn by heart and recite for seeking
divine forgiveness. I beg the forgiveness of the Lord save Whom there is no God,
the living, the Eternal. Unto Him do I turn penitent. The Prophet has said, “Whoever
will offer penitence to God and implore His forgiveness through this Kalima God
will forgive him even if he has fled from the field of Jehad which is a most mortal
sin in the sight of God.” And again: “Whoever will recite this Kalima thrice before
going to sleep God will forgive his sins even though they may be as profuse as the
foam of the sea,” Sometimes the sacred Prophet used to recite only (I implore the
forgiveness of the Lord). It is a very brief phrase and we should try to cultivate
the habit of repeating it every now and then. Saiyyid-el-Istighfar It is related
that the holy Prophet once remarked that the following prayer was Saiyyid-el-Istighfar
(the leader of all the prayer formulas of Istighfar). O God! Thou art my Lord, There
is no God save Thee. Thou art my Creator and I am Thy slave. I abide by Thy covenant
and promise as best as I can. I seek refuge in Thee from the mischief of what I
have wrought. I acknowledge unto Thee Thy favour which Thou hast bestowed upon me,
I also confess mine inequity; so forgive me for none forgiveth sins save Thee. Says
the Prophet: “He who will offer repentance and beg the forgiveness of God reciting
this prayer with faith and sincerity during day-time then if he died on that day,
before nightfall, he shall go to Heaven, and he who will recite it at night, with
faith and sincerity, and then if he died on that night, before day-break, he shall
go to Heaven.” The three Kalimas of Tauba we have mentioned above are quite easy
to remember. As a Tradition reads: “Blessed, indeed, is the man in whose record
the profusion of Tauba is written.” |
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