Repentance

 

11.  REPENTANCE (TAWBA)- THE KING Of AND GATE TO ALL GOOD ACTS

 

Guess what was the first recorded act of worship Allah granted to our father Adam: was is not repentance? He and his wife our mother Eve were put in the Garden, given free range and rein in eating from it except one tree which may be the tree Allah calls “The accursed tree” (shajarat al mal’unata) in the Qur’an. It was explained to them that the Satan was who had refused to bow to Adam was their undoubted enemy and any suggestion of that creature was to be rejected. They all the same were deceived by the Satan and ate and in true to form as believers and with Allah’s inspiration (Who always inspire His believing servants with good acts) they issued their repentance. Read if you wish:

 

“Our Lord, we have wronged ourselves. If you do not forgive us and have pity on us we will indeed end up as losers” (7: 23)

 

The whole story of our parents boils down to this: human existence normally begins with blissful ignorance, guidance from above always comes but is not appreciated enough and a moment comes when the worst warned against from the Higher Authority comes to pass to the utter shame and shock of the lapsed believer.  The first experience of our parents after eating from the forbidden tree at the instigation of their enemy was one of self-disgusted shame:

 

“When they both ate from it their shame opened up to them and they rushed to cover themselves up with the leaves of the Garden” (7: 22)

 

When Allah reprimanded them and reminded them of His warnings the two realised and admitted their error and cried out the first ever words which passed above.

 

Because Allah calls His Book ‘A Book of Metaphors” (Kitaban Muteshabihan) (39: 23) in which many verses are metaphors (3: 7) we can conclude that our parents prefigure and represent us and we should therefore regard ourselves equally warned by our Creator against some bad things which may always be hidden among many good things in the same environment or context. It also transpires from Allah’s Book that it is always Allah who instructs us first and that is in piety before anything else; equally it is again Him Who first warns against dangers and points out to its sources and agents. So He said to Adam “O Adam, this (Satan) is your and your spouse’s enemy. Let him not expel you from the Garden after which you will have to tire and you will have to suffer” (20: 117)

 

How and why repentance has been deemed inevitable for man’s spiritual advancement, inevitable because Allah would not have allowed our parents sinning so soon after and so grossly despite all the warnings of Allah? It looks that man’s learning process is best served by making him experience both contrasts and alternatives. Contrasts like first living comfortably but complacently and then losing the comforts because of heedlessness against known dangers and alternatives like summer and winter. When we care to learn from experience we begin to appreciate and take more care of our good fortune thereby avoiding its opposite state of want and hardship.  The same applies to alternatives or rather alternating conditions. Hot and dry summer days may feel euphoric for a while but sooner or later boredom sets in and complaints begin to be floated about. When the cooler breezes of autumn arrives everybody begin to feel fresher and lighter. Appetites begin to whet and night sleeps begin to feel more delicious. In the winter warming ourselves before glowing coals or other fires in our cosy sitting room feels like heaven. Why do you think almost everybody like horror films? Because they appreciate their safety more while watching the horror of others portrayed on the cinema of TV screen. “I am safely and happily sitting while some others may be living in horror like in these screen images” they think. Why people gossip about others’ sins, having a special interest in the sexual? Because they feel a certain sinful pleasure by just imagining how the actual sinners enjoyed themselves even if briefly. That must be why idle gossip is very much incriminated in all religions.

 

Lastly we must note Allah’s extremely eye-opening remark “Their shame opened up to them and they began to cover themselves up with the leaves of the Garden” (7: 22).  It looks very much to me that what our Creator is driving at is explaining us how to limit the damage sin causes to us: we must put on ourselves shame-covering, image-boosting appearances to compensate for our lost dignity and also not expose others but help them cover their defects up so that we all look to and feel good towards each other. We call this self-decoration ‘good manners’ and they are inseparable complements of good morality. Look how the Messenger of Allah prayed:

 

“O Who does not punish for every wrong and does not remove cover over our shames from us, o the Great in pardon and Gracious in toleration and Vast in forgiveness, o the Extender of Both Hands in loving mercy, o the Host of all consultations and o the Last Resort of all complaints…”.

 

Sufism is based on the premise that All the Qualities of Grace of Allah (al asma’ jamal Allah), except what the greatest Name ‘Allah’ signifies  must be made ours as well if we are to be Allah’s good serving friends. As for His Qualities of Majesty (al asma’ al Jalal Allah) only the Satan and evil people want and try to make their own.  However, pretending such majesty amounts to vain pride and takes the pretender all the way to the bottom of the Hell after some false rides in the skies.

 

To see what repentance achieves we must consider what it follows: it follows our learning our lesson. Our parents had both Allah’s gift the Garden and His admonitions but because they could not observe the admonitions they lost the Garden. Losing the Garden taught them the lesson they needed. They realised that by turning from their Friend Allah to their false friend and true enemy Satan they had caused their own fall from grace which the Garden represented. They were now earthbound where more pain awaited them than comfort. Up here in the Garden they had forgot about their Friend, down there on the earth they could not need anybody more. But they could not analyse the situation like this: they were in shock and confusion. Read it you wish:

 

“Adam disobeyed his Lord and lost his way” (20: 121)

 

In His inexhaustible Mercy Allah moved to help him all the same: He All-Gracious said

 

“Thereafter Adam received words from Allah (by virtue of the utterance of which) He turned to him (in forgiveness), for He is the Merciful and Ample Forgiver (2: 37).

 

Which good parent or guardian friend will not pardon an inexperienced, basically well-meaning offender? He will in fact encourage the naïve offender to apologise and also how to go about it. Mum says to baby “Come on. Say ‘sorry mum’. The baby both shamefaced and relieved says a hearty sorry. All good parents derive their graciousness towards their children from Allah’s and the children keep re-enacting the errors of their great grandparents Adam and Eve till the end of time. This is how all of us learn in a real and hopefully lasting sense. One can only admire the Qur’an how subtly and succinctly it puts the matter as no other book.

 

So, repentance is the signal that a lesson has at long last been learned and can now be added to the moral armamentarium of the person. Actually there is no other vehicle for learning than making mistakes while trying to be correct and then turning to the taskmaster, offering apologies and receiving new instructions as well as new help albeit sometimes the master will transfer the unsuccessful pupil to a new and lower environment where the pupil will have to toil until he proves to the master that he can now both cope with and enjoy the originally intended higher environment.

 

Because repentance is so central to moral growth and thereby to spiritual attainment our Sufi masters unanimously declare that the first step on the Sufi path is a thorough repentance, a total and meticulous house-cleaning so-to-speak. The intending Sufi must abandon all harams like drink and smoking, gossip and lies, envy and malice… the list is long. He must restore all rights he stole from others if possible or pray for his victims’ happiness as long as he lives and ask Allah to help him against their outstanding claims. Feeling sorry for our wrongs, I mean real sorry, so real that you are prepared to go bankrupt to pay off your defaulted debts to others or their inheritors is the real repentance and remember, repentance in its Arabic and therefore true meaning means ‘turning your orientation to Allah, pursuing Allah’s pleasure no matter the cost in terms of means except your most basic needs like survival and health. What is so good about repentance is that once you turn to Allah He turns to you and not only He facilitates your repayment of debts to His other servants and to Himself like your debts of neglected prayers and fasts but He grants you bounties which you could never hope to earn by your own efforts. These bounties will be both material and spiritual but the spiritual will prove the far more rewarding and lasting. Amen.

 

12.  GOOD OPINION ABOUT ALLAH IS FAITH COMPLETED

 

Many people think that believing in Allah means subscribing to the opinion that this universe has a creator of some sort which or who is looking after it and its contents and has also some relations with people. If this was all then the Satan also could be called a “mu’min”, that is to say ‘a believer’ like brother Ahmad or Ali or Ghulam. But Allah calls Iblis Satan a kafir which means an infidel. What is more, the Satan does not only believe in the existence of Allah, he knows that Allah exists and has had many conversations with Allah as the Book of Allah tells us. He quarrelled with Allah and has been challenging Allah for ages now.

 

What was and still is the trouble with Iblis? Surely it is not denying Allah’s existence. Surely it is his bad opinion about his Lord  Who he knows only too well that is there. Among people infidels are of two kinds. One kind is that who does not believe that Allah exists. The other kind is that, like the Satan, believes that Allah exists but hates Allah. This hate is the same as holding a bad opinion about Allah. You may hear such a person talking like this: Allah has not been kind to me; He ruined my life, my prospects. On the Day of Judgment it will be I who will make the accusations against Him and not He Who will accuse me. He may burn me in hell alright but I shall still be the one in the right and He in the wrong”. In other words in such an infidel we have the Satan in human form and no less.

 

Leaving aside such human satans, can even normally good believers always keep their good opinion about Allah? I wish they could but that is not guaranteed; in fact it is next to impossible. Testimony to this is right in the Qur’an and severally so.  Let us begin with a general declaration by Allah: “Blessed is Allah Who created life and death in order to test you to expose which ones among you will conduct themselves better” (67: 1-2)

 

The first deception Iblis applied to our parents Adam and Eve was spoiling their implicit good opinion of or trust in Allah. He told the couple “Your Lord is banning you from this tree for fear that you two become two angels and therefore remain permanently (in the Garden)” (7:20). The two naïve partners were taken in by the Iblis and under his prompting attempted to defeat Allah in His supposed plan against them.

 

We find in the very Book of Allah how Noah was disappointed with Allah when his son was drowned and was reminding Allah that He had promised him the safety of his family members. Allah rebuked him “O Noah, he was not of your family, for his conduct was not good. I advise you against asking for things you have no knowledge of” (11: 46) and Noah duly repented.

 

Which means, whoever we are it is in our human nature to have doubts and objections sometimes as regards Allah, Allah kindly acknowledges and accommodates that provided we repent and absolve Allah of all blame and instead accuse ourselves if that is what we deserved. Allah does no wrong whatsoever; what we don’t like in His dealings with us must be seen as a necessary test with which we must be patient and believe that everything will eventually turn out well, in fact only too well simply because Allah is very Kind and Good. Here we have what ‘faith completed’ means.

 

Why people cannot be perfect even when prophets, you may ask. I remind you an observation we had made recently: creaturely existence is entirely about change and without change existence is unthinkable as well as unnoticeable. A man in exactly the same state of mind for years will not be aware of even his own existence: put a man in a spherical chamber with uniform impressions from all directions like the same sound, same colour, same lack of any differences and changes but he will soon go into something deeper and stranger than sleep; he can only survive on a diet of his past memories and concerns which will also soon cease to matter or to be felt. There is no better method to wipe out the mind of a man and turn him into a plant than a total deprivation of stimuli. The effect of isolation from change is simply horrific and suicidal. So, for a prophet to appreciate the value of obeying Allah he must occasionally disobey him (as Adam and Jonah and Moses did in the case of learning from his Divinely taught tutor identified as ‘Khidr), to appreciate the value of believing in Allah he must occasionally if vaguely have doubts about Him or His good intentions.  You see, too much perfection is imperfection itself.

 

You may ask when our Prophet peace be on him doubted his Lord. We have several verses suggesting and at least one hadith confessing this.  One set of verses describes the feelings of the Prophet and his companions besieged in Medina by the enemy during the Battle of the Trench. Says our Lord “Or did you think that you could enter the Garden without what happened to those (believers) before you happening to you as well? They had been so touched by poverty and distress that in the end both the messenger and the believers around him cried out ‘When is Allah’s help?’. Beware that Allah’s help is indeed near (2: 214)

 

Before the Battle of Badr began the Prophet had a long and arduous prayer which had alarmed and even exasperated his soulmate Abu Bakr who had to cry out “O Messenger of Allah, enough, the Throne of Allah shook, He will help you”. The main plank of the Prophet’s argument was this “O Allah, if you abandon this small band of believers and bring defeat on them nobody will remain on earth until the Day of Resurrection to worship Thee”.

Are these acts of the Prophet rebellions or objections or know-better demonstrations against his Lord? No! They are entirely motivated by noblest concerns and necessarily put to Allah within the limits and limitations of human endurance and fallibility. Remember? Even the angels had sort of objected to Allah when He had informed them that He was about to place a deputy (khalifa) on earth. “Will you put there one who will work corruption and shed blood?” they had questioned. Allah had replied “I know what you know not”. Similarly prophets and saints also can come to the end of their wits and patience simply because they can never fathom and exhaust or equal Allah’s knowledge and wisdoms and reasons; otherwise they could be as great and as powerful and as wise as Him which is out of question.

 

Now let us make do with this much travelling in the heavens and come down to our humble earth, I mean the world of ours the humble servants who cannot even dream of being prophets. If what is above is the lot of both the highest angels and Allah’s chosen prophets what ours can be? I am afraid only bumping and fumbling. Yet if anything Allah is fair:

“Allah does not burden a soul more than it can bear” (2: 286)

 

Ours is trying this and a creditable degree of success is certain, at least in the long run: whenever you face a situation which worries and puzzles you sick do not be tempted by the Devil’s voice in you saying “Now you are done boy (or girl)! You have no hope or route of escape, your God is punishing you or is about to punish you badly and you can do nothing about it. You see? Wherever or whomever you turn to you are only getting obstacles, refusal, non-concern or empty, useless and perhaps also false sympathy. You are finished, be prepared for the worst”. Even worse you may hear or feel “Allah has deprived you, He has not been good to you and you cannot argue about it lest He strikes you even harder”. Or the very worst “I am afraid (or realise now that) there is no God or anything but I allowed myself to be deceived and now I get the raw deal I deserve. I was trusting a non-existent power”.  Blasphemy in short if you know what I mean and maazallah (God forbid)!

The right course is not the above. It is trusting and hoping from Allah whatever complexion the picture gets. Prophet Jonah was trapped in the belly of a whale for days and he attained salvation by doing the most right thing: he cried out to Allah admitting his fault unreservedly “La ilaha illa anta subhanaka innee kuntu minaz-zalimeen” (21: 87), i.e. “There is no god but Thee, I have been one of the wrongdoers”.  In response Allah not only saved his person, He also saved his mission as a prophet, restored him to his people who then eagerly embraced Allah’s religion.

 

One saint said “If the sky turns into copper and the earth into iron you should not for a moment worry where your rizq (provision of necessities) will come from”. Allah will satisfy all your needs if you just have faith and put your trust in Him. He is absolutely right.

That of course does not mean that we will just lie back and doing nothing expect food be put into our mouths. Exaggeration is one of the arts of eloquence and what is meant above is that whatever we may do may not be enough to bring us what we need; our means and capacities are limited on top of being God-given already; without the all-powerful help of the Almighty we cannot satisfy all the requirements of a success we need. To pave the extra asphalt to take us to our destination we have to beg Allah to put in His loving mercy and send His angels to toil on our behalf to make up our immense shortfalls. 

 

Remember also and repeat the verse “Whoever fears Allah then He opens for him a route to salvation and provides his needs for him from a direction he cannot guess. Whoever leans on Allah, Allah is enough for him” (65; 2- 3). Amen

 

So, pray always like this in your deep heart” Lord, I thank You for the faith You granted me and the Islam You enabled me to practice and the trust in You you inspired into me. I believe that You are enough for me under all circumstances, please spare me any tests I cannot bear deliver me from all afflictions I may find myself in and put me among Your good servants”. 

Amen.

 

13.  GOODWILL IS SINCERITY

 

There are two concepts in the Qur’an which define the health of one’s faith. One is ‘Ikhlas’ and the other ‘Nush’. The first occurs as the name of 112^th Sura which reads:

 

“Say: Allah is One. Allah is Fully Self-Sufficient. He never begat nor was He ever begotten. None can ever be an equal to Him”.  Here the name of the Sura, that is to say the name ‘Ikhlas’ means purity and it is given to this Sura because this Sura defines the purest, fullest and most correct description of the Divine Being, Allah.

 

Ikhlas also means ‘sincerity’. Applied to this Sura it signifies the sincerity of a believer’s faith in Allah; the believer is sincere simply because he or she cannot accept to adulterate his belief in Allah by believing in other supposedly divine powers or personalities outside Allah. Can a sincere lover, knowing the jealous nature of his beloved extend his love to other persons? Can an intensely loyal servant of a king espouse the cause or covet the prizes other monarchs can offer him?

 

This unique devotion to one master, this unique faith in that one master and this constant and exclusive service to this same master is- ikhlas, sincerity.

 

A true Muslim believer has ikhlas towards his Lord. He will never contemplate adopting a master outside and despite Allah except human sub-masters who are at least equally sincere servants of Allah. The top among such sub-masters is none other that Muhammad the Messenger of Allah who is so sincere towards Allah and so united with Him in will that obeying Muhammad is obeying Allah and disobeying him is disobeying Allah. Let me give you a few beautiful verses which I hope will lift and caress your heart with many joys of faith:

 

“Whoever obeyed the Messenger has just obeyed Allah” (4: 80 )

“Let those who dissent from his orders fear a trouble hitting them or a painful punishment hitting them (24: 63)

 

Why our master Muhammad is so important after Allah? Because his will followed Allah’s Will like a shadow following the body casting it. And that is what exactly Islam means: the Muslim’s will is in submission to Allah’s Will, ideally speaking. The Prophet was the most perfect, most ideal Muslim created by our Lord Almighty All-Gracious. When the companions (sahaba) was fretting and fussing about why on earth the Prophet was accommodating the apparently humiliating demands of the Meccan pagan delegation at Hudaibia Umar was disappointed while Ali was distraught. Only Abu Bakr could keep his calm and certainty and he explained to Umar who was asking why, despite being on the true path the Prophet was bowing and bending so much in front of the demands of the pagans. Happily assured Abu Bakr replied “He is Allah’s Messenger, He cannot disobey Allah”.  If a man walks his shadow also walks, if the man sits the shadow also sits, if the man bends the shadow also bends. What is more, as the Prophet’s will was the shadow of Allah’s will, the will of Abu Bakr was the shadow of the Prophet’s will. That is why both Allah and His Messenger called Abu Bakr ‘al Siddiq’, the fully faithful (shadow of the original).

 

As you can see, the rare and incomparable spiritual quality of ‘sidq’ which means both truthfulness and loyalty can only be a part or aspect of ikhlas or doctrinal purity and spiritual sincerity put together. Allah describes the couple Muhammad and Abu Bakr:

“That who came with the truth (Rasulullah) and (that who) confirmed it- they are the successfully saved (39: 33)

 

Why did Allah sent Muhammad and in fact all His messengers or prophets as they are also called (I am humbly discounting the view that a prophet and a messenger of God are not the same thing. Many verses of the Qur’an explicitly put the two titles together and that is as it should be: who is a prophet if not somebody with a message from Allah and instructed to pass the message to his people? (See our Qur’anic Studies- 3 course, ‘Nabi’ and ‘Rasul’). Allah sent Muhammad in order to both convey Allah’s Message in the Qur’an and exemplify the moral qualities and the applications of the Law told about in the Qur’an. Incidentally and unlike the spiritual ideals and laws of other (at best inititially truly from God but subsequently corrupted) religions Islam’s spiritual ideals and laws (as seen from the Qur’an itself) are both realistic and practical. For example, it was not only the Prophet who was occasionally bowing and bending to the demands of the people whether Muslims or not: because his will was the shadow of Allah’s Will it was Allah also who was apparently bowing  and bending in the face of people’s fears and needs for Allah is very Lovingly Merciful. Let us give one Divine and one Prophetic example of this condescending, accommodating loving mercifulness (rahmat).  Allah said “O believers, when you are about to have a private consultation with the Prophet give alms beforehand…”. When the companions heard this they were upset and worried. The reason why Allah sent down this verse was that the believers were taking the time of the Prophet for granted and was too frequently pestering him with their small questions. Seeing their shock and shame Allah hurried to console them “Have you been discomfited by (the requirement of) giving alms before consulting? Allah pardons you upfront if you do not do it, therefore perform the salat and pay the zakat and obey Allah and His Messenger…” (28: 12- 13)

 

The lesson for us from all above is this: always evaluate the tolerance and receptivity of people on whom you have jurisdiction of some sort and take care not to overburden them or if it appears that you have overburdened them then unburden them! Don’t be like the Catholics for example who banned their clergy from marriage and married people from divorce, for example. Put under such burdens it has been no wonder that most subjects of the church resorted to hypocrisy and indulged in secret debauchery. The sins from all these go to the door of the high clergy inventing the laws concerned. Even popes could not keep such unrealistic and impractical laws: many openly displayed both lovers and bastards as did their some bishops and cardinals. Apparently sincerity and loyalty (ikhlas) are achievable only when the requirements of a faith are realistic and practical: too much burden, too heavy pressure forces us the weak creatures to become hypocrites or shoot out of the bad faith altogether. If the Western nations have been abandoning Christian faith and laws that is because of the unrealism and impracticability of the faith and the laws. Their increasing shift towards crasser and dirtier hedonism must be a delight to the Satan and a responsibility before God for their church leaders.

 

Now we may ask: What all the said sincerity towards and loyalty to Allah boils down in practice?  Why, it boils down to a firm establishment of goodwill towards all creatures in the heart of Muslim believer. A prophet of God exemplifies exactly that. He burns with the interminable anxieties and terrors his mission causes him on behalf of his audience who often disappoint him by their rejection and rebellion. Allah admonishes His beloved Muhammad:

 

“Do not eat away your soul with regrets over them… (35: 8)

“Will you destroy yourself out of your regret because they refuse to believe in this message? (18: 6)

 

What was troubling the noble soul of the Prophet? Why, he had almost inexhaustible good will, well-wishing towards all people and the refusal of some to come on board of salvation was giving him nightmares.  It is this goodwill, this well-wishing towards all which informs the character of Muhammad the Messenger of Allah and this sterling character trait is called ‘al nush’. It has derivatives like ‘nasiha/nasihat’ and the root verb is ‘nasaha’ which means bear goodwill and also give good advice. A famous hadith perfectly demonstrates what nush means:

 

“Religion is ‘nasiha’, said the Prophet. His companions asked ‘Towards whom o Messenger of Allah?’. He replied ‘towards Allah, towards His Messenger and towards all Muslims’”.  Nasiha towards Allah must mean good manners towards Him All-Gracious the first of which must be a genuine and functioning faith in Him made invincible by always keeping a good opinion of Him All-Gracious and Sublime. Nasiha towards the Messenger of Allah is similarly understandable: One must fully and happily believe in Allah’s Messenger, obey him lovingly and keep an unshakeable good opinion of him. Nasiha towards fellow believers is both this same good opinion unless they commit explicit and repeated offences and also giving always to them good advice in good faith.

 

Certainly the most perfect of believers and Muslims was none other than the Prophet. His goodwill towards all men never abandoned him. When he at long last got all his enemies in his palm he forgave almost all and that included Abu Sufyan the chief of the Meccan pagans and their commander in their wars against him. He also forgave Abu Sufyan’s wife Hind who had the Prophet’s dearest uncle Hamza assassinated. She had also chewn on Hamza’s liver as she had vowed while the rest of the idolaters were mutilating him. On their confession of Islam the holy Prophet dropped all his interminable grievances against such mortal offenders and what is more he also rewarded a lot of them with high offices and benefices. With that he calculated winning and did win their hearts to a certain extent as the Arab proverb says “Man is the slave of gracefully granted gifts”. A few he insisted that they were killed: they were those who had vilified the Prophet, the Qur’an and Islam only too badly and cast very evil and mean images. Apparently their scorn and hatred was inextinguishable and therefore they were better in death than in life for their own good.

We believers also should translate our any Islamic sincerity and loyalty into goodwill towards all and should not hesitate to even buy off the opponents of the Truth we  and all men are supposed to serve. Buying is not so much with money but with charitable interest and love and gratitude inspiring treatment of others.

 

May Allah equip us with all the sterling qualities He endowed His best friends with. Amen.