Hadith

The Prophet (Pbuh) is reported to have said: “A person who repents having committed his sins is like one who has committed no sins.” Every time we turn to God in repentance, He turns to us with forgiveness and acceptance.The emphasis, however, is always on our attitude being genuine.


The main and clear aspect of pilgrimage is that we hasten to respond to God’s call, wearing nothing of the ornaments, which are part of our custom. When we feel our dedication in this way and when our submission is truly genuine, God rewards us richly for our pilgrimage. He wipes off our sins. When we have finished, we start with our slate clean. We know that when we committed those sins, we wronged ourselves and we disregarded our duty to obey God. When we respond to His call with dedication and submission, as we do in the pilgrimage, He accepts our submission and erases our past sins.


This is confirmed by numerous Hadiths. The Prophet (peace be upon him) is quoted to have said: “The only proper reward for a pilgrimage offered with dedication is paradise.” He also says that every time we do the Umrah, we have our sins, which we have committed since our last Umrah, forgiven. There is no doubt that forgiveness is the reward God has promised for those who offer the pilgrimage and the Umrah to emphasize their submission to Him.


This is not surprising because God forgives anyone who turns to Him in genuine repentance, even when the sins he has committed are grave indeed. The Prophet is reported to have said: “A person who repents having committed his sins is like one who has committed no sins.” Every time we turn to God in repentance, He turns to us with forgiveness and acceptance.


The emphasis, however, is always on our attitude being genuine. Our dedication must be complete; our submission total; our repentance sincere. A person who declares that he has repented having done a particular sin, while at the same time he knows that if a chance offers itself anew, he will not hesitate to do the same sin again, will not qualify to be forgiven that sin. His repentance is merely verbal. He does not mean it because a good believer always regards his sins as something totally undesirable, even though at the time of committing them, he might have enjoyed them. People commit adultery or fornication in order to satisfy their sexual desire. This indulgence may provide them, at the time of committing these actions, with pleasure, enjoyment and ecstasy. However, when they reflect on what they have done, they are genuinely sorry for having exceeded the limits set by God. That genuine regret, combined with a prayer for forgiveness and a resolve not to repeat the same sin, ensure that God looks compassionately on us and forgives us that sin.


The pilgrimage is the greatest act by which we demonstrate our submission to God, regret for having disobeyed Him by committing sins of any sort and type, and resolve to do better in our future days. Therefore, the reward for offering the pilgrimage is total forgiveness and admittance into heaven.


However, the Prophet speaks of a pilgrimage offered with total dedication. That involves a firm resolve to abide by Islamic rules and teachings. We cannot just say to God that we are responding to His call and we are certainly sorry for our past slips, but this is merely for the present. As for tomorrow, we go back to the same old practices! This is no demonstration of our submission to God. It does not show that we have really repented what we did in the past. On the contrary, it shows that we still do not have the necessary respect for God’s orders. How can that be rewarded with forgiveness?


Such an attitude is similar to that of a person who, having committed a sin, says that he is sorry for doing it, yet he will nevertheless go back to it the next minute, if the chance offers itself. This is playing games with the great concept of repentance and forgiveness. God accepts no such verbal declarations, because they are devoid of any real substance.


Having said that, we must be clear that what counts is one’s feelings and intention at the time when one declares one’s repentance. If at that particular moment, a person is genuine in his repentance, then he is forgiven his past sins. If, nevertheless, he commits the same sin later, because he is too weak to resist the temptation, his weakness is not taken against him except in as far as the new sin is recorded against him. His case is similar to that of a smoker who, realising how injurious to health tobacco smoking is, decides to quit. He stops smoking, but after a few days he finds the going too hard and succumbs to the temptation to resume smoking. He lights up again. His decision to quit is good, but his weakness later does not mean that his decision was frivolous. It was genuine, but he could not carry it out.


Similarly, a person who commits a sin again after having genuinely repented it, is forgiven the earlier one because at the time when he declared his repentance, he was sincere. This is indeed a mark of God’s grace which He bestows on us in abundance. He knows beforehand that we will be going back to our sins, but He also knows that at the time we declare our repentance, we are genuine. He, therefore, accepts our genuineness and resp-onds to it accordingly.


When God forgives us for something, He does not record it against us again. A person may commit the same sin many times, but if he genuinely repents it every time he commits it, then he is forgiven that sin every time. Eventually, he will acquire, with God’s help, the necessary resolve and strength to be able to resist any temptation to go back.


If the attitude is one of playing games, thinking that one can commit all the sins one wants and then have his slate wiped clean because one offers the Umrah or the pilgrimage, then the attitude is one of carelessness and disregard to God’s commands.


It is very doubtful that God will accept such an act of worship in which one declares repentance when one has not actually repented. The fact that one intends to go back to it shows that the repentance is only verbal. The Umrah and the pilgrimage cannot be approached in such a casual or frivolous manner. They are very serious acts of worship, the importance of which cannot be over-emphasized. A casual attitude cannot earn God’s forgiveness. It is imperative to resolve to make a clean break with the past and make the fact of worship a genuine beginning of a life of obedience to God and proper observance of His comman-dments.

Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh) was the greatest teacher of all times. He fulfilled his job as an educator along with other tasks assigned to him by Allah. Here are two examples of his greatness as an educator.


Firstly, take the term used by the Prophet to call his followers Sahabah or ‘Companions’. To what extent did it affect his adherents to call them ‘companions’ rather than ‘disciples’, or simply ‘followers’? It was certainly an intended process to raise those adherents to the high standard of their Prophet and it produced the desired results.


Secondly, consider what those Companions related about the behaviour of the Prophet towards them. They all said that the Prophet treated them with such love that each of them thought that he was the Prophet’s favoured one, the nearest to his heart. There was an Abyssinian slave who lived at the Masjid-e-Nabawi in Madinah. He used to sweep the Masjid every day. When he passed away, people thought they should not bother the Prophet to pray the prayer for his funeral or accompany the funeral to the graveyard. The next day, the Prophet inquired about the slave. He was told that the slave had died the day before. The Prophet was annoyed. He said, “Why didn’t anyone inform me of his death?” Someone said, “We thought it was not worth it to bother you for the death of such an unimportant person.” The Prophet did not agree. He said, “Where is the man buried?” Some people led the Prophet to the grave of the dead slave. The Prophet then offered a special prayer for the man. (Bukhari)


Let every one of us try to treat his friends, indeed, his family members, as such that everyone of them may feel that he or she is the most favoured.


(Compiled from: “The Way Of The Prophet” by Muhammad Qutb)