Mirza Yawar Baig – Every sinner has a future
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of forgiveness and protecting from negative influence of the world. They stress the need for forgiveness to be rewarded and the importance of finding passionate individuals. The conversation also touches on the importance of seeking forgiveness before death and finding people who are passionate about forgiveness. The story of the Prophet's story of the man killing 99 people is discussed, and the speakers emphasize the importance of forgiveness to be rewarded. The woman who died in a fit of anger is directed to a scholar for advice on finding a better place to live.
AI: Summary ©
In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the
Merciful.
All praise is due to Allah, Lord of
the worlds.
And peace and blessings be upon the Messengers
and Prophets.
Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, peace and
blessings be upon him and his family and
companions.
Peace and blessings be upon him and his
family and companions.
My brothers and sisters, this issue of Tawbah
and Istighfar is so important.
We know the hadith of the Prophet, peace
and blessings be upon him, in Musnad Ibn
Ahmad, where the Prophet said that when a
person makes Tawbah and Istighfar continuously, when a
person does a lot of it, then Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala extracts him, solves his
problems for him, extracts him from his difficulties.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala solves that person's
problems for him and provides him from sources
that the person cannot imagine.
Now, just think about this, that you know,
our whole life is spent in this world
and may Allah have mercy on us, we
get worried about this and that and we
have this problem and that problem, Alhamdulillah, most
of us have problems which later on when
you think about them, after that time has
passed, you know, you want to laugh at
the things that you used to worry about.
Of course, I am not saying that everybody
is in the same place, there are people
today in the world who are facing difficulties
which are literally unprecedented, not in living memory,
but in history of course.
Human beings and human history is full of
misery and suffering, so there is no shortage
of incidents in history, but at least in
living memory.
For example, what is happening in Palestine now
is something which is absolutely unprecedented.
We never saw this before, we never thought
we would see it and may Allah have
mercy on the people.
And may Allah punish the perpetrators, but the
cure for that, the solution of difficulties, the
solution to get out of difficulties is Istikhara
Tawba.
It is to seek repentance, it is to
ask Allah SWT to forgive us.
And that is the Hadith in Musnad Imam
Ahmad, the person who frequently seeks forgiveness.
Allah SWT extracts him from his difficulties, removes
his difficulties, solves his problems and provides him
from sources that he could not imagine.
And this Hadith is literally the Tafseer of
the Ayat of Surah Al-Talaq where Allah
SWT says, And whoever fears Allah, He will
make for him a way out and will
provide for him from where he cannot reach.
That a person who has Taqwa, Allah SWT
will remove his difficulties, will solve his problems
and He will provide him from sources that
he could not imagine.
Now, who is a Muttaqi?
A Muttaqi is a person who considers Allah
SWT Jalla Jalaluhu and Allah SWT's position and
Allah SWT's pleasure as the sole
object of his deeds, the sole criterion
for all his decision making.
Surely when we think about this, see how
simple life becomes, because if we have just
one criterion for all decisions, will Allah SWT
be pleased or not?
That's all.
If we have this criterion for all decisions,
then we cannot possibly go wrong, because if
you are doing something which pleases Allah, then
automatically it means that Allah SWT will make
things easy and the world also will be
pleased with us.
Abu Huraira Abdul Anhu, in a Hadith in
Muslim Sharif, he narrated from Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam, who said, he who repents before the
sun rises from the west, Allah will forgive
him.
Now, this means that when a person commits
a sin, he goes away from Allah.
Tawbah means to return to Allah, to return
to Allah from the sins.
When he repents, he returns to Allah and
desires to be pardoned by Allah SWT.
And to get close to Allah, this returning
is Tawbah.
And when it is said that Allah turns
towards him, it means that Allah accepts his
repentance.
When Prophet Muhammad says, before the sun rises
from the west, he means before the person
dies.
Because that is the, as far as we
are concerned, this is the, you know, we
will die before the sun actually comes out
from the west.
Another Hadith in Tirmidhi, Abdullah Ibn Al-Khattab,
he reported that Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said,
Allah accepts a slave's repentance as long as
the slave is not on his deathbed.
That is, before the soul of the dying
person reaches his throat.
The word Qaraqara is used in the Hadith,
which means when there is a grasping sound
in the throat, as the soul is about
to leave the body, the soul leaves the
throat.
So, which means that by then the person
has started suffering the agony of Sakarat.
May Allah SWT protect us from this.
The Ghayb has become open, he has seen
Malakut.
At that time, the doors of Istaffar are
closed.
At that time, a person cannot repent.
If the person repents, that repentance is too
late.
So, therefore, a person must seek the forgiveness
of Allah SWT before that time.
So, it's very, very important.
Finally, the very famous story in Bukhari and
Muslim, that the Prophet said, reported by Abu
Sayyid al-Khudri, that Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
said, there was a man from among a
nation before you who killed 99 people, and
then made an inquiry about the most learned
person on earth.
He was directed to a monk.
He came to him and said that he
had killed 99 people and asked him if
there was any chance for his repentance to
be accepted.
The monk said, there is no chance of
your repentance being accepted.
So, this man flew into a fit of
anger and he killed also that monk, completing
100.
He then asked about the most learned person
on earth.
He was directed to a scholar.
The scholar told him.
So, the man went to the scholar, he
said, I have killed 100 people and is
there a chance for my repentance to be
accepted?
The scholar said, yes.
And he asked him, he said, who stands
between you and your repentance?
He said, nothing.
Of course, if you ask Allah to forgive
you, Allah will forgive you.
And then he said, go to such and
such a land.
There you will find people who are pious,
who are devoted to Allah and who worship
Allah.
I join them in worship.
And do not come back to your land
because it is an evil place.
So, the scholar is giving him good advice.
He's saying, first of all, he's encouraging him.
He's saying, yes, of course, Allah can forgive
anything as long as you sincerely seek forgiveness,
even though in your case you have done,
you know, not one but 100 murders.
And then he says to him, go to
this other place, which is a better place.
One of the reasons why you became evil
is because you are living with evil people.
So, get out from there, go to a
place which has good people.
So, the man went away and hardly had
he covered half the distance.
So, he is still not covered half the
distance when death overtook him.
So, the man died.
There was a dispute between the angels of
mercy and the angels of torment.
Who came to take his soul, the angels
of mercy pleaded with him.
They said the man came with a repenting
heart to Allah and the angels of punishment,
they argued, they said, no.
He never did a virtuous deed in his
life.
Then there appeared another angel in the form
of a human being and the contending angels
agreed to make him the arbiter between them.
He said, measure the distance between the two
lands.
He would be considered belonging to the land
to which he is nearer.
So, they measured and they found the man
was closer to the land of piety where
he intended to go and so the angels
of mercy collected his soul.
And this is in Bukhari and Muslim.
In another version, he was found to be
nearer the locality of the pious by a
cubit and was thus included among them.
Another version says Allah commanded the land which
he wanted to leave, to move away and
commanded the other land, his destination to draw
nearer.
And then he said, now measure the distance
between them.
It was found that he was nearer to
his goal by a hand span and was
thus forgiven.
So, the question here is not by what
distance he was closer and he was not.
The question is two things here.
One is that the man made the effort.
He made his steppan and tawbah and then
he made an effort to change his life.
And this is what Allah likes and this
is why Allah's mercy comes to the rescue
of that person where Allah orders the earth
to stretch in such a way that he
is closer to the place of his forgiveness.
Now, one comes to know from this hadith
that the gate of tawbah is open even
for the worst of sinners.
And Allah forgives everyone provided he repents sincerely.
The conditions for such repentance, we have mentioned
them before in the earlier reminders, which is
to be genuinely contrite, to stop doing the
sin and never to go back.
And if it involves another person, then to
make amends also.
Now, it is the duty of a religious
scholar that while discussing a problem he should
keep in mind the psychological aspects of the
questioner and adopt a policy which neither causes
a change in the injunction of Allah nor
makes the sinner reckless in his sins out
of frustration.
And the third thing we learn here is
that when a situation warms, angels can appear
in the form of men, people on the
orders of Allah.
We ask Allah to help us to do
that which is pleasing to Him and to
save us from that which displeases Him.