Istighfaar wa Tawba – 1

Auto-generated transcript: In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. Peace and blessings be upon the honourable Prophet and the messengers. Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and his companions. My brothers and sisters, Allahﷻ told us the solution for our difficulties. Today we are living in times which are stressful. And may Allah have mercy on us. Things seem to be going from bad to worse. And we ask Allahﷻ for khair and for afia. And for protection from all the evil that is there in the world. The way to get that protection, Allahﷻ taught us in the Quran. The people of Nuh, when they continued to disobey him and continued to disobey Allahﷻ, and they continued to reject the message of Nuh, Allahﷻ sent on them different kinds of difficulties and different kinds of calamities. So when they were caught in that, they would come to Nuh and ask him to make dua. Nuh said, and Allah mentioned this in the Quran, He said, Make istighfar to your Rabb. I said, Truly he is the most forgiving. He sent the hearing. And he will give you rain in abundance. And he will give you gardens and produce. And he will give you rivers. And he will give you children. Now if you see, what Nuh is saying, he is not saying Allah will give you Jannah. Allah will also give you Jannah if he makes istighfar and so on. Inshallah he will give Jannah. But the issue here is, they were asking him for solution to their worldly problems. And he is giving them a solution to worldly problems. So gardens and rivers and children and so on. These are literal as well as allegorical. In the sense of gardens means, you know, increase in your material wealth and power and authority and so on. So also rivers which support that and children support again. So the point is that Allah is saying that if you want a solution to your problems, even worldly problems, it begins with istighfar. It begins with seeking forgiveness. Istighfar is to seek forgiveness. Allahﷻ said, فَاسْتَغْفِرُوا ثُمَّ تُوبُوا إِلَيْهِ Allah said, seek forgiveness and then turn towards Allah. So, tawbah means to turn towards Allahﷻ. Istighfar means to seek forgiveness. Now, this shows us that when we say tawbah and istighfar, it implies two things. One, it implies that you are sincerely and totally and completely contrite and regretful and you are ashamed of whatever you have done. First thing is that, istighfar is to seek forgiveness. Absolutely humble yourself before Allahﷻ and say, Allah, I realize what I have been doing all this while is sinful, it is bad, it is something which you dislike and I am genuinely and sincerely regretful. I will never do this again. So, this is the first. The whole sense of genuine regret comes from istighfar. And then, therefore, you are seeking forgiveness, you are groveling before Allahﷻ. You are not justifying anything. If you see the original, that you have done عَدَى then there are two different ways you just forty and half, as long as you are asking your duty, whatever you are doing, of making mistakes. Both of them. Adam AS also disobeyed Allahﷻ. Adam AS and Hawa AS immediately they made istighfar to Allahﷻ. رَبَّنَا ظَلَمْنَا أَنفُسَنَا وَإِلَّمْ تَخْفِرْ لَنَا وَتَرْحَمْنَا لَنَا كُونَنَّ مِنْ الْخَاسِرِينَ O Allah, we accept, we understand, we realize, we are very sorry, we are regretful. That we have committed a sin and we have made zulum on ourselves. ظَلَمْنَا أَنفُسَنَا We have made zulum on ourselves. We have transgressed against ourselves. وَإِلَّمْ تَخْفِرْ لَنَا And if you do not forgive us, لَنَا كُونَنَّ مِنْ الْخَاسِرِينَ Truly and surely we will be the losers. So please forgive us. There is no conditionality there. There is no justification there. There is not even, they are not even saying shaitan, you know, misled us. They don't talk about shaitan. They are not saying, this is our fault. Shaitan misled, somebody misled, my friend misled, whoever misled, my nafs misled. End of the day, you did what you did. This is something very important to understand. As long as you are exporting blame to somebody, it means you are not sorry. Simple as that. You are not sorry. If you were sorry, then you would not be exporting blame. Whoever told you, you had a brain, you had understanding, you knew your religion, who told you to go against it? The final decision, who pulled the trigger? You. No matter who put the gun in your hand, no matter who told you what, who pulled the trigger? You. So you are the person who has committed the sin. That is something to be very clear about and therefore when you make and when we make istighfar, we don't put conditions and we don't make all the statements. Rabbana zalamna arfusana. All are our fault. We have transgressed. No, there is no third party involved. Shaitan on the other hand, Iblis on the other hand, he took another route. Instead of saying, he could have also said, Rabbana zalamna arfusana. He could have said, I have made zoram on myself. You told me to make sajda, I am sorry, I did not do it. Please forgive me. He could have done this. He had the opportunity. Allahﷻ even asked him, why did you not make sujood? He could have made istighfar by himself. Even if he didn't make, Allah asked him, why did you not make sajda to him? I created him with my own hands. So Allah is giving him ample opportunity to make istighfar. He did not do that. He says, anzirni ila yawmi wa'asoon. He says, Rabbi, He is not denying Allah as rububiyat. He is not denying Allah as ruhiyat. He is not saying, I will not make sajda to you. He is not saying, I will not make sajda to Allah. He is disobeying the command of Allah. Allah says, make sajda to Adam AS. He says, I will not do that. And he has a justification for it. I am better than him. You made me from fire. You made him from clay. So he has got a justification. He has got his own logic. Fire, fire is superior to clay and blah, what, not what. Issue is not that. Issue is not your logic. Issue is Allah gave you a command. You obey the command. Period. Khalas. There is no logic and there is no justification and there is no nothing involved. You were told to do something. Do it. Samayna wa'tana. This is the position of the Muslim. The moment. Samayna wa'tana. We hear, we obey. Finished. Because we are not concerned with the context of the order. We are concerned only with who gave the order. If Allah Ta'ala gave the order, we obey the order. Period. It's not a question of context. Does the order make sense? Is it scientifically correct? Huh? Is it this? Allah said do it, we do it. Period. No other consideration in there. So istighfar is to be sincerely regretful about what we did. And then this istighfar has to be combined with tawbah. Has to be combined with turning towards Allahﷻ. Which means that if you are truly regretful about what you did, then the proof of that regret is that you will not repeat that. That you will do the opposite of that. Right? Otherwise, where is the regret? If you say I'm sorry and then you do the same thing again, then you are not sorry. If you were sorry, why are you doing it again? If you are regretful, you do not make the same mistake again. Therefore, Make istighfar. Be regretful. Seek repentance. Seek forgiveness. Repent. And then do not do that again. Turn towards Allahﷻ. Turning towards Allah means what? Means obedience. So therefore, I am regretful. I'm sorry for what I did. And I will not do it again. I will do the opposite. So for example, if I have not been praying on time, if I have not been missing my salah and so on, then I realize what a terrible thing that is, how serious it is to miss your salah, not to pray and so on. So what do you do? You make istighfar, I'm very sorry, so on, so on, so on. And then what must you do? Make sure that you never miss another salah. No matter what happens, I will pray on time. That's it. Period. If that is not happening, I'm saying I'm sorry for missing salah, and then I keep on missing salah, then where is, you're not sorry. This is some game you are playing with Allahﷻ. So let us focus on that tomorrow. Inshallah, we'll talk more about istighfar and tawbah. Let us make focus on this and say, the solution to our problems, our worldly problems, is to make istighfar and sincere istighfar to Allahﷻ and to turn towards Allahﷻ and make sure our life is in complete obedience to that. Sayyidina Ali bin Abi Talib also recommended, he said, give some sadaqah. As a sign of your repentance, give some sadaqah. So, seek repentance, make istighfar, give some sadaqah, and then turn towards change, lifestyle, turn towards Allahﷻ. If you do this, then Allahﷻ promised, faqul tu istaghfiru rabbakum, innahu kana ghaffara, and then, yursili sama'aya, alaykum midrara, and so on, ilal akhir. So, all of that will happen. All the goodness will happen in your life, conditional upon making sincere tawbah and istighfar. Conditional upon that. It won't happen without that. So, if you want difficulties to go away, whether it's personal difficulties, whether it is global difficulties, we have both of these. We ask Allahﷻ to remove them. We ask Allahﷻ to forgive us. We ask Allahﷻ to enable us to make istighfar and tawbah. We ask Allahﷻ to help us to get out of the clutches of shaitan and be on the path of righteousness and the path of obedience. Wa sallallahu ala rabbil karim wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in wa rahmatika rahman wa rahim.