01
(Essay)
Come Back
Repentance, the man who walked away, and the door that is still open.
By Mike Rashid King • Allah's Humble Servant
The man who stopped coming
You know him. You may be him.
He used to be at the masjid for Fajr. Then it was only Jumu'ah. Then it was Eid. The prayers slipped one at a time. The sin he swore off came back, and he went back to it.
Now the sin is not what keeps him away. The shame is. He believes he has to be clean before he can come back.
The word for coming back is tawbah. Lane's Lexicon gives its first meaning: he returned unto God. He desisted from his sin. He went from disobedience to obedience. The same verb is used of Allah. Taba 'alayhi: God returned to forgiveness toward him. One of His names is at-Tawwab, the One who returns again and again with forgiveness to the servant who returns to Him.
You turn back, and He turns toward you. The word holds both movements.
I have written about the tongue, the temper, the promise, pride, the eyes, your parents, your company and envy. A man can fail at every one of them. This one is about what he does after.
✦
What Allah says about coming back
Allah speaks to the men who went too far, and He calls them His own.
۞ قُلْ يَٰعِبَادِىَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَسْرَفُوا۟ عَلَىٰٓ أَنفُسِهِمْ لَا تَقْنَطُوا۟ مِن رَّحْمَةِ ٱللَّهِ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يَغْفِرُ ٱلذُّنُوبَ جَمِيعًا ۚ إِنَّهُۥ هُوَ ٱلْغَفُورُ ٱلرَّحِيمُ
Qul ya 'ibadiya alladhina asrafu 'ala anfusihim la taqnatu min rahmati Allah, inna Allaha yaghfiru adh-dhunuba jami'a, innahu huwa al-Ghafuru ar-Rahim
Say: O My servants who have transgressed against themselves, do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Indeed, Allah forgives all sins. Indeed, it is He who is the Forgiving, the Merciful. (Surah Az-Zumar 39:53)
Look at the name He uses. My servants. The transgression did not take that name from them. That reading is mine, and the next ayah gives the instruction: return to your Lord and submit to Him before the punishment comes upon you (39:54).
The first two who disobeyed show you the two roads. Iblis was told to prostrate and argued: I am better than him (7:12). Adam, ʿalayhi as-salām (peace be upon him), and his wife were told to keep away from one tree, and when they ate from it they said: our Lord, we have wronged ourselves, and if You do not forgive us and have mercy upon us, we will surely be among the losers (7:23). Then Adam received from his Lord words, and He accepted his repentance; indeed, it is He who is the Accepting of repentance, the Merciful (2:37).
The difference between them was not the size of the sin. It was what each one did after it. That is my reading of the two stories side by side.
Quran 7:12 · Quran 7:23 · Quran 2:37
Allah promises more than a clean slate: except for those who repent, believe and do righteous work; for them Allah will replace their evil deeds with good (25:70).
And He shows you a prophet calling from the bottom of the dark. Yunus, ʿalayhi as-salām, went off in anger, and the fish swallowed him (21:87, 37:142). He called out within the darknesses: there is no deity except You; exalted are You; indeed, I have been of the wrongdoers. So We responded to him and saved him from the distress, Allah says, and thus do We save the believers (21:87 to 88). Had he not been of those who exalt Allah, he would have remained inside its belly until the Day they are resurrected (37:143 to 144).
Thus do We save the believers. The rescue did not stop with Yunus.
Quran 21:87-88 · Quran 37:139-144
✦
What the Prophet ﷺ said
He described how Allah receives the one who comes back. A man is crossing a waterless desert on his camel, with his food and drink on its back, and the camel is lost. He gives up hope and lies down in the shade. Then he finds the camel standing before him. He takes hold of its rein and, out of boundless joy, says: O Allah, You are my servant and I am Your Lord. He makes that mistake from the force of his joy. Allah is more pleased with the repentance of His servant than that man was with his camel.
He did not speak of repentance as a thing for other people. By Allah, he said, I ask for forgiveness from Allah and turn to Him in repentance more than seventy times a day.
He told of a man who had killed ninety-nine people and asked whether any repentance was left for him. A monk told him no, so he killed the monk and made it a hundred. He kept asking. A scholar told him: yes; what stands between you and repentance? Go to such and such land; there are people there devoted to prayer and worship; worship with them, and do not come back to your land, for it is an evil land. He died on the road. The angels of mercy and the angels of punishment disputed over him, the distance was measured, and he was nearer to the land he was walking toward. The angels of mercy took him.
He had not arrived. He had turned around and started walking.
And he told you the door is open by night and by day. Allah stretches out His hand during the night so that the one who sinned by day may repent, and He stretches out His hand during the day so that the one who sinned by night may repent, until the sun rises from the west.
✦
Why men stay away
Systems Thinking traces the loop. A man sins. Shame comes. Shame tells him he is too dirty to pray, so he skips the prayer. The skipped prayer leaves more room for the sin, and the sin brings more shame. The loop runs on one belief: that he has to be clean before he comes back. That is an inference about how the loop works.
The Prophet ﷺ broke the loop at the exact point where shame says wait. When a servant commits a sin, then performs ablution well, stands and prays two rak'ahs and asks Allah's pardon, Allah pardons him. Then he recited: and those who, when they commit an immorality or wrong themselves, remember Allah and seek forgiveness for their sins (3:135). Al-Albani graded it sahih. The prayer is the road back, and it is open to the man who just sinned.
Sunan Abi Dawud 1521, sahih per Al-Albani · Quran 3:135
Dialectical Thinking demands the objection. I have repented before. I broke it. I will break it again. I am a hypocrite to keep asking.
The Prophet ﷺ described that man. A servant commits a sin and says: my Lord, I have sinned, so forgive me. Allah says: My servant knows he has a Lord who forgives sins and punishes for them; I have forgiven My servant. He sins again, asks again, and is forgiven again. What the hadith honors is the coming back, every time. The resolve has to be real each time, because Allah describes the ones He forgives as those who do not persist in what they have done while they know (3:135).
The second objection is quieter: my sin is too big. Allah forgives all sins (39:53), and the angels of mercy took the man who killed a hundred.
The door is open. It also has a closing time. Allah accepts the repentance of a servant as long as his soul has not reached his throat, and no soul perceives in what land it will die (31:34).
Sahih al-Bukhari 7507 · Quran 3:135 · Quran 39:53 · Jami at-Tirmidhi 3537, hasan per Darussalam · Quran 31:34
✦
The practice
The rules come from the Quran and the Sunnah (the example of the Prophet ﷺ). The order is mine.
- Come back today, as you are. Allah accepts the repentance of a servant as long as his soul has not reached his throat (Jami at-Tirmidhi 3537). Waiting to feel clean is the shame talking.
- Make wudu and pray two rak'ahs, then ask Allah's pardon (Sunan Abi Dawud 1521). Do it on the same day as the sin.
- Confess to Allah, and keep the cover He put over you. Say: my Lord, I have sinned, so forgive me (Sahih al-Bukhari 7507). The Prophet ﷺ warned about the man whose Lord covered his sin at night, who tells people in the morning what he did and removes the cover Allah had placed over him (Sahih al-Bukhari 6069).
- Say the master of seeking forgiveness morning and evening. It begins: Allahumma anta Rabbi, la ilaha illa anta, O Allah, You are my Lord, there is no deity except You (Sahih al-Bukhari 6306). Learn it whole.
- Follow the bad deed with a good one. The Prophet ﷺ told Abu Dharr: follow an evil deed with a good one to wipe it out (Jami at-Tirmidhi 1987, hasan per Darussalam). Give charity, visit the sick, feed someone.
- Make it right with people. If your sin took something from someone, ask his forgiveness in this life, before the Day when there is no money to settle it (Sahih al-Bukhari 2449).
- Change the land. The scholar told the man who killed a hundred to go to a land of people who worship, and not to come back to his own (Sahih Muslim 2766a). Leave the room, the app or the company that kept you in the sin.
Jami at-Tirmidhi 3537 · Sunan Abi Dawud 1521 · Sahih al-Bukhari 7507 · Sahih al-Bukhari 6069 · Sahih al-Bukhari 6306 · Jami at-Tirmidhi 1987, hasan per Darussalam · Sahih al-Bukhari 2449 · Sahih Muslim 2766a
✦
The quiet work
Coming back makes no noise. A whispered sentence. A forehead on the floor while the house is asleep. Allah covered the sin, and He covers the return.
The man who stopped coming does not need a ceremony. He needs one sentence, the one a prophet said from inside the dark:
وَذَا ٱلنُّونِ إِذ ذَّهَبَ مُغَٰضِبًۭا فَظَنَّ أَن لَّن نَّقْدِرَ عَلَيْهِ فَنَادَىٰ فِى ٱلظُّلُمَٰتِ أَن لَّآ إِلَٰهَ إِلَّآ أَنتَ سُبْحَٰنَكَ إِنِّى كُنتُ مِنَ ٱلظَّٰلِمِينَ
Wa dha an-nuni idh dhahaba mughadiban fa-zanna an lan naqdira 'alayhi fa-nada fi az-zulumati an la ilaha illa anta subhanaka inni kuntu min az-zalimin
And mention the man of the fish, when he went off in anger and thought that We would not decree anything upon him. And he called out within the darknesses: There is no deity except You; exalted are You. Indeed, I have been of the wrongdoers. (Surah Al-Anbiya 21:87)
It is short enough to say on any floor, in any dark. Say it tonight, and come back tomorrow for Fajr.
Sahih al-Bukhari 6069 · Quran 21:87-88
There is no deity except You; exalted are You. Indeed, I have been of the wrongdoers.
By Mike Rashid King • Allah's Humble Servant