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Arabic My brothers and sisters, this issue of Tawbah and Istifar is so important. You know the Hadith of Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wasallam in Musnad ibn Ahmad where Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wasallam said that when a person makes Tawbah and Istifar 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 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’m 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, Mala’a alam. 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’s 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 subhanahu wa ta’ala forgive us. But the cure for that, the solution for difficulties, the solution to get out of difficulties is istighfaratowa. It is to seek repentance, it is to ask Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala to forgive us. And that’s the hadith in Musnad ibn Mahfati, the person who frequently seeks forgiveness. Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala 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 the literally the tafsir of the ayat of surah talaq where Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala says that a person who was taqwa, Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala will remove his difficulties, will solve his problems and he will provide him from sources that he could not imagine. Now who is a Muttakhi? A Muttakhi is a person who considers Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala jallaatilalahu and Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala’s position and Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala’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 subhanahu wa ta’ala be pleased or not? That’s all. Now 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 subhanahu wa ta’ala will make things easy and the world also will be pleased with us. Uhura al-Abdullahi anhu in the hadith in Muslim Sharif narrated from Rasulullah 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, tauba 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 subhanahu wa ta’ala and to get close to Allah. This returning is tauba and when it is said that Allah turns towards him it means that Allah accepts his repentance. When our Prophet 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 uh you know we will die before the sun actually comes out from the west. Another hadith in Thirmidhi, Abdullah Umar ibn Al-Khattab he reported that Rasulullah 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 gargala is 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 subhanahu wa ta’ala protect us from this. The ghayb has become open he has seen Malapur both at that time the doors of Istafar are closed from that at that time a person cannot make cannot repent and the person depends that he meant that repentance is it’s too late. So therefore it is a person must therefore seek the forgiveness of Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala before that time so it’s very very important. Finally the mature very famous story in Bukhari and Muslim that Nabi Sayyid al-Hodori said reported by Abu Sayyid al-Hodori who said that Rasul Rasul Allah said there was a man from among the 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 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 who the scholar told him that so the man went to the scholar he said I have killed 100 people and is there a chance for my dependence to be accepted. The scholar said yes and he asked him he said who stands between you and your repentance. He said there’s nothing of course if you ask Allah to forgive Allah will forgive you and then he said go to such a such a land there you will find people who are pious who are devoted to Allah and who worship Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. 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 a hundred murders. And then he says to him that 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 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 trauma who came to take his soul the angels of mercy pleaded 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 is here is not by what distance he was closer than he was not the question is two things here one is that the man made the effort he made his step in tawah and then he made an effort to change his life and this is what Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala likes and this is why Allah mercy comes to the rescue of that person where Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala 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’s the releases of it is a duty of a religious scholar that while discussing a problem you 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 subhanahu wa ta’ala we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala to help us to do that which is pleasing to him and to save us from that which cannot please him which displeases him
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