Repentance
There is little doubt that repentance cleanses an individual of all his sins. Allah Almighty forgives an individual when he decides to correct his attitude. The Quran confirms that if repentance is done with all conditions properly fulfilled, God Almighty accepts it as matter of principle:
Allah does accept repentance, but only of those who are guilty of an evil out of ignorance yet quickly repent, and Allah turns to them again, for Allah is All-Knowing and All-Wise. But He does not accept the repentance of those who continue indulging in evil until death draws near and they say: We now repent; nor of those who die disbelieving. For them We have a grievous retribution in wait. (4:17-8)
Thus writes Amin Ahsan Islahi in his commentary of these verses:
On reflecting upon these verses, one finds two conditions for the acceptability or otherwise of repentance. Those who sin under the influence of emotions and then repent immediately (on realizing their error) and correct their attitude, Allah Almighty has vowed to accept their repentance. On the contrary, repentance is not accepted of such who continue to sin and care to repent only when the angel of death reaches them, nor is it accepted in the case of those who die in a state of disbelief. One question that still remains even after the clear delineation of the two extreme cases is regarding the fate of those individuals who, although do not get the opportunity of repenting immediately after committing a sin, yet do not delay until the appearance of death to perform it. The verse is silent regarding such cases, which evinces both hope and fear. That seems to be the very purpose behind the absence of a mention of the treatment of this category so that people belonging to it should continue to remain between the conditions of fear and hope. However, it does occur in one's mind occasionally that people from the Muslim Ummah belonging to this category shall get the benefit of the intercession of the Prophet (sws) because there does not seem to be any reason why such people should not be entitled to intercession. (Tadabbur'ul Quran, Vol 2 [Lahore: Faran Foundation, 1991], p. 267)
What exactly is the repentance that satisfies all conditions to justify for the doer a clear case for being forgiven? The author of Riyad al-Salihin has responded to this question by drawing from the opinions of a large number of scholars. He writes thus:
Thus say the scholars: To repent on committing a crime is mandatory. If a sin is committed against Allah alone, then there are only three conditions: First, man should desist from repeating the crime; second, he should regret his action; and third, he ought to make a firm commitment that he is not going to repeat the crime in future. If any one of these three conditions is not met, the repentance done shall not be valid. If the sin committed has to do with a fellow human being, then in addition to the afore-mentioned three conditions a fourth one is for the sinner to compensate the aggrieved individual against whatever loss has been inflicted upon him. For instance, if he has deprived an individual of his valuables, the sinner should duly return them to the rightful owners. If pain has been inflicted upon a person, he should be allowed to respond with a similar injury or else he should be requested to forgive. If a person has been backbitten against, he should be approached by the sinner to get the apology accepted from him.
A sinner must repent for all his crimes. If he repents in the case of some and stays away from doing it in the case of others, he will continue to remain obliged to repent for the remaining crimes. The verdict of Quran, the Sunnah, and the consensus of all the scholars of the Muslim Ummah is unequivocal on the obligatory nature of the need to repent is obvious beyond doubt.
The attitude of many of the Muslims, however, is quite to the contrary. They continue to violate with impunity the unquestionably obvious injunctions of the Shariah and yet take refuge in the comforting thought that they shall be pardoned. How very similar this attitude is to that of the unworthy successors of the early generations of the Children of Israel about whose behaviour the Quran informs us thus:
Then after them a new generation inherited the Book. They took to the goods of this base world, and said: We shall surely be forgiven this. Yet they will accept similar things if they came their way again. (7:169)
…Continued in Part 6
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