Friday Sermon 25 April 1997

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And it is He that accepts repentance from His servants and pardons the misdeeds He knows what you do.

And He responds to those who believe and work well and grants them more out of His grace; and the disbelievers will have a severe punishment.

('The Holy Quran'.  al-Shura [The Consultation]: 26, 27).

Today I wish to open certain other aspects of these verses before you.  As far as forgiveness of past sins relates to repentance it is not essential for all evils to be erased that very moment.  So a completely righteous life is not granted simultaneously following repentance.  It results in the beginning of a new struggle.

When God forbears one of the meanings of it is that God ignores the misdeeds and safeguards from their ill effects.  Secondly that God erases them but how are they erased? Do they erase themselves or does one have to undertake a struggle for it? 

'Our Lord we have heard a Summoner calling unto faith ' Believe ye in your Lord' so we have believed.  Our Lord forgive us therefore our sins and remove from us our ills and in death join us with the righteous.'

('The Holy Quran'.  Āl Imran [Family of Imran]: 194).

The process of eradicating ills begins from prayer and in constant remembering that Allah knows what one does.  it should not be that one prays in an easterly manner and acts in a westerly one.  If one acts righteously in lieu of supporting the prayer then Almighty God would grant those prayers.  Mere repentance of the past sins is not enough unless one fills one's life with virtuous acts and it is actually the good works which guarantee the eradication of evil deeds.   One of the meanings given of يَزِيدُهُم مِّن فَضْلِهِ ['grants them more out of His grace'] is that Allah the Almighty would reward such people manifold.  I understand the subject of  يَزِيدُهُم مِّن فَضْلِهِ to be related to كَفِّرْ عَنَّا سَيِّئَاتِنَا ['remove from us our ills'] or to يَعْفُو عَنِ السَّيِّئَاتِ ['pardons the misdeeds'].  The person who breaks away their bad habits should appear diminished and not increased.  They would only increase if one understands the subject of removing from ills habits in the way elaborated by 'The Holy Quran' that you should remove your ills through beauty.  Beauty thrusts out ugliness as lights thrusts out darkness.  When certain bad habits are replaced by better habits then that is what is discussed in  .يَزِيدُهُم مِّن فَضْلِهِ  Those would be the habits of fidelity.  So that the more the bad habits are shed the more the beauty would increase and when beauty would increase then people would be drawn towards you and that would also serve to make you stronger.  In this relation I draw people's attention to summoning towards Allah.  

Evil cannot overcome virtues.  When it appears that evils are overtaking virtues then those virtues are in reality unreal and hollow and are not really virtues otherwise it is impossible for virtue not to overpower ills when upstanding in its real nature.

One naturally begins to hate and move away from the sin which is forgiven.  What you have been forgiven is the hatred you have of sin.  When one hates sin then one attends to the removal of the minuscule and minor stains.  

Bounty is descending from heaven so if your invitation to Allah is not bearing fruit then you have some weaknesses in you which are known to Allah.  Until you begin to act to remove these ills the promise of  يَزِيدُهُم مِّن فَضْلِهِ would not be fulfilled in your favour.  

It is a must to seek help through prayer for hatred of sin and it is also essential to take actual steps to move away from what one hates.  One should not slacken in prayer due to the abundance of sin.  The real Bayat [initiation] is to Muhammad the Holy Prophet of Allah which guarantees the survival of the Ummah.


The text http://www.alislam.org/urdu/sermon/FST19970425-UR.pdf


© The Tahir Archive / MTA International, 2016.
Friday Sermon 25 April 1997

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