Tawbah has the following three steps:
Firstly, you have to feel regret and question yourself: Why did I do that? Why did I say this? Why did I hurt that person? Why did I look at that? Say it to yourself, you don’t have to say it to people. It will not be a proper tawbah unless you regret what you did and feel some pain inside. And how do I regret? One thing to say to yourself should be: who did I disobey?
Don’t look at what you did, but look at Who you disobeyed.
If I know who Allah is, then I’m going to question my actions.
Second, I have this firm resolution that I am not going to go back to that sin. Just as people make New Year resolutions they intend to keep, we have to take some action with our intention. This resolution means you’re going to remove the things from your life and surroundings that make you disobey Allah . If you keep watching haram, then you need to remove those channels that bring haram and make it easy for yourself to stay away.
It’s similar to if you want to lose weight, then the advice is don’t put the wrong foods in front of yourself. If you have weight gaining food in front of you and you think you won’t eat it, then you will be wrong.
So, removing the cause of the problem is a necessary step in tawbah.
The third step, after the first two are put into practice properly, is making a commitment that you will not go back to the sin again. Most of the time, we will slip, and it will happen again. However, if you’ve gone back, don’t despair. Go back to Allah.
The beauty of Allah is He is All-Generous. We aren’t the same, if someone hurts us, we’ll forgive them once, possibly a second time, but the third time we’ll say ‘I’m done: three strikes and you’re out’. It’s not the same with Allah because He is All-Generous. If we disobey Allah , return back to Him , He is the All-Forgiving.
Practical Steps for Tawbah
The following are practical steps we can do to help us with tawbah:
Write down the sins that come to your mind. Ask Allah to remind you of what you did.
Look at the list and think about how they happened. Ask Allah to help you, and to forgive each one of those sins.
Make time to do this regularly and ask Allah to forgive you, as the more we ask Allah to forgive us, He will open ways to return back to Him .
There is a famous story of the three Sahabi who stayed in Madinah, and did not go out with Rasul Allah sws on an expedition. By doing so, the Companions even disobeyed Allah, but they felt very guilty.
When Allah saw inside their heart and knew how bad they felt about not going with the Rasul sws. He facilitated their tawbah and made it easy for them. When there is sincerity inside us, He will send people to us to remind us.
Whenever we truly repent to Allah , He will open the doors for us. At the point when we do sin, we just need to take a minute, pause and think: who did I disobey? I need to acknowledge this and turn to Allah for forgiveness.
After that we shouldn’t feel stressed and worried. He will forgive and He forgives all sins, so we shouldn’t despair. Nor should we allow anyone to make us feel like despairing because the One we are asking to forgive us is Himself, The All-Forgiving and the All-Merciful.
May Allah forgive all our sins. May Allah wipe away our wrongdoings whenever we turn sincerely to Him in du‘a. May we have our sins completely wiped away and may our hearts and tongues be guided to regularly seeking forgiveness. Ya Rabbi Ameen.
Excerpt is from My Dear Heart by Dr Haifaa Younis
9781847742919 - HB - Kube Publishing
How is your heart? This organ is a subtle creation of our Rabb, it is the seat of our faith and the only thing of true worth we will take with us to Allah.
Yet how much time do we take to understand, nourish and protect it? Do we know what hinders and helps it? In My Dear Heart, Dr. Haifaa draws on timeless wisdom from the Qur'an and sunnah and her own experiences to help you care for your heart. The thirty chapters accompany you on a journey of discovering what dwells in your heart and what affects its different states.
My Dear Heart is an invitation to pause and reflect on the sicknesses that harm/tarnish it and the cures to restore its health on the path to achieving a sound heart, a qalbun saleem. In a world full of distractions and noise, this book brings our focus back to what matters; a heart that is close to Allah, at peace and pleasing to Him.
Dr. Haifaa Younis is the founder, Chairman, and resident scholar at Jannah Institute. She is a Resident Scholar at the Islamic Center of Irvine, California. Dr. Younis graduated from the Mecca Institute of Islamic Studies (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) and Al-Huda Qur’an Memorization School (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) where she completed the memorization of the Qur’an. Currently, she lives and works in the US, and teaches various Islamic studies courses focusing on purification of the heart (Tazkiyah).
