Repentance: Clearing Mind and Soul

Assalaamualaikum wa rahmatullah

Lord, I wanted to repent to You on all the errors that we had mistakenly committed and for all the sins I had committed without I realize them or I realize. We were ignorant and we realize that now. We seek Your forgiveness and please forgive us, be Merciful to us never leave us alone... We have no Shield and vulnerable if You leave us alone.

Lord ordered us to repent through His Word in Surah at-Tahrim verse 8th : "O faithful believers, repent to the God with the real repentance!" 

The God has opened the door of hope to His servants and slaves: "Say (O Muhammad)! O My servants who had crossed the line of their limit don't give up from the mercy of the God. Indeed the God forgives all of sins. Indeed, He is Forgiver above all, the Most Compassionate." (Surah az-Zumar verse 35) 

Conditions for Repentance

I. Sincerity to repentance

II. Promise Him that we would never commit the same sins again

III. Remorse on the evil deeds committed

IV. Determination to leave the evil deeds

V. Performed before death

If one of these conditions is not fulfilled, the repentance is not valid. If the sin is related to brethren in humanity, another condition applies. The sinner must free himself from the right of the related person who had been wronged. For example, if it is in the form of property, it must be returned to the rightful. If it is in the form of punishment and sentence, the person must submit himself to apologize from the wronged. If it is in the form of insults and abusive words, the sinners must sincerely apologize to the one who was wronged. 

According to Hanbali madzhab, a person who missed the obligatory prayers without any valid reason is counted as an ingrate to the Lord which will lead to infidelity and being excommunicated from community. It is a serious evil deed. Besides performing the qadha salat service for the missed prayer services must also repent to Him.  

Time to Repent

Repentance should be done immediately once a person realizes his sins and crimes. Sin is dangerous to the heart and the purity of the soul. If a person delays his repentance, little by little he will be influenced by the sins. It is like dots in the heart and blocking the heart from receiving the Light.

Among the reason which will bring the soul toward repentance is the remembrance to death and reckoning the time when we will be alone in the grave. Death indeed is scary for most of human-being. It means that we will have to leave the people that we love. We will leave our family, children, wife, husband, friends, lovers, properties, belongings, parties, pleasures and etc. Death is the time when all of the grace will be taken away forever.

Says the Lord in surah az-Zumar verse 30: "You indeed will die and indeed they will die too!"

Beside remembering the bitterness of torments that will be faced by the sinners, death also reminds everyone about the grace of His Kingdom where the faithful believers will be rewarded in it. It will raise up the spirit and enthusiasm to repent because nothing to lose...

How to Repent

In our Path, we perform repentance with the prayer service alone without anyone except our selves with the God. The prayer is called as Salat at-Tawbah which means the Repentance Optional Service. The way we perform it just like other prayer services but with the intention to repent to Him on our sins. Perform the ghusl (shower or dipping in the water) and wudhu (ablution) in a complete manner. All of these require intention only for Him. Stand at a clean place and facing the qiblah (direction of holy land).    

The time to perform the prayer service for those who thinks they are sinful is most likely around 2/3 night which means around 02:00 in the morning and later which is also apart of the raising up at night time. Please check the time to perform optional prayer services before performing them. 

Intention to perform the prayer service for repentance is important. Make sure to place it firmly in the heart and mind to focus. Just mentally say: "I perform this prayer service to repent two units only for the God."

The first unit of the prayer service, it is optional to recite the opening supplication. And then, recite the surah al-Fatihah. And then choose any one surah from the Glorious Quran to recite in the unit after Surah al-Fatihah.

The second unit, recite the surah al-Fatihah again since it is obligatory for a valid service. Then another surah from the Glorious Quran and this is optional. While prostrating in the final second unit, recite the supplication of repentance of Jonah a.s at least 40 times. Make sure to focus the heart into sincerity and try to ponder on the meaning of this prophet's supplication. The prayer means: "There is no one except You, glory be to You, I am sincerely repenting on my sins and I am among those who exceed the limit of crime and sins." The meaning could be simple, I just make it longer in English so people could understand what Jonah a.s. is praying about.

Before the peace greeting and prayer or the Tahiyyat al-Akhir, recite astaghfar as much as possible. It means like: "Forgive me dear God, whom no gods other than Him, He is the Living God, the One who Stands alone without any support and I repent to Him." 

Recite the Sayyidul Istighfar which means the Chief of Apology to seek forgiveness from the Lord and asking for purity of the soul and heart. It means: "O our Lord, You are our God. There is no one except You who created me. And I am Your servant and slave (I am not slave to other idols which includes worldly materials and etc). And I am in Your grip and in Your covenant as firm as I can. I seek refuge with You from the evil that I had committed. I confess all of Your grace on me and I confess all of my sins to You. Please forgive me dear Lord. There is no one who could forgive me except You." 

Let us repent dear beloved brothers and sisters in faith. Don't wait until its too late. This is an advice firstly to myself and I really regret myself on my ignorance. It goes to others to also help me spread the message for repentance to others if stepping by this humble and meaningless slave's site. Make sure we equip ourselves with the knowledge of the Path so we won't go into wrong directions. Let us together try to obey the covenant of our patriarch Abraham a.s. with the Lord and recite salawat for both of noble prophets' soul and their family members.

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace, and love, amin!   

Acts of Worship: Conditions to Perform Salat

Assalaamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah!

Source picture from View Iran.

For compulsory salat, we must meet these conditions which are:

A Muslim

Those who believes in the six articles of the pillars of faith are bound to five articles of the pillars of the law of life.

Sane

Possess sound mind and aware of what he or she is up to. A drunk person can not perform salat because his or her mind is not sound. He or she does not know what is she talking about when communicating with the God in salat.

Meet the Age Requirement

A person who reached 10 years old are bound to this article of the law of life (salat). Seven years old age is a good time to teach children to perform salat.

Pre-Salat Conditions 

Confidence on the Time

We must have confidence that we meet the prayer time for five times daily prayers. We may check the shadows under the sun for Dzuhr and 'Asr prayer services. Nowadays we have announcements in TV and radio for those who live in majority Muslim countries like in Malaysia while for those who live in the country administrated by non-Muslims like in Thailand or any other place, they could get the information or taqwim (calender) from their associations, centers and councils. No confidence although the time is correct, our salat will be invalid.

Facing Quiblah

Turning our face and chest facing the direction of Ka'aba in the city of Mecca. Those who are unable to perform this because of troubles are given leniency to face any direction since East and West belongs to Him.

Covering 'Awrah

It is compulsory for a men to cover from his belly-button down to his knees. For women, covering according to what is prescribed in the scripture for example wearing reasonably loose-fitting garment. It is a common sense. We are summoning the God and not flirting around looking for a date, taking part in miss universe, or playing snooker while performing salat. I had talked about this with my Muslim European teacher in her room too, it is regarding fashion. I am a moderate person, I don't judge people based on their looks or attire but when we perform salat or prayer it is not a sin to follow the prescription of scripture. When we perform salat, we are communicating and summoning the God. So, we must make sure that we are in proper attire. When we meet royalties, or VIPs, or in formal occasions or to Halloween parties for example, we perhaps wear proper attire according to their dress code or theme. But when we summon Him who has the Dominion over the Universe, should we just wear skimpy, stinky, and filthy clothes without any dress code? Summoning Him is not like when we go for the Cannes Film Festival. He is more than that. 

Purity

Pure from feces and physically clean. It means clean clothes, clean body, and the place to prostrate is clean from ritual impurity mentioned in scripture. There are jurists who summarized these into their kitab (books) for practices as to make it easy for laymen who have no time to revise, studying the branches of religious science or analyze the scripture. For Hanbali jurisprudence, the impurity at the cloth is still tolerated but I don't recommend it to others if we are able to make sure that everything is clean. A woman who are in menstrual state are given the leniency not to perform salat or entering prayer hall. It is called as holiday for women here. Personally I don't like to be close to women in menstrual state, hormones imbalance and they are quite moody. I can sense that from far without having to ask them, lol.

Ritual Purification

There are three kind of ritual washing. The first one is ma'amad or ghusl. Ghusl means shower or ma'amad means we dip ourselves into the river if there is a river or pond. Ghusl is a major cleansing. Then we have tayammum, for those who can't find water such as when the area is in drought or in desert. The most common one is wudhu' or ablution which is minor cleansing. We always see people perform this at mosque too before performing salat or contact prayer with the God. After we perform this, it is the state of pure from hadath. 

Sutrah

What is this? It means barrier from people passing by in front of us while we perform salat. It is best to have a barrier when we perform salat alone. It could be a wall or simply blocking the way of passers with hands. It is forbidden to walk in front of a person who perform salat, or walking between the barrier and the person who perform salat. A person may pass in front of person who perform salat in congregational row, usually in the mosque.  

I guess this is it for our note regarding pre-conditions to perform salat.  May it benefits brothers and sisters. I apologize for false words if it happens to pop out in here. We are just ordinary human-being and no perfect but we try to do as best as we can, His Will. Thank you for passing by, may everyone be blessed.

Sealed with prayers for peace, mercy, and love, amin!