Repentance

What follows goes quickly through the most basic text on this science, which was taught in North Africa, and in particular in West Africa, and which is passed from teacher to student. It is a text on iḥsān: how does one get to that stage? He begins with repentance — the idea of recognising that one is doing something wrong. Because the word for a bad act in Arabic, a sin, to use a Christian terminology, is an ugly act, and the word for a good act is a beautiful act: ḥasanāt and sayyiʾāt. The private parts in Arabic — the anus and the genitals, either male or female — are called the sawʾatān, the two ugly things. And the word for a wrong action is related to the same word, sayyiʾāt. It is ugly. An act is ugly. It is not something one wants to look at. When one sees a wrong act, one gets — one should, if one is healthy. There are people out there now who are so distorted that they enjoy making ugly things; a lot of modern artists make a lot of money out of it. But that is a personal opinion, thrown in.

The idea is that repentance from every deed that is done is necessary immediately and absolutely. In other words, one must do it immediately: if one does a wrong action, one has to turn away from it immediately, and absolutely, meaning that one does not have the intention to return to it. Repentance in Islam is based, first, on remorse, a sense of remorse. One has to feel a sense of remorse. And its soundness is contingent upon abandoning the deed, even at the time. So if somebody is drinking — for a Muslim who is drinking a glass of alcohol — they cannot just say astaghfirullāh, may God forgive me, and keep drinking it. There has to be a move away from it at the time, and then a desire never to continue it, never to return to it; and rectifying what one is able to, if others are involved in the deed. So if somebody else was the victim of one's wrong action, then part of making a true repentance to God, in the Muslim worldview, is that one rectifies the wrong done to that person. If one was backbiting, then one goes and asks for their forgiveness. If one stole money, one has to return what was stolen. There is a rectification. And within limits, because they say that if doing that will lead to a greater problem, then one does not. For instance, if somebody did commit adultery, they should not go and tell a person: I committed adultery with your husband, or with your wife. One is actually not supposed to do that. One should just ask forgiveness.

The gist of taqwā, which is God-wariness, God-consciousness, is fulfilment of the commandments and the avoidance of the prohibitions, both inwardly and outwardly. In other words, fulfilling injunctions has to be an inward experience as well: one is not just doing it because of Islam; one is now doing it also because of īmān. And what happens in many religious cultures — and there is certainly one in the Middle East that most people are very familiar with — is that outwardly things look as though they are running according to Islam, but inwardly there is a very different story. This happens when an exoteric Islam is imposed without concern for people's internal states. And so there is a religious police who make people pray. This is very alien to the Islamic tradition, but unfortunately part of the modern Islamic tradition.

And then he says: thus its aspects are four in number — inward and outward, obeying and avoiding. And then he says: and this is for the sālik. Now the sālik, traditionally, in the Sufi terminology, was somebody who set out on the path of self-purification.