When the Wronged Person Cannot Be Reached

The rights of others must be restored, and their forgiveness secured. But what if that person has died? What if he has moved to another city? What if he is a non-Muslim, wronged years earlier at school — where it was he himself who was the bully, the ringleader, who gave people hell? There are a number of ways to proceed. The first is to make every effort to find those people: to seek them out, to learn where they are, even if twenty years have passed — even where the person is not Muslim, a George, a Jack, a Jill, an Arthur, a Martha, as much as a Hassan, a Hussain, an Ahmad or a Wali — forgiveness must still be sought from them.

If money was deliberately taken or stolen from someone who cannot be found after every effort to locate them, it should be given as charity on their behalf, in the hope that Allah (swt) accepts it so that they benefit from it on the Day of Judgement. If a person is too poor to give anything, then forgiveness should be sought from them continuously in duʿāʾ — asking Allah (swt), on their behalf, to forgive them too, where a wrong has been done and there is no way left of asking them directly because they have passed on to the next world. Where the wronged person is still living — an uncle, an aunt, a relative, a friend, a colleague at work, someone known from school — they must be found and their forgiveness sought, or the tawbah is no tawbah at all, and Allah (swt) will not accept it.

A person who says, "I have made tawbah to Allah," has covered only half of the equation. The real reckoning on the Day of Judgement that sends people to Jahannam is not the reckoning between the servant and Allah (swt) — He is Ghafūr al-Raḥīm and can forgive in a single instant. It is human beings who do not forgive on that day. So the people wronged must be found, and their forgiveness sought; only then does tawbah become tawbah. This concerns tawbah nasūḥah, sincere tawbah, the general repentance that brings a person back onto the path of Allah (swt). Where a person has used profanity or sworn at someone — ḥarām, no good — astaghfirullāh al-ʿaẓīm is said to Allah (swt), and that person must still be found and asked for forgiveness too. And where a person — one of the so-called clever ones, a sharp businessman — has, by fraudulent means, sold faulty products over the years, that too calls for the same restitution.

If a person truly meets these conditions — leaving the sin, feeling remorse, resolving never to return, and securing both the forgiveness of others and having forgiven them in turn — then that person's sins can be expected to be forgiven by Allah (swt). But sincerity, ikhlāṣ, is something Allah (swt) judges by, so great care must be taken over how sincerely these conditions are fulfilled.