Renewing Tawbah Whenever the Heart Forgets

Tawbah must be made regularly, renewed regularly, made whenever past sins are remembered, and made again whenever those sins are repeated. Remembering a past sin should bring back that same remorse — a private talking-to: "I know who you are. Don't pretend to be a shaykh now" — or, for a woman, that wearing the ḥijāb now makes her someone else — "I know what you used to be, I know what you used to do." Then comes the plea: "O Allah, I am the worst of all mankind, the worst of all Muslims — forgive me. Only You know, O Lord, what kind of person I am; all these people think I am good, that I made tawbah and am so pure now — but You know. Forgive me." That remorse, that remembering, is itself an act of tawbah.

But if the same sin is fallen into again — inadvertently, not deliberately, in a moment of weakness — then tawbah becomes fard again. It cannot be argued that tawbah was already made the week before, or the week before that, and the same thing was done again regardless — as long as the sin recurs, tawbah must be made again; there is no way around it. If sinning is a human weakness, it is human to err, and it remains fard to make tawbah for it; there is no going without it.

The ʿulamāʾ, the Islamic scholars, the mashāyikh, caution against going into detail when remembering a sin — the exact particulars of what was done, step by step. Detail should be avoided, because in dwelling on it, shayṭān — upon him be Allah's curse — will entice a person back into repeating it: sin is not committed for the sake of being punished but because there is enjoyment in it, some payment of some kind, and to recall the detail is to recall that enjoyment too, and thereby be enticed again. A sin may be acknowledged in general terms — yes, that was done — but never gone into in detail. Sincere tawbah does not work that way. Allah (swt) commands this fard upon every Muslim:

Every single believer is addressed, so that success may be attained. But what of one who says he has committed no sin — must tawbah still be made? Yes. Rasūlullāh (peace be upon him) says that he makes tawbah seventy times a day — on another occasion, a hundred times a day — though he never sinned. He was showing the way for others: to one particular young man he said, ask forgiveness of Allah (swt), make tawbah, seventy times a day. The young man replied that he did not commit seven hundred sins in a day — were he to sin seven hundred times in a day, he would be dead and gone. But Rasūlullāh (peace be upon him) told him that even without sinning, Allah (swt) will record the ḥasanāt for it on the Day of Judgement and reward him for it: though no sin was committed, ḥasanāt are still earned for the istighfār itself — astaghfirullāh al-ʿaẓīm al-karīm, alladhī lā ilāha illā huwa, al-ḥayyu al-qayyūm, wa atūbu ilayh.