The Chapter on Repentance in Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn: Why It Follows Sincerity

Occasion: Transcription of a Ẓuhr khatira delivered on 21 February 2026 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

Today we speak about the second chapter of the book “Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn,” the chapter on repentance.

Why Did Repentance Come after Sincerity?

Imam al-Nawawī, may Allah have mercy on him, arranged the book of repentance after the book of sincerity, because the sincere person feels belonging, so if a shortcoming occurs in him he feels reproach of himself and a review of conscience, then he returns to Allah, Blessed and Exalted, and repents to Him. And no one does that except one who has a great measure of sincerity. As for one who does not feel belonging, he does not feel at all a need to review himself; by his very nature he feels he is free.

And the freedom of the Muslim is only within the framework of servitude to the Lord of the worlds, Glorified is He. Imagine an employee who feels belonging to the place where he works, and is free in making the decisions available to him. And we understand that the Lord of Might, Glorified is He, is above every authority, and we have no ability to call Him to account in anything. So our freedom within the framework of servitude gives us a kind of comfort, and to Allah belongs the highest example: the whole responsibility is on whom? On the great chief, the owner of the company or the factory or the shop, whatever the name; he has the full responsibility, and under its umbrella I act in my freedom. So freedom is not absolute, but is freedom within the framework of what benefits you and what lifts responsibilities from you.

And from here comes the question of the order of the chapter: why was sincerity put first? Because it is the first thing required; whoever is not sincere does not work, and if he works he does not do it well, and if he does it well he is not keen on the interest of the place where he works, but is keen on his own interest in the first place.

The Three Stages of Repentance

Then the Imam begins by defining repentance, and that it passes through three stages. The first is regret that occurs inside the servant, and a feeling of wanting to review himself and reproach it, I do not say punish it, so much as he wants to atone for his sin. Then he resolves not to commit this error again.

And here we sometimes deal with a conscience that moves partially, and a conscience that moves all the way. Ask a smoker: how do you feel? He will tell you: By Allah, Shaykh, pray for us that Allah turn to us in repentance, I am in pain, I am very sorry. And this speech is sincere, but sincere within a partial review; his conscience moves a little then goes back; as evidence, he has “quit cigarettes” a hundred times, and this means he has gone back to them a hundred times. As for the believer, his conscience does not move in a partial movement, but moves in steps, so he resolves not to return to the sin again, and the matter ends.

Then, if there are matters related to people, he returns them, and that is the greatest and hardest of the stages. For the sin did not occur in the first place except to obtain worldly benefits: either a desire he wanted to discharge and discharged in the forbidden, or money he wanted to earn so he stole or cheated or forged or tricked or swindled, or a position he wanted to reach so he flattered and lied and compromised. So worldly gain was achieved within the framework of this disobedience, and if you want to repent you must restore all these things to their proper place, and that is only by returning rights to their owners.

And a problem comes to us here: how do we return many of the rights when we have no way to do so? If you took something from a place secretly and no one knew of it, you will return it secretly as you took it. But sometimes there is mutual wrongdoing even between brothers of the same father and mother, in the consuming of inheritance and cheating among people and in dealings, and returning these matters is not easy. That is why it is the furthest of the stages, and the most rewarding and the most fulfilling of the aim of repentance in the souls of the servants.

Why Did the Law Require the Return of Rights?

Why did the law set this condition, that matters must be returned to their proper place? So that the rest of the members of society feel that in this society there is a repentant person, and so that souls are emptied of the grudges in them; for society cannot work with burdened hearts. And society is like a machine: if one cog in it is spoiled, all the machines stop, however expensive they are, and however cheap, small, and simple the cog, because it affects the movement of the whole machine. So if a member of society is spoiled, how does the corruption go?

I sold you a commodity and there was deception in the sale, and you came back to me and spoke to me, and I said to you: This is what I have, do what you like. How do you leave me having sensed this wrong and this cheating and this deception and this evasion? You go back with your chest full of grudge and pain and a feeling of weakness and helplessness. And how would you return to me again if your need is with me?

Take another example: I work as a teacher and you work as a doctor, and you came to me with your children and I neglected them and paid them no attention, and you complained to me, and I said to you: This is what I have and you have no other way, bang your head against the wall. Then days passed and I came to you as a patient for you to treat my body, so how will you treat me? It is quite natural, from human nature, that you would treat me as I treated you. And this is a light example, and among the matters there are far worse. So Islam wants to uproot the attachments of the heart from the roots of hearts, so that hearts remain clean.

And imagine that one of the people says to his brother: I ask you by Allah to forgive me, yesterday we were talking and we went a little beyond our limits regarding your good name. And you say to him: No harm, may Allah bless you, the important thing is that you did not go very deep, and the matter passes with a bit of joking. So what results from that? There results more trust from you, so you give me some of your secrets, because you knew that if I overstep I come back. And this in itself is among the indicators of the rise of societies and their advancement and movement on a broad level, not on an individual level.

So the three conditions come to achieve three dimensions: a dimension between the servant and Allah, a dimension between the servant and himself, and a dimension between the servant and the rest of the servants. With Allah I say: I erred, I committed such and such, I ask Your forgiveness, my Lord, and I repent to You. With the self an inner treatment: that I not do that again. With people: that I return the rights to their owners.

The Address of Repentance Is an Address to Society

And with this the Imam opened his chapter, for our Lord, Glorified is He, said: ﴿وَتُوبُوا إِلَى اللَّهِ جَمِيعًا أَيُّهَا الْمُؤْمِنُونَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ﴾ (“And turn to Allah in repentance, all of you, O believers, that you might succeed”).^[1] Is this address individual or societal? Societal. And we have, for example: ﴿قُلْ يَا عِبَادِيَ الَّذِينَ أَسْرَفُوا عَلَىٰ أَنْفُسِهِمْ لَا تَقْنَطُوا مِنْ رَحْمَةِ اللَّهِ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَغْفِرُ الذُّنُوبَ جَمِيعًا إِنَّهُ هُوَ الْغَفُورُ الرَّحِيمُ﴾ (“Say, ‘O My servants who have transgressed against themselves, do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Indeed, Allah forgives all sins. Indeed, it is He who is the Forgiving, the Merciful’”),^[2] from which one senses that it is an individual address. And the verse we read this morning in the Fajr prayer: ﴿إِنَّمَا التَّوْبَةُ عَلَى اللَّهِ لِلَّذِينَ يَعْمَلُونَ السُّوءَ بِجَهَالَةٍ ثُمَّ يَتُوبُونَ مِنْ قَرِيبٍ فَأُولَٰئِكَ يَتُوبُ اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِمْ وَكَانَ اللَّهُ عَلِيمًا حَكِيمًا﴾ (“The repentance accepted by Allah is only for those who do wrong in ignorance and then repent soon after. It is those to whom Allah will turn in forgiveness, and Allah is ever Knowing and Wise”).^[3] As if Allah, Blessed and Exalted, when He spoke of repentance in the general Qur'anic address, was speaking to society. So how does He speak to society when the one who erred is one person?

Let us go to our master the Prophet ﷺ, for the hadith on which this matter rests: «كُلُّ بَنِي آدَمَ خَطَّاءٌ، وَخَيْرُ الْخَطَّائِينَ التَّوَّابُونَ» (“Every son of Adam is a constant sinner, and the best of sinners are those who constantly repent”).^[4] Is he speaking of a society or of an individual? Of a society. How so? Because errors occur only within the group; no one errs alone. The errors a person commits between himself and himself are far fewer than the errors he commits with people: earning money between me and people, and obtaining desires between me and people. So we deal in a kind of internal spread, so if I err, and there is a command from the Lord of the worlds for the repentance of society, you will find all the people beginning to carry with you. As if society lifts up the one who has fallen into error: a society of a hundred people in which one erred, so ninety-nine hands stretch out until they raise him up again. Does he stay down below? Impossible. And even if he cannot walk, people carry him, carry him bodily, to keep going, striving, and producing and working more.

Monitoring of Following Up, Not Following Up of Monitoring

So the Qur'anic address ﴿وَتُوبُوا إِلَى اللَّهِ جَمِيعًا أَيُّهَا الْمُؤْمِنُونَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ﴾ is a societal address, because it commands people to follow up on errors. And it is not following up of monitoring and scrutiny, but monitoring of following up. What is the difference? Following up of monitoring is that you follow someone in order to monitor him with your eye on him and examine him: this one has an extra, and this one what did he do, and where did he get this from? And this is speech with an unkind eye. As for monitoring of following up, it is that you watch a person's condition in general in order to follow the development of his affairs or their decline, so you ask him from time to time: Reassure me about yourself, how are you? Are you better today? So he answers you: Praise be to Allah.

A brother asks me and says: Yesterday I was hearing your chest making a whistling sound in the prayer, so I made dua for you in my prostration. What a feeling! Where are we from this wonderful, beautiful feeling, that you see a brother of yours say: I made dua for you in my prostration when I heard something of an imbalance in your body? Will my reaction be to say to him: You are monitoring me? What made you strain your ear toward me? No, because the monitoring here occurred with the intention of following the conditions and developments and reassurance and more help.

And when someone enters upon you and you say to him: How are you? How is your wife and children? And how is your father? He senses this companionship. And society moves in this way. So when we see the collective address in the Noble Qur'an we see that we are before a system that wants to move a lateral movement, that makes the whole world move along together. And imagine a car moving on three wheels while the fourth wheel comes behind it at a second stage; that does not work, either all of it stops or all of it moves.

Why Does the Prophet ﷺ Seek Forgiveness?

Abū Hurayra, may Allah be pleased with him, says: I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say: «وَاللَّهِ إِنِّي لَأَسْتَغْفِرُ اللَّهَ وَأَتُوبُ إِلَيْهِ فِي الْيَوْمِ أَكْثَرَ مِنْ سَبْعِينَ مَرَّةً» (“By Allah, I seek forgiveness of Allah and repent to Him in the day more than seventy times”).^[5] And I have a set of questions. First: why does the Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, seek forgiveness?

A simple analogy: when you buy a new car of a major make, then reach five thousand miles with it, you need an oil change. You say: why? It is new! Yes, but there is what is called maintenance or follow-up, whatever it is called. And whether the car is of the big makes that we do not even know how to name, or very simple from the lowest prices in the world, the same law applies to it. Is that not so?

And it is as if the Messenger of Allah ﷺ is teaching me that there is no one on the face of the earth above the possibility of error. I say it again: there is no one on the face of the earth above the possibility of error, even if it is the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, for he portrays to people that he is among the creatures, and that some kind of error may issue from him.^[8] And when you hear the word “error” attributed to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, you recoil. So how is that?

We have very simple evidences. When the Prophet ﷺ says after the prayer: «أستغفر الله، أستغفر الله، أستغفر الله، اللهم أنت السلام ومنك السلام، تباركتَ…» (“I seek forgiveness of Allah, I seek forgiveness of Allah, I seek forgiveness of Allah. O Allah, You are Peace and from You is peace; blessed are You…”).^[6] Where is the logic in that? How can we say there is someone who seeks forgiveness after an act of obedience? We are still at the close of the prayer, “as-salāmu ʿalaykum wa-raḥmatullāh, as-salāmu ʿalaykum.” So what is the aspect of his ﷺ seeking forgiveness? Its aspect is the possibility that a shortcoming may have come from me in performing the prayer: that my mind wandered even for a moment, or I did not think deeply about the meanings of the verses, or my heart was not moved as it should be. The point is that “error” in itself is a term expressing different kinds and states: among them being entangled in a crime, or doing what is not mine to do, and there is another possibility, which is that I fell short in performing what ought to be upon me.

The second question: why does the Messenger of Allah ﷺ swear to them? «والله إني لأستغفر الله في اليوم أكثر من سبعين مرة» (“By Allah, I seek forgiveness of Allah in the day more than seventy times”), and in this there is of rhetorical emphasis what there is. Why does he swear? Because the Prophet ﷺ wants to root in their souls that it is not because you are Abū Bakr that you are above error, and not because you are so-and-so that you are above error, but that the same law applies to everyone. Why? Because we are all still within the framework of: ﴿قُلْ إِنَّمَا أَنَا بَشَرٌ مِثْلُكُمْ﴾ (“Say, ‘I am only a man like you’”).^[7]

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Nūr, verse 31. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Zumar, verse 53. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, verse 17. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: The hadith was reported by al-Tirmidhī, Ibn Māja, and Aḥmad from the hadith of Anas, may Allah be pleased with him, and it is ḥasan according to a group of scholars; the speaker confined himself to citing it in its wording without attribution. ^[5]: Editor's documentation: Reported by al-Bukhārī from the hadith of Abū Hurayra, may Allah be pleased with him, and the text here is as the speaker cited it. ^[6]: Editor's documentation: The speaker refers to the dhikr that is reported after the closing salām of the prayer; it is reported in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim from the hadith of Thawbān, may Allah be pleased with him. The speaker cited the formula in summary and did not complete it clearly in the transcript. ^[7]: Editor's documentation: Sūrat al-Kahf, verse 110, and the speaker mentioned this much of it. ^[8]: Editor's documentation: The prophets are protected from error in what they convey from their Lord, and the intention is not to ascribe disobedience to the Prophet ﷺ; the speaker means that no one is above being subject to shortcoming in the right of what is obligatory upon him, and the scholars have explained his ﷺ seeking forgiveness in several ways, among them humbling himself before Allah, thanking Him for His blessing, and rising through the stations of servitude.