At-Tawwab

The Acceptor of Repentance

Exalted and Glorious

So turn (in repentance) to your Creator, and kill yourselves (kill the ego).  That will be better for you with your Creator.  Then He accepted your repentance.  Truly, He is the One Who accepts repentance, the Most Merciful.  (2:54)

 

And had it not been for the Grace of Allah and His Mercy on you.  And that Allah is the One Who forgives and accepts repentance, the All-Wise.  (24:10)

 

Would one of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother?  You would hate it (so hate backbiting).  And fear Allah.  Verily, Allah is the One Who forgives and accepts repentance, Most Merciful. (49:12)

 

When they were unjust to themselves, if they had only come to the Prophets, alayhi as-salm and asked Allah’s forgiveness, and the Prophet, alayhi as-salam had asked forgiveness for them, they would have found Allah indeed to be the One Who Accepts Repentance, the Most Merciful.  According to Islamic Shari’ah, the validity of repentance depends on three things: a confession of one’s sins, remorse, and a firm resolution to abstain from its recurrence.

 

He who repeats this name frequently, his repentance will be accepted.

 

At-Tawwab is the One Who accepts the repentance of His slaves when He turns to them and receives their repentance and their returning to Him.  He is the One Who constantly forgives sins and wrong doings as they perish in Him.  So let us return to Him in all our affairs.

 

Allah Allah Allah

From: The Meanings of the Names of Our Lord by Shaykh Muhammad Sa’id al-Jamal ar-Rifa’i Head of the Higher Sufi Council in Jerusalem and the Holy Land Teacher at the Dome of the Rock (al-Aqsa)

 

 

AL-TAWWAB

Allah is He who constantly turns people to repentance.  Tawbah, repentance, means literally to return: to return from revolt and sin to the straight path of virtue.  Allah awakens the hearts of believers from the sleep of heedlessness through love of Him, with the manifestation of His existence around them, with the words of good advice of those who are close to Him, with the promise of His rewards and Paradise, and with the fear of His punishment and Hellfire.

 

Allah has servants whose hearts catch fire with a single spark.  He also has servants whose hearts have turned to cold stone.  If one poured heaps of fire upon them, they would still not become warm.  Some have hearts like iron, which softens a bit from the fire and turns immediately back into iron again.  That is why one has to be awakened frequently by listening to Allah’s commands in the Qur’an.  The whole universe, everything, including you, is the Qur’an. If you take lessons from what you see, inside and outside yourself, you will wake up and return from the sinful state of unconsciousness, and disharmony to the state of being in harmony with Allah’s will.  That is repentance acceptable to Allah, with which His anger is transformed into mercy, compassion, and love.

 

The repentance that is acceptable to Allah is not simply seeing the wrong and ugliness of one’s actions, regretting having done bad things and wishing not to repeat them, fearing Allah’s punishment and hoping for Allah’s mercy.  This is like cutting off the crabgrass and leaving the root.  One has to dig out all the roots.  The repentance acceptable to Allah is the effort of inner cleaning, trying to eliminate the cause of the sins.  Allah promises not only His mercy and forgiveness, but His love, to such purified ones.

 

Allah says of the punishment due for sin:

… save him who repents, and believes, and does righteous work – those, Allah will change their evil deeds into good deeds, for Allah is oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful (Surah Furqan 70).

And

For Allah loves those who turn to Him and He loves those who seek to make themselves pure and clean (Surah Baqarah 222).

 

When you are able to forgive and keep forgiving those who hurt you, you will see the manifestation of at-Tawwab in yourself.  Allah forgives the ones who forgive others.  No matter how sinful they are, no matter how often they forget their repentance, they must never doubt the mercy of Allah and the acceptance of their repentance.

 

Many a misfortune that falls upon people is a result of their unrepented sins.  If you complain about those difficulties, they will only increase.  But if you accept them, look upon them as Allah’s will, and submit.  Allah will consider your submission as payment for your sins and as a true repentance, and the difficulties will cease.  If you are able to go beyond this, welcoming your difficulties and feeling thankful for receiving a temporal punishment in this life rather than eternal fire in the Hereafter, your faith and spiritual state may reach new heights.  To show thankfulness in adversity is the attitude of saints.

 

‘Abd at-Tawwab is the blessed servant who has been made to return from the desires of the flesh and from the lies and imagination of this world to the Truth.  By repeated repentance for his wrongdoings he has come to know the multiplicity in himself, and shedding it with his repentance, has achieved unity and oneness.

 

A believer who cannot stop doing wrong, is aware of it, and is crushed under the feeling of being sinful, may recite this Name 409 times in the mornings.  One day he will feel that his repentance is accepted.  The sign of the acceptance of one’s repentance is that one cannot commit that sin again, and the recollection of it leaves one’s memory.

 

From: The Name & the Named by Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti