INSIGHTS ON ISLAM: a Convert's Search for God and Spiritual Truth

"ALLAH'S MERCY IN RELATION TO SIN"

AN EXCERPT FROM MY FORTH-COMING BOOK. . .

02-22-98:

Realized more fully that Allah’s Mercy is not a faculty that manifests one time; say, at the onset of the commission of a sin. His Mercy – His desire to save you from the consequences of your impending sin – is in force all throughout the commission of the sin, offering you at every moment, with every downward step you take towards the harming of your body and soul, the opportunity for you to reverse your course of action and instead turn to Him in repentance.

This is because Allah’s Love for you is constant and ever present, like gravity, and His Mercy that seeks to save you from the inferno of your sins and transgressions is ever waiting for you to turn to Him and take hold of His life-saving rope so you may be pulled out from the pit and be rescued from your self-wounding sin. But alas, there always comes a moment in the act of every transgression against yourself or others where the tides of fear or circumstance cannot be reversed or blamed for what your “self that incites to evil” propels you to do.

There comes a time in the commission of all sins – that is, in every act of separation from God – when you consciously submit to your inner Shaitan and let go of the rope of Allah and commit to engaging in an act of “willful selfishness” we generally refer to as “sin.” It is at such moments that our direct disobedience to God can and often does result in the manifestation of the negative (and usually predictable) consequences of our willful selfishness.

Such consequences may not appear immediately – and this, too, is a Sign of Allah’s Mercy, of Him giving us every opportunity to repent – but should our hearts not seek His Forgiveness and divine redemption, His punishment (like His Mercy) shall be, like gravity, inescapable. And it is then that we shall fall. Even then, at that late hour, we can still choose to fall to our knees and prostrate in humility and sorrow, seeking His countenance and Mercy in sincere remorse and repentance, for remorse is the smelting furnace of an anguished heart and a self-tortured soul, each seeking in final desperation to purify the gold of our original goodness of the dross of our sins.

It is a necessary fire whose flames shall, insha’Allah, cool the heat of our future passions that we may yet be saved from the greater Fire in the Hereafter.