Almighty Allah states in the Qur’an: O Believers! Turn towards Allah’s Presence in perfect and most sincere repentance. Your Lord will certainly remove your sins from you and admit you to the Gardens with streams flowing under them. {Chapter 66: Verse 8}

And that you should seek forgiveness from your Lord, then submit your repentance before Him (with true heart). He will keep you glad and gratified with an excellent provision till an appointed term and will reward for merit everyone enjoying me (i.e. will bestow reward and ranks corresponding to one’s amount of righteous deeds and dedicated services). And if you turn away, then I fear for you the torment of a Mighty Day. {Surah Hud Chapter 11: Verse 3}

What is Repentance?
A Hadith states that regret is repentance.  Sunan Ibn-e-Maja,Hadith 4252,V4 P492 }

Remorse(nadamah) is the turning of the heart, in sorrow and regret, away from something which the servant has committed, and which angers Almighty Allah, such as sins or the neglect of obligatory acts. It may also occur following excessive involvement in permissible pleasures or the neglect of supererogatory devotions. A sincere remorse is one which leads to persevering in earnest And Avoiding neglectfulness. When sound, it includes Nearly All The Conditions Of Repentance-Tawba which is why The Prophet (PBUH) Has Said, May Blessings And Peace Be upon Him: ‘Remorse is repentance’.

Those Who Are Remorseful About their Misbehaviour, But Still persist in it, are only jesting and remorse will not avail them. Seeking forgiveness (istighfar) means asking Almighty Allah to forgive, which in turn means his concealing the misdeed [from the eyes of others.

When Almighty Allah, by his grace, forgives a sin, he neither exposes its doer to shame nor punishes him for it, whether in this world or in the next. The highest kind of forgiveness is for Almighty Allah to place a veil, a barrier, between the servant and sins, Until it is as though he were free of them.

What Are The Conditions Of True Repentance?
Almighty Allah accepts repentance if it is sincere (If the sinner includes regret (nadam)for what was done and resolve (azm) not to do it again. If you commit a sin, then think of it as bad. You should feel ashamed of committing the sin. Convince yourself and be committed that you will not do this sin ever again. Add to this, feeling of remorse and shame together with a firm intention never to repeat the sin. The origin of repentance is turning towards Allah.

It has four conditions:
(1) Acceptance of having sinned,
(2)Regret and
(3) Intention to stop.
(4) If the sin requires compensation, then this is compulsory.

For example, a person who has missed any salah must do Qada. If the sin involves another person, the person who has sinned must fix the wrong that he or she has done to someone. If we have said bad things, slandered someone backbit someone or stolen from or hurt another in any way, we have to ask the person who is wronged for forgiveness if possible, or somehow reverse the harm.

Repentance of Sinner from Bani Israel
Abu Sa’id al-Khudri (Radi Allah Anhu) reported Allah’s Messenger (sal-allahu-alleihi-wasallam) as saying: “There was a person before you who had killed ninety-nine persons and then made an inquiry about the learned persons of the world (who could show him the way to salvation). He was directed to a monk. He came to him and told him that he had killed ninety-nine persons and asked him whether there was any scope for his repentance to be accepted. He said: No. He killed him also and thus completed one hundred. He then asked about the learned persons of the earth and he was directed to a scholar, and he told him that he had killed one hundred persons and asked him whether there was any scope for his repentance to be accepted. He said: “Yes; what stands between you and the repentance?
You better go to such and such land; there are people devoted to prayer and worship and you also worship along with them and do not come to the land of yours since it was an evil land (for you).” So he went away and he had hardly covered half the distance when death came to him and there was a dispute between the angels of mercy and the angels of punishment. The angels of mercy said: “This man has come as a penitent and remorseful to Allah” and the angels of punishment said: “He has done no good at all. “Then there came another angel in the form of a human being in order to decide between them. He said: You measure the land to which he has drawn near. They measured it and found him nearer to the land where he intended to go (the land of piety), and so the angels of mercy took possession of it.[Sahih Muslim : Book 37, Book Name Kitab Al-Tauba Number 6662]

Dua of Repentance from the Quran
… ‘O our Lord! We have wronged our souls. And if You do not forgive us and have mercy on us, we shall certainly be among the losers.’ {Surah A’raf Chapter 7: Verse 23}

Mrs. Rubina Yasmeen