Message to someone drowning Answered By Sheikh Hamed ibn Abdullah Al-Ali
Question: Respected Sheikh I would like to let you know that I have committed most major sins and I am not saying this in order to take pride in my sins; I used to feel this before but not any longer. I have drunk wine twice in my life or perhaps three times, I don’t know. I have committed adultery with almost 10 women and I was about to destroy the future of a girl but Allah saved her from my harm; I do not know is it possible that Allah accepts my repentance and forgives? I don’t know, I have tried to repent more than once and every time I return to the same sins to the degree that I have felt I am a hypocrite who is not afraid of death and being accounted. Sometimes I feel that Allah loves me and that I love Him, but then Satan quickly takes over my heart again. I have defeated Satan in many rounds, but he defeated me in more battles; Is it possible for me to return to Allah once again and how? I have prayed a lot but more than that I have interrupted my prayers. My weakness has reached points a believer cannot imagine. I have sworn upon the Holy Quran that I will stop smoking but I haven’t. I have promised Allah Himself that I will not view pornographic sites and that I will never visit them again and that I will not watch those unclean movies that the west uses to kill our faith but I have broken my promise to Allah; My will has weakened to a level that nobody can imagine after I used to have strength in performance and the ability to change my personality and my way of life; I have become a person who does not feel the pleasure of life even though I still maintain my soul and my rounds of vice, sins, lying, cheating; so how do I get rescued? I want to know what religious people have known but what I haven’t. I am sure that they know something I don’t know and don’t feel, so why? This is me so what do I do to benefit me, may Allah benefit you.
Answer: In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise be to Allah, and prayers and greetings upon our prophet Muhammad(peace be upon him) and his family and companions. The prophet (Peace be upon him) said Allah will shower his forgiveness upon whoever repents before the sun rises from the west [reported by Muslim from the hadith of Abu Hurairah] I have read your message, and I know that nothing prevents you from repenting, even if your sins reach the sky or fill the whole earth. As long as the human is in this life, the door of repentance is open. I have noted from your letter that you are living a battle between the call of faith in your heart, and the call of desire that is guided by Satan in your heart Praise be to Allah the Exalted who has retained in your heart some of the light of faith, which blames you for sins, and beautified good deeds to you. But this light is weak, because the darkness of sins, which are the blowings of Satan, has weakened this light. This is why it sometimes shines, making your conscience awake a little, only to extinguish again and you return to committing sins. I will clarify to you the illness that you are suffering from, then I will describe the treatment, so please read this with reflection and interest, may Allah benefit you from it. Dear brother, the heart is the place of will in the human; sometimes it wants good, and sometimes evil, and the body parts are nothing but soldiers that obey the heart according to what it desires. The difference between religious people and yourself is that the hearts of the former firmly want good, so their body parts obey this will and are thus persistent in obeying Allah the Exalted. As for yourself, your heart knows good and evil, and differentiates between good and bad deeds, but it cannot want good, so you find that it wants desires even though it knows they will harm it, so it commands the body parts, so they obey it, but what is the