Is My Repentance From Acts of Disbelief Valid, and Am I Still Muslim?

Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Question

I went through a period of baseless misgivings about disbelief, and I am convinced that in my desperation, I committed certain acts of disbelief. I am very sad. If someone commits such an act, repents, and later becomes convinced it never happened, though it did, is the repentance and the faith nullified? If a Muslim later realizes a past act was disbelief, must the testification of faith be renewed, and was he a Muslim in the meantime? Is a general repentance enough, covering what is known, what is forgotten, and what one did not recognize as disbelief? If a person repents but feels no remorse and wishes he did, is the repentance valid, and must remorse remain for life? And as someone who reads and wants to keep learning, should I worry that studying more will expose me to further danger?

Answer

In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate.

You have carried this fear for a long time, and you do not owe anyone an apology for asking about it.

You are a Muslim. Nothing you have described has taken you out of Islam, and none of it asks you to go back and investigate your past. Our tradition has already answered every one of these questions in your favor. Here they are in order, as you asked.

A Mistaken Memory Does Not Undo a Repentance Already Made

One. No, on both counts. A repentance that was made is made, and a later mistake about the facts does not reach back and undo it. Faith does not lapse whenever the memory of it goes unclear. Ibn Abidin (Allah have mercy on him) gives the Hanafi rule: “What is known with certainty to be apostasy is ruled to be so, and what is only doubted to be apostasy is not ruled to be so, since established Islam does not depart through doubt.” [Ibn Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar] Read that slowly, because it is about you. Your Islam is the established thing. Your fear is the doubt. The doubt does not win.

You Were a Muslim the Whole Time, and Nothing Here Needs Renewing

Two. You do not need to renew the testimony of faith (shahada), and you were a Muslim throughout that interval. The Hanafis begin from the principle that nothing takes a person out of faith but a denial of what brought him into it, and a suspicion arriving years later about something long past denies nothing. Ibn Nujaym (Allah have mercy on him) records the standing instruction to every scholar who is asked such a question: “If a matter admits of several aspects that require a verdict of disbelief and one single aspect that prevents it, the mufti must incline to the aspect that prevents the verdict of disbelief, thinking well of the Muslim.” [Ibn Nujaym, al-Bahr al-Raiq] The jurists set aside only the man who says outright that he intends the disbelieving sense, and nothing in your letter resembles him. A scholar is bound to read your case charitably. You are not entitled to a harsher verdict on yourself than a scholar is permitted to give. So leave your shahada alone, and leave that interval alone.

One General Repentance Covers What You Forgot and What You Never Recognized

Three. Yes, and a general repentance is exactly what you should make, once. Repentance never required you to itemize anything. Imam Nawawi (Allah have mercy on him) writes that one “must repent from all sins, and if he repents from some of them, his repentance is sound, in the view of the people of truth, from that sin, and the remainder stays upon him.” [Nawawi, Riyad al-Salihin] If repenting from a single sin is sound for that sin, a repentance that intends everything is sound for everything, the forgotten and the unrecognized, along with the rest.

Then there is everything that was never written against you to begin with. The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “Allah has passed over, for my sake, what my community’s breasts have whispered to them, so long as they do not act on it or speak it.” [Bukhari] What stayed inside your chest was never recorded. What did not stay there, your repentance has already covered. Between the two, there is nothing left over for you to look for. He also said, “Do you not know that Islam demolishes what came before it, that the emigration demolishes what came before it, and that the pilgrimage demolishes what came before it?” [Muslim]

Grief Is Enough; You Are Not Required to Keep Manufacturing Remorse

Four. The repentance is valid, and the feeling does not have to stay with you for the rest of your life. Remorse is not an emotion you are asked to produce on demand. Imam Ghazali (Allah have mercy on him) defines it plainly: “If the loss came about through his own act, he grieves over the act that caused it, and this pain of his, on account of his act that lost him what he loves, is called remorse.” [Ghazali, Ihya Ulum al-Din] You wrote that you are very sad, and that you wish you felt remorse. That grief and that wish are the thing itself. You have been searching for something you were holding the whole time. What comes after it is turning away and meaning not to go back, and you have done both. A sin repented from is as though it had never been. You are not asked to keep feeling it, and you are certainly not asked to keep checking whether you feel it.

The Threshold for Disbelief Is Public Knowledge, Not a Private Fear

Five. No. And the rule as it reached you is not the rule. A verdict of disbelief by denial attaches to what is known of the religion by necessity, and Ibn Hajar al-Haytami (Allah have mercy on him) sets that threshold as something “definitive and well known, such that it is not hidden from ordinary people who keep the company of scholars.” [Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, al-Fatawa al-Hadithiyya] He adds that such people know it straight off, without having to reason their way to it. That is a public standard, not a specialist one, and study does not add to it. Learning more about your religion only fastens you more firmly to what is already on that list. So keep reading and keep studying, and let this fear go with the others.

Think Well of Yourself, the Way a Scholar Is Bound To

Six. Yes to both. A Muslim who loves Islam and wants to remain a Muslim should never call himself a disbeliever, and should read his own case in the best light it admits. Calling yourself a disbeliever is not humility, and it is not caution. It is a verdict, and you are no more entitled to pass it on yourself than a scholar would be entitled to pass it on you. Nor is there anything here left for you to worry about. Thinking well of yourself in this is not a leniency you are inventing for your own comfort. It is the ruling.

What to Do Now

What to do now is short. Make one general repentance, in your own words, for everything known and unknown, and then treat the matter as closed. Do not renew your shahada. Do not compile a list. Do not test yourself. When the thought arrives, and it will, say “la ilaha illa Allah” once, without arguing with it, and go back to whatever you were doing. Keep your prayers, and keep learning as you have been.

This has weighed on you for a long time, and it is worth speaking to a qualified doctor or counselor about the distress itself. That is care for your well-being, and it says nothing about your faith.

Allah says: “Say, ‘O My servants who have committed excesses against their very selves, despair not of the mercy of Allah: Verily Allah forgives all sins soever: Truly He is the All-forgiving, the All-compassionate.'” [Quran 39:53; Keller, The Quran Beheld] That verse came down for people who were certain they had gone too far. They had not. Neither have you.

And Allah knows best.

Faraz Rabbani

 

Related Answers

• What Is the Ruling for Someone Who Has Thoughts of Disbelief Without Saying Them Aloud? — Draws the line between an intrusive thought and a held conviction, the same distinction this answer rests on.
• Do I Need to Repeat My Shahada If I Felt Unsure of Faith in Islam for a Brief Period? — Answers the shahada-renewal question directly, for anyone who wants it addressed on its own.
• How Can I Tackle My Scrupulous OCD Thoughts? — Practical guidance for the waswasa pattern underneath this whole letter.
• The Conditions of Repentance — Lays out what repentance actually requires, useful background for the remorse question here.