Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Repentance: The Cradle of Mercy

This book before you is a memorandum of more than twenty meetings filled with moral teachings from those Tuesday nights, nights that bring good and beautiful memories. I hope you will be lucky to make full use of the discussions of this book that address us with new forms in the circle of repentance and go deep into our consciences to move the feelings of goodness in our souls.

Author(s): Allama Husayn Ansariyan

Translator(s): Abdullah al-Shahin

Publisher(s): Ansariyan Publications - Qum

Table of Contents

Introduction 6

Notes 7

The Divine Gifts and Man’s Responsibility 8

1. The abundance and capacity of blessings and talents 8

2. The way of getting blessings 8

3. Aiming at blessings 9

4. Being grateful for the blessings 9

5. Warning of being ungrateful for blessings 11

6. Infiniteness of blessings 11

7. Those grateful for blessings 13

8. Badness of wasting blessings 14

9. Stinginess and not spending blessings 15

10. Disappearance of blessings 15

11. The completing of blessings 16

12. The reward of the lawful spending of blessings 17

Notes 19

Guilt and the ways of curing it 20

The key of peace 20

Guilt is a disease 20

Despair is disbelief 21

Curer 22

Repenting is a prompt duty 26

Repentance is an ethical obligation 28

Notes 30

Turning to Allah 31

Sins and the ability to repent 31

A wonderful tradition on the authority of Allah over people 32

We have inherited repentance from our father Adam and mother Eve 33

Sins 35

The bad results of sins 36

The way of true repentance 38

True repentance in Imam Ali’s view 38

Each sin has a special repentance 39

1. The Satan 40

2. The worldly life 41

3. Plagues 42

The gift of Allah to the real repentant 42

The holy Qur'an and repentance 43

1. The command of repentance 43

2. The way of the real repentance 43

3. Accepting repentance 44

4. Turning away from repentance 44

5. There as on of not accepting repentance 45

The traditions and the matter of repentance 45

The advantages of repentance 47

Notes 48

Stories of Repentant People 49

The ideal woman 49

The repentance of Sha’wana 50

Repenting in the battlefield 51

The repentance of the Jew young man 51

A nomad repenting of disbelief and polytheism 52

The repentance of shaqeeq al-balkhi 52

The angels and the sins of the repentant 53

A sinful one and the time-limit of repentance 53

The sinful and the hope of repentance 53

The truthful one and the repentant one 53

The neighbor of Abu Baseer 53

The repentance of the thief 54

Repentance and beseeching 56

The drunkard and repentance 56

Expensive weeping of the repentant 57

Showing repentance and solving problems 57

The wonderful morals and the more wonderful end 58

Repentance of the gravedigger 59

The repentance of fudhayl al-ayyadh 61

Three repentant Muslims 62

Repentance of al-hurr bin yazeed ar-riyahi 63

Repentance of two brothers at the last hours of ashura 67

Repentance of Yousuf’s brothers 70

Repentance of the island dweller 72

Al-Asmaei and the repentant bedouin 73

Truthfulness that causes repentance 74

Wonderful repentance 74

Repentance of Bishr al-Hafi 75

The repentant will be in paradise 75

Repentance of Abu Lubaba 76

Repentance of the blacksmith 76

Repentance of the people of Younus 77

Repentance of the young prisoner 79

Repentance of one of tyrant’s assistants 79

Wonderful repentance 79

Repentance due to a meaningful sentence 80

Wakefulness of ar-Rasheed’s son 82

Repentance of the magus 84

Repentance and peace with the truth 85

Notes 86

The Abundant Profits of Piety and Godliness 88

Man and his tendencies and desires 88

The great jihad 91

The way of reform 92

The matters related to reforming oneself 97

Ibn Sereen and interpreting dreams 98

Divine wealth and abundant knowledge 98

Waking of the young man 99

The young worshipper 99

Saint Pouria and his jihad against desires 100

Seizing the opportunity 102

The moral beauty and purifying the soul from vices 103

People of guidance and success 104

Believing in the unseen 104

Allah the Almighty 105

The Angels 108

Barzakh 109

The day of resurrection 111

The accounting 114

The scales 117

Paradise and Hell 118

Prayer 120

Spending 122

A wonderful story on charity and spending 124

Being kind to father and mother 127

Being charitable to the kin 128

Being kind to the orphan 129

Being kind to the needy 130

Courteous saying 131

Imam as-Sadiq (as) when talking about this verse 132

Sincerity 133

Patience 134

Lawful wealth 135

Piety 136

Charity and benevolence 137

Ghairat 138

Taking lessons 138

Goodness 139

Learning 139

Hope and expectation 140

Justice 141

Vices and bad deeds 142

Lying 143

Accusation 144

Backbiting 144

Scorning and mocking 145

Oaths 145

Impermissible lusts 145

INJUSTICE AND OPPRESSION 146

Anger and violence 147

Spite and hatred 147

Stinginess 148

Monopoly 149

Being fond of the worldly life 149

Treason 150

Drinking intoxicants 151

Cursing and abusing 152

Wasting and squandering 152

Cheating 153

Usury 153

Causes of perishment 154

Pride and haughtiness 154

Notes 155

Summary 160

Notes 162

Introduction

When the aggressive war1 broke out, I went to the front to carry out my legal duty, due to my responsibility. There I was lucky to be surrounded with a moral sphere, and I made the acquaintance of those of luminous faces, divine souls, and holy personalities.

Some believers of understanding suggested that I might, on the days when the fronts became quiet and when the mujahidin came back from the way of love to Tehran to do some tasks, hold a meeting of gnostic discussions according to the holy Qur'an, the Prophet’s Sunna and the traditions of Ahlul Bayt (as). We would meet with those pure hearts and luminous faces in a circle of faithful friendship. We confirmed the divine knowledge, and were supplied with the moral provision that was necessary for the fields of fighting.

I could not but accept this suggestion. The weekly meeting’s time was appointed; it was on Tuesday night every week.

In the beginning, the number of attendants was not more than twenty men. The meeting began with offering the prayer congregationally in a moral and divine state, and then mentioning some questions and researches on the divine knowledge. We finished the meeting with the retelling of the Tragedy of Abu Abdullah al-Husayn (as)2 . Gradually the attendants spread the news of the meeting. Other men joined the twenty men that gave the meeting a special moral sphere. This meeting was different from all the other meetings. It had notitle, no name, and no certain etiquette. It had no chairman, no chief or subordinate. It was full of love, longing, unity, and sincerity. They all came to the meeting for the sake of Allah, sat for the sake of Allah, talked and listened for the sake of Allah. Nothing was felt in this meeting save love and passion.

The attendants increased to about one thousand men. I was bound to attend the meeting on Tuesday nights, even if I was in the farthest point of Iran, and so were the other participants. The mujahidin, who were in the south and the west of the country, also got permission from the military leadership to come and participate in this meeting of love.

I thought that this meeting of love and sociability would continue for many years, but fate made a group of the best of the participants of this meeting be martyred, and the Ba’thi3 enemy captured another group. The number of the martyrs and the captives from among the participants of the meeting became so high that I could not bear to see their places empty, and the new attendants could not fill the places of those dear ones; I could not but leave the meeting with a sad heart and teary eyes. Therefore, that meeting stopped forever. I am still, until this day on which I am writing these lines, hoping to find men like those dear ones but I have not found ones like them nor do I think that I will in the future.

Many subjects were discussed in the meeting: repentance, loving the truth, the day of resurrection, and gnosticism. Fortunately, all those discussions were recorded on cassettes, and, after some years, I got some of those cassettes by my two sons, Muhammad and Ameer. The discussions in those cassettes were about repentance. They suggested that I write down the discussions and then present them in a book to the people. This book before you is a memorandum of more than twenty meetings filled with moral teachings from those Tuesday nights, nights that bring good and beautiful memories. I hope you will be lucky to make full use of the discussions of this book that address us with new forms in the circle of repentance and go deep intoour consciences to move the feelings of goodness in our souls.

Husayn Ansariyan

Notes

1. The war between Iraq and Iran.

2. Imam al-Husayn (as) is the third infallible Imam of the Shia. He has been martyred on Ashura 61 A.H in the land of Karbala.

3. Ba’th was the ruling party in Iraq.