I’m a sinner and I’ve sinned for years
I am 22 year old Sunni girl and I am in love with Ismaili Muslim boy. I fell in love with him last year. We started dating and soon I had sex with him. I was a virgin girl before and I really regretted after that. I cried for nights and asked for forgiveness but then again I repeated this sin over and over again and last month I even got pregnant. I was so scared what if my family comes to know about it. I went with my bf and had abortion secretly. I’m so guilty and ashamed. My parents pray regularly and they are very good Muslims. How could I do this to them. They might even consider killing me if they ever find out about my sin. I always ask for forgiveness but then I repeat it again and again. I know Zina is a major sin. After committing Zina, I realized that I’m not happy any more. Every day is a sad day for me. I don’t know what to do? Sometimes I felt like ending my life. My bf loves me a lot and his family knows about our relation but my parents would never accept him since he is Ismaili and I’m Sunni. His dad is my dad’s friend though. There are so many other sins I’ve committed beside this :'( Please help me and tell me if Allah will ever forgive me? Is there any hope for me? Am I still considered a Muslim?
As salaamu alaykum,
I understand that you’re feeling bad about yourself and that you’re worried about the state of your soul. Know this; you are still considered a Muslim. Your sins do not take you out of Islam, nor do they bar you from Allah’s forgiveness. Allah has told us:
“It is He Who accepts repentance from His servants and pardons evil acts and knows what they do.” (Surat Ash-Shura, 25)
And the Prophet (peace be upon him) tells us in essence that even if our sins equal all of the foam on the oceans of the earth, and we come to Allah asking for forgiveness, He will forgive it all.So the very important answer to your question is, YES, Allah will forgive you. It is easy for Him to forgive you because he knows what is in your heart. He knows that you feel terrible about it and that you have remorse. This fact demonstrates that you believe in Him and that you want to be closer to Him. This is the ultimate state of Islam; longing for Allah. We long for Him and to be better in ourselves because of our fitra- our true nature. Our true nature is to be pure and clean in total witnessing of Allah. We are never fully in that state as long as we are here in the dunya. But we strive to be closer to that state and that striving is what it means to be a Muslim. The fact that you are disturbed by your behavior and that you are feeling remorse is in fact a very deep state of Islam in which you often can find that you are closer to Him than many other times.
Throughout the Qur’an Allah makes mention of our tendency to sin and make trangressions in our acts; thoughts and behaviors. It is known and expected by Allah that we will make mistakes and that we will sin. Allah also makes mention numerous times throughout the Qur’an of His forgiveness. He is the Forgiver, He is the one who pardons, He is the Most Merciful. And he communicates to us many times that He will continually forgive our sins no matter how many and how persistent. All we have to do is believe in Him and remember Him. That’s it. That’s literally all we need to do in order to be forgiven and to receive His forgiveness. There are no other hoops that you need to jump through to be forgiven, only that you ask for forgiveness.
So it sounds to me like you’ve got that part covered. The next part to it is to make use of those feelings of remorse for future benefit. That is, to make the intention and commitment internally to not go back to your sinful behaviors. Not because you will lose Allah’s forgiveness, you will always have that. But for your own sake, so that you do not continue to cycle back to the same behaviors that get you to be further from your fitra and thus further from Allah. It is this cycle that creates the situation that you are feeling sad every day. So I would recommend that you focus on Allah’s forgiveness, know that you have that, and use it to motivate you to make some changes, to make the effort to better yourself and to learn to control your thoughts and actions. Counseling can help you strengthen your skills in this area, and it can be a great support in helping you pave a new way forward. It is also very important to address those thoughts that you have had about ending your life. Those thoughts are a result of the hopelessness taking over and not being put in check by the correct belief and thoughts. Namely that Allah does forgive you and that you can still be clean and pure and a good Muslim.
Of the 99 names of Allah, three of them indicate His quality of forgiving; al-Ghāfir means the Forgiver, al-Ghafūr and al-Ghaffār both indicate Allah’s qualities of empathy and the fact that He is the most forgiving and oft-forgiving. These three names occur in the Qur’an 98 times. This tells us not only that Allah is forgiving, but that he wants us to know this. Allah knows that we will sin often and he knows that we will doubt that He forgives us. So He reminds us over and over again to make it very clear that asking for forgiveness and being forgiven by Allah is a cornerstone of Islam. It is a process in which we are able to come closer to Allah. And returning to Him is the heart of the meaning of being Muslim.
Sincerely,
Your brother in sin and in repentance, your brother in Islam,
Fatima “Y”
Anonymous
I too, along with every other muslim on this planet, have sinned. You are not alone. We are not perfect and inshallah Allah will accept your asking for forgiveness. As far as relationships go, I know that when you tell your family (maybe not so much your immediate) and friends that you like this guy and you are dating, everyone is slightly accepting and it is socially accepted in our society. The hard part is taking your relationship any further than that, because as soon as you mention marriage (which should be the intention, at least, when dating someone) everyone seems to freak out, family, friends, strangers and all. They tell you to backtrack and ask yourself 1 million questions as to how and why you want to spend the rest of your life with someone. So in my own opinion, getting married for us muslims in our society has always proven to be so much more difficult than dating, and that is so absurd to me. I think that is why so many muslims just find themselves dating especially at your age. The point of this message is to say, if you can see yourself going through what you must in order do nikkah with this boy, then do it and work towards it, but if you don’t see him being worth the struggle of having your worlds collide, then what is the point of a relationship if it’s final chapter is not marriage? I know what its like to be in your shoes and I am sorry for what you have had to go through and inshallah I will keep you in my prayers, may Allah help you to be strong at this time in your life and may you not have to regret any other decisions you make. God bless you 🙂
HA18
Salaam my dear sister,
It sounds like you are in despair. You feel darkness and shame, embarrassment and fear. You feel like you will be shunned by Allah, and possibly unworthy to be loved by Allah. You did some things that you consider horrible, you had sex outside of marriage, you had an abortion, you did things that in your mind, maybe just a few years ago, you never, ever, ever, thought you would do. But you did. It’s done, and you have let it out in the open. So, now, it is time to make things better. You do not deserve to stay in this cycle of despair, hurt, and sorrow. You deserve to break free and make choices that YOU are in control of and that come from your strengths, not your weaknesses. My dear, I think you feel like you have hit rock bottom…now it is time to rise up. Instead of letting things happen TO you, you need to control what you allow to happen.
I want you to consider the following: This too shall pass.
Nothing in this world is permanent, and nothing we do has to be. As crazy as you think everything is right now, I promise you it does not have to stay this way. Of your entire existence, you have now entered a part of your life where you have become someone you never thought you would be or ever wanted to be. You have made choices that you never thought you would have to. This is an intense and scary phase in your life. Please note the use of the word “phase”. I promise you sweetheart, this WILL pass. Time will take care of everything. But it will require a lot of strength and bravery from you.
You now have a lot of choices to make: what are you going to do about your boyfriend? what are you going to do about your family? how are you going to emotionally process the abortion? how are you going to move past these feelings of darkness, sadness, and despair? How are you going to take control of your life, once more?
Taubeh is not a one-time thing, and for a situation as challenging as yours, expect to taubeh constantly to Allah. To taubeh is to constantly realize, as you have done in this post, the waterfall of things that you have done/have happened to you, and to ask Allah for forgiveness and for strength. Realize that this is too much to handle, and you need Allah to take your hand and show you the way. Teach you what to say, teach you where to go, teach you how to handle it. Make dua to allow to please take care of you, please teach you what to do, please make the path of taubeh easy for you.
The fact that you feel so alone and in despair is not your weakness, but it is your strength that you have allowed yourself to realize it/feel it. Above all it is Allah’s mercy, that instead of letting you continue down your path, you are able to see and feel regret about what is happening to you. Please know that this pain is necessary for change and the fact that change is coming means that Allah LOVES you. Allah has not let you go. Allah has already guided you to post on this site as step 1 and instead of letting you continue to wander blindly, Allah is opening your eyes and forcing yourself to ask: do I really want this for the rest of my life?
This is a large challenge and I recommend you work with a life coach or a counselor. I am not sure how your financing situation is like, how supportive your parents, or maybe your boyfriend’s parents would be of supporting you financially to work with the life coach. But either way you need to start to make a stand. You need to explain to someone, probably starting with your boyfriend and maybe even his parents, how everything is making you feel.
Keeping you in my duas. Please keep posting and letting us know how you are feeling.
Sara
This is an excellent response, but I’m surprised the part about her parents possibly killing her wasn’t addressed. Someone needs to communicate to her parents along with any like minded siblings that a violent dare I say even overly harsh response to this girl is ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE. While I strongly believe in the power of repentance (tawba) and sincere rectification (islah), a lot of us sin all the time and we try our best and pray God receives us with his grace (fadl) and enfolds us in his mercy (rahma). For her parents or even any misogynistic siblings to possibly take matters into their own hands must be prevented. If you ask me, that would be more unIslamic than anything the girl did and that would definitely throw them out of the fold of Islam. To be clear, I agree with everything Faatima has written. I work with domestic violence issues within the Muslim community so I’m very passionate about this.
Anonymous
Thank you for your input. You are right, I should have addressed this in my response.
I was focusing on what I thought the main issue was that she was reaching out about. I also generally try to focus on the things that the person writing actually has power to do something about, in order for them to feel empowered about their situation and for them too to focus on their part in it.
It is not our place to communicate to her parents, as you suggest, because this is an anonymous post and part of what makes this service effective is in maintaining that anonymity for the sake of the poster’s comfort in sharing, and often times for their safety and protection as well. Having said that I do agree with you that I should have articulated the fact that not only is this absolutely unacceptable as you put it, but that if the parents did have anything close to this type of response to her actions that it would in fact not be in line with being “good Muslims” as she deemed them. Only Allah knows whether or not they are good Muslims. I will assume the best and believe that they indeed are in many ways. But certainly if they would feel inclined to act on their disappointment and anger to such a degree as having the impetus to kill her, indeed this reaction would absolutely not be in line with “good Muslim” behavior, nor is it sanctioned by Islam to do so.
I think it’s great that you brought this up in your comment and I think this is why we have the comment function on this website. There are many angles to every situation and none of the counselors here assume to have all the answers, nor do we have the absolute right answers all of the time. Ultimately it is up to the poster to handle their own situation that they are grappling with in life. This is a community effort to provide support to individuals in their own struggles. While this is a fantastic resource it is limited in it’s function and ability to address everything fully or properly given the relative severity of each unique situation. This is why I recommended counseling for this particular poster. Because it seems that there is a lot going on that a few comments or suggestions alone cannot solve.
Your comment inshaállah will help the poster as well as other readers recognize the severity and atrocity that violent responses are and bring attention to the fact that they should not be tolerated in our communities. I thank you for your comment and for bringing attention to this important aspect and I encourage you and others to continue offering supportive and insightful comments on future posts.
Sincerely,
Your brother in Islam
“Fatima” Y