Ramadan: The Second Ten Days of ‘Istighfar’

Tooba Khokhar, Cambridge

Water is the great sustainer of life – whether in the vast oceans or in a glistening drop of dew. It is little wonder that our ancestors, men and women who found holiness in the forests and boughs, built temples to invoke rain from the Divine so that the earth around them would blossom and bear fruit and be ever fresh.

In the spiritual landscape of the Holy Qur’an, our guidebook for life, rain signifies boundless mercy and grace from the Most Gracious, Ever Merciful. In chapter 71, verses 11-12, we read

And I said, ‘Seek forgiveness of your Lord; for He is exceedingly Forgiving.

‘He will send down rain for you in abundance,’

So, we are told to follow a different path in seeking the bounties of the Divine. The key to attaining the showers of Divine blessing is not in constructing temples of stone, but in building a shrine in the heart. A shrine of istighfar.

We are now in the holy month of Ramadan, traditionally divided into three parts. The second of which is devoted to istighfar. What is istighfar? This word is often translated as forgiveness, or as the act of seeking it. However, this rendering does little to convey the full depth and breadth and richness of meaning contained in this Arabic term.

One aspect of istighfar is certainly seeking forgiveness for the little and not so little wrongs we do, the countless ways in which we err; for the sins we are scarcely even aware of and for those whose memory overwhelms us. The Qur’an in this respect has a clear message. God addresses His Servants in chapter 39, verse 54, stating

Say, “O My servants who have committed excesses against their own souls! despair not of the mercy of Allah, surely Allah forgives all sins. Verily He is Most Forgiving, Merciful.

The Qur’an highlights how in doing wrong it is not the Divine we are wronging but our own heart and soul we are discomfiting. However, our feebleness is contrasted with the infinite mercy of the Divine, a message expressed beautifully by the Holy Prophet (may the peace and blessings of Allah be on him) who is reported to have said:

Allah, the Exalted, has said: ‘O son of Adam! I shall continue to forgive you so long as you call on Me and hope for My forgiveness whatever your faults may be. I care not, son of Adam, even if your sins should pile up to the sky and you should supplicate Me for forgiveness, I would forgive you. Son of Adam! If you come to Me with an earthful of sins and meet Me, not associating anything with Me, I will certainly grant you as much pardon as will fill the earth.’i

It is this immense and infinite mercy we invoke. The Promised Messiah and Imam of this Age (on whom be peace), wrote how “ghafara, from which [the word] istighfar has been derived, means ‘covering’ or ‘suppressing.’ In other words, istighfar means that Allah may suppress the sins of someone who has immersed himself in His love and may not permit the roots of humanness from being exposed”.ii

Indeed, istighfar is not just about seeking forgiveness from God, rather it is an attitude to the Divine, a way of understanding our place in the grand scheme of the cosmos. The Promised Messiah (on whom be peace) further wrote that

…the meaning of Istighfar is that God should cover up the natural weakness of the supplicant with His power. This meaning is then enlarged to include the covering up of a sin that has been committed, but the true meaning is that God should safeguard the supplicant against his natural weakness and should bestow upon him power from His power, and knowledge from His knowledge, and light from His light.

Having created man, God has not become separated from him, but as He is man’s Creator and the Creator of all his external and internal faculties, He is also All-Sustaining, that is to say, He safeguards with His support everything that He has creatediii

So, istighfar is not an individual act of repentance, rather an acknowledgement of our intrinsic need for God and our desire to draw our strength from Him. “As God has bestowed upon man from the beginning, tongue, eyes, heart, and ears, etc.” writes the Promised Messiah, “so He has bestowed upon him from the beginning the desire for Istighfar and has made him feel that he is dependent upon God for help”.iv

Elsewhere, he describes istighfar as a kind of medicine, explaining that it is an ‘elixir’ that counters the ‘poison’ of negative impulses that arise from our baser selves. So, istighfar is both prevention and cure – working to wipe out the stains of past errors and to guard against future ones, by illumining our souls with Divine Light.

This is why istighfar is the key to bringing down rain that both purifies our souls and makes our hearts’ desires appear before our eyes in the form of endless blessings. For it is a comprehensive philosophy of both repentance and acknowledgment of our need for the Divine, and our nothingness before His Grace. It is this which brings about the rain that means the garden of faith is never barren, rather ever more verdant and filled with the sweetest, most colourful, and most comforting fruits.

i Gardens of the Righteous, p. 320. URL: https://www.alislam.org/library/books/GardensRighteous.pdf

ii Essence of Islam, Vol. II. p. 242 URL: https://www.alislam.org/books/Essence-2.pdf

iii Ibid, p. 242 iv Ibid, p. 243