Tawbah Is the Sole Right of Allah: Humility, Responsibility, and Admonishing with Goodness
We may see a person’s behavior, but we do not see the whole of his life, we do not see all of his good deeds, we do not see all of his pain, and we do not know the truth within his heart.
When we encounter an offense against religion, a believer’s first response should not be to overstep Allah’s authority by making himself the judge of the offender’s heart, but should instead be to admonish oneself first — that both we and he are alike faqr, human beings in poverty before Allah.
What we can do is admonish the behavior with good manners, keep tawbah to Allah — which belongs solely to the One — separate from coercing another human being for our own sake, and keep the goal of admonishment focused on bringing a person closer to Allah, not on generating hatred or giving people a sense of satisfaction.
Yaoharee
(1) Tawbah in Islam is not merely uttering an apology, nor is it a display of remorse before others to satisfy society. Rather, tawbah is the servant’s “return” to Allah — turning the heart away from wrongdoing, forgetfulness, arrogance, misplaced standing before God, and transgression, and toward the One who owns the truth, who knows what is hidden in the heart, and who always opens the door of mercy to human beings. For this reason, tawbah is sacred, because it concerns the deepest relationship between a human being and God. No human being can possess the heart of another, and no society should turn tawbah into a stage for public humiliation, a display of defeat, or a surrender to the anger of the crowd. The core is only this: tawbah belongs to Allah, remedy is the right of the one who was wronged, and admonishment must be led by goodness and wisdom.
(2) When we say “tawbah is the sole right of Allah,” the word “right” here does not mean ownership in the human sense, does not mean possession as of property, and does not mean limiting His mercy. Rather, it means that true knowledge of the heart of the one repenting, the authority to accept tawbah, and the final judgment of a person’s inner truth belong to Allah alone. A human being may see external actions, may see the harm caused, may demand correction, and may admonish with evidence, but he cannot possess the inner truth of another person’s heart. This is a line that must be drawn clearly, because when this line blurs, the word tawbah is pulled down from the relationship between servant and God and turned into a tool humans use to control one another.
(3) The first foundation of this matter is al-Haqq, the supreme truth that belongs to Allah, and faqr, humanity’s poverty before God. Allah is the owner of complete truth, the owner of complete knowledge, and the owner of the final judgment over hearts. Human beings are limited created beings who must depend on Him for life, knowledge, understanding, and moral decision-making. Within the framework of knowledge in the temporal world, supreme truth, human poverty, God-consciousness, responsibility, and wisdom are arranged into an ethical architecture that lets a human being know his own place — and once he knows his place, he becomes more capable of taking correct responsibility for what he says and does.
(4) When this principle is applied to admonishing on the matter of tawbah, a human being must know that he can see only what is apparent, but cannot fully know what is in the heart. The Qur’an therefore warns: “So do not claim purity for yourselves; He knows best who has taqwa.” (An-Najm 53:32) The word taqwa means God-consciousness and vigilance toward God. This verse immediately places human beings back into their correct position: a person may admonish another person, but should not claim purity for himself, should not set himself up as one who knows another’s heart, and should not turn his own anger into a voice of judgment in place of God’s.
(5) Here a clear distinction must be made between admonishing with good manners and judging. Admonishment is pointing out a wrong with good intention, calling the wrongdoer back to what is right, opening a way for him to correct himself, and protecting the rights of the injured party. Judgment, on the other hand, is determining status, guilt, legal consequence, or religious consequence based on evidence, authority, and due process. Admonishment is thus a moral duty that must be carried out with manners, mercy, and self-restraint, while judgment requires evidence, knowledge, legitimate authority, and procedural justice. Those who admonish should therefore not speak or act as if they were the judge of another person’s heart, because admonishment is opening a door for return, while judgment is a ruling based on what can be proven and on rightful authority.
(6) Admonishing with good manners does not mean speaking so indirectly that the wrongdoing disappears, and a just judgment does not mean the wrongdoer must be made to feel ashamed. Good admonishment can be direct, clear, and firm, but must not violate dignity, must not accuse beyond the evidence, and must not claim to know the other person’s heart. A correct judgment may lead to serious consequences of responsibility, but must not arise from the anger of a crowd, from public humiliation, or from forcing a person to display inferiority before others. If admonishment turns into judging the heart, or if judgment turns into venting anger, then both have strayed from justice and from the manners of religion.
(7) The problem with the phrase “he should repent” therefore does not lie in the word tawbah itself, because in its general sense every human being who does wrong should turn back, repent, and return to Allah. The problem lies in the standing of the speaker before God: are we speaking as human beings in poverty before Him, or as those who possess the truth? Are we admonishing while bearing responsibility, or using religion as a tool for our own displeasure? Many times, when we say “he should repent,” we may not actually mean “he should return to Allah,” but may in fact mean “he should come back and accept our moral authority, because he has displeased us.”
(8) This condition is a displacement of one’s standing before al-Haqq — a state in which a person forgets that he is impoverished before God, and instead positions himself over knowledge, goodness, religion, and authority as an owner, rather than as one responsible for what he has received. In earlier language we might call this “ego,” but the word ego is too broad. What actually happens runs deeper: the person is not simply infatuated with himself, but is displaced from his standing before God. When the one admonishing forgets this standing, he may begin to speak as though he were the owner of judgment, the owner of goodness, the owner of religion, and the owner of another person’s tawbah.
(9) This is precisely where confusion arises between “repenting to Allah” and what might be called “repenting to us,” even though in truth there is no such thing as repentance to a human being in the same sense as repentance to God. A human being may have the right to receive an apology, the right to remedy, the right to have his rights restored, and the right to justice if he has been wronged — but none of this amounts to owning another person’s tawbah. Apologizing to a human being is a matter of repairing rights, while tawbah is a matter of returning to God. When we conflate these two things, we turn religion into the language of personal displeasure, and we let the name of Allah become a veil concealing our own wants.
(10) Calling a wrongdoer to repent remains a correct statement when it is an invitation to return to Allah, but the very same words become distorted the moment they turn into a command for him to submit to us. Admonishment is still necessary when wrongdoing, harm, or a violation has occurred, but admonishment must remain within the bounds of evidence, manners, proportion, safety, an outcome closer to good than to harm, and awareness that the one admonishing is himself still a human being in need of Allah’s mercy. Admonishment that forgets this standing is not religious courage, but a displacement of one’s standing before al-Haqq, carried out in the name of religion.
(11) The way out is neither silence in the face of wrongdoing, nor allowing a wrongdoer to hide behind the words “I have repented.” The way out is for the one who admonishes to return to standing as a human being who listens, reflects, and understands with limitations — not as one who possesses meaning absolutely. Within the framework of knowledge in the temporal world, human beings do not understand truth as owners of truth, but understand it as recipients responsible for that understanding. Applied to tawbah, this means the one admonishing may understand the visible wrong, may see the harm that occurred, and may demand remedy — but he must still speak as a limited human being, not as one who possesses another person’s heart.
(12) When the one admonishing is aware of his own poverty before Allah, and carries his responsibility appropriately, wisdom in admonishment then has a way of arising in its proper place — not wisdom in the sense of rhetorical cleverness or the ability to win an argument, but the placing of things in their correct position. Tawbah remains with Allah, remedy remains with the injured party, judgment remains with a just process, and admonishment remains within the framework of goodness. When a human being knows his own place, God-consciousness arises; when there is God-consciousness, he becomes responsible for what he says and does; and when that responsibility is firm, wisdom then appears in the form of action done in the right way and in the right direction.
(13) Responsibility in this matter is therefore not merely “speaking the truth,” but admonishing with goodness, because truth spoken without responsibility can be turned into a weapon of the displacement of one’s standing before al-Haqq. The Qur’an lays down this principle beautifully: “Good and evil are not equal. Repel evil with what is better, and then the one between whom and you there was enmity will become as though he were a close friend.” (Qur’an 41:34) This verse is not a command to close one’s eyes to evil, but a command not to let evil dictate the shape of our response. If evil is answered with humiliation, gloating, or contempt, the one admonishing may be letting evil produce another round of evil through his own hands. But if evil is answered with something better, admonishment becomes a gateway to wisdom.
(14) So, “what is better” in this verse does not mean weakness, does not mean neglecting the injured party, and does not mean trivializing the wrongdoing. It means a way of responding that rises above anger, one that does not betray truth, does not abandon justice, and does not destroy human dignity. Such goodness is the responsibility of the one admonishing, because he is not called to own another person’s tawbah, but is called to open the way back to truth with words carried by God-consciousness, justice, and mercy. Admonishing with goodness is therefore not diluting religion, but preserving religion from being reduced to merely the emotion of an angry person.
(15) Before we say “he should repent,” we should seriously ask ourselves: are we speaking as human beings in poverty before Allah, or speaking from a state displaced from our standing before al-Haqq? Are we bearing the responsibility of the words of admonishment, or using admonishment as an instrument of our own anger? Are we truly calling him back to Allah, or calling him back to submit to us? These questions are not asked merely for self-protection, but are questions that cut off the root of displacement from the very start, because if we do not examine our own standing, the word “tawbah” may change from a word of mercy into an unwitting tool of domination.
(16) The fact that someone has displeased us does not mean he must “repent to us” in the sense of submitting to our feelings. If he has violated our rights, he must take responsibility for the rights he has violated — he may need to apologize, make amends, correct the situation, clarify, or stop the harmful act — but that falls under huquq al-‘adam, the rights of human beings, not ownership over tawbah. Tawbah in its true sense is a matter between him and Allah. We may remind him to return to Allah, but we cannot force his heart to return in the form we want to see, because the heart is not a space human beings can possess, and our own satisfaction is not the condition by which God accepts anyone’s repentance.
(17) To say “tawbah is the sole right of Allah” therefore does not mean that a wrongdoer bears no responsibility for what he has done. On the contrary, true tawbah opens the door to an even deeper level of responsibility, because one who returns to Allah must also restore the rights of those he has wronged. If the wrongdoing concerns only the relationship between the human being and Allah, tawbah lies within the space of seeking forgiveness, remorse, abandoning the wrong, and changing oneself before Him. But if the wrongdoing has harmed another person’s body, property, honor, safety, dignity, or trust, tawbah before Allah does not erase the duty to make amends and restore the rights of the one who was wronged, because a genuine return to Allah cannot coexist with disregard for the rights of His servants.
(18) A clear distinction must be made between not owning another’s tawbah and not demanding responsibility. These are not the same thing. Saying that we have no right to own another person’s tawbah does not mean we must be silent about wrongdoing, does not mean the injured party must submit, and does not mean the wrongdoer need not fix what he has damaged. Islam does not teach neglect of justice, but teaches that justice be placed in its correct position. We can say, “What you did was wrong,” “You must restore the rights,” “You must apologize to the one you harmed,” “You must stop that act” — but we should be careful when saying “you must repent,” because that phrase concerns the door between a human being and God, a door of which we are not the owner.
(19) When we forget our own poverty before Allah, we may begin to speak in the name of religion with the posture of an owner, rather than someone responsible. We may speak as though our anger were Allah’s anger, as though our displeasure were proof that another person has not yet repented, and as though our desire to see him surrender publicly were a condition of religion. This is a displacement of one’s standing before al-Haqq occurring in the space of admonishment — a state in which a human being forgets his standing before God, moving himself from the position of one responsible to the position of an owner. The result is that religion becomes used as the language of power, instead of a guide to truth and mercy.
(20) Claiming tawbah through humiliating behavior — such as pressuring a wrongdoer to shave his head in public, forcing him to slap his own face, or compelling him to display abasement in front of others — must be placed under intense ethical scrutiny. If such behaviors are used to shame the wrongdoer rather than to open a way for him to return to Allah and restore the rights of the injured party, this act turns tawbah into a form of social ownership. Tawbah requires a heart that returns, not a body turned into a mark of defeat, and no human being should have his dignity destroyed just so that onlookers feel their anger has been compensated.
(21) Understanding that tawbah is a right belonging to Allah is therefore not a denial of justice, but a placing of justice in its correct position. Wrongdoing must be called wrongdoing, the injured party must be protected, violated rights must be restored, damage that has occurred must be remedied, and society has the right to demand responsibility for what is apparent externally. But none of this should turn into forcing a human being to display inner remorse before a crowd so that society feels it has won. Because the crowd’s victory does not necessarily equal the heart’s return to Allah, and defeat before society does not necessarily equal genuine tawbah.
(22) In cases where the wrongdoing affects others, correct tawbah must inevitably be linked to huquq al-‘adam. One who has harmed another with words must take responsibility for the wound to dignity and reputation. One who has violated property must return or compensate for it. One who has endangered another’s safety must stop the harm and bear the consequences of the act. One who has destroyed trust must strive to restore what was destroyed. Saying “I have repented to Allah” is therefore not sufficient if the rights of the wronged human being remain unaddressed, because true tawbah is not an escape from responsibility, but the beginning of responsibility before God and before the one who was wronged.
(23) Protecting huquq al-‘adam must also not violate another set of huquq al-‘adam. Demanding the rights of the injured party should not be turned into destroying the dignity of the wrongdoer beyond bounds. The Qur’an says: “And indeed, We have honored the children of Adam” (Al-Isra 17:70). This honor does not mean that every act is correct, but it means that even when an act is condemned, the human being who committed it should not be turned into an object of society’s gloating. Correct admonishment must distinguish between opposing the act and erasing the humanity of the one who acted. We may say that the act was wrong, harmful, and must be corrected — but we should not destroy his humanity in front of others.
(24) Admonishment that does not violate huquq al-‘adam must therefore be grounded in truth, must not accuse beyond the evidence and must not distort the wrongdoing, must be intended for correction and not for winning or destroying, must maintain proportion and not let one wrongdoing become an excuse for an excessive response, must open space for the wrongdoer to genuinely change rather than pushing him to remain stuck in his wrongdoing forever, and must not forget the injured party, because mercy toward the wrongdoer is incomplete if it becomes neglect of the one who was harmed. At the same time, justice for the injured party is incomplete if it is turned into the gratification of onlookers.
(25) In today’s world, where anger spreads quickly, calling on someone to “repent” often happens in public spaces — in communities, on social media, or in religious discussion circles. The speed of emotion often makes people demand an immediate confession, apology, or image of defeat, but Islamic ethics should not let the speed of the crowd replace the deliberation of wisdom. Justice requires evidence, context, proportion, and a method that does not create new harm, while tawbah requires a heart that turns back — not merely a mouth forced to speak in front of many people, or a body forced to display shame before the eyes of others.
(26) A public apology may be necessary in some cases, especially when the harm has occurred publicly. If an act has caused many people to misunderstand, a public clarification is reasonable. If words have harmed someone’s honor in public, a public apology may restore some measure of dignity. But these must be understood as external responsibility, not as absolute proof of inner tawbah. A public apology should aim to remedy the harm, not to stage the wrongdoer being humiliated so that society feels satisfied. This distinction matters greatly, because remedy is a moral act, while public shaming may be nothing more than anger dressed in the language of religion.
(27) The most important point is drawing a clear line between demanding responsibility and owning tawbah. We have the right to demand responsibility when a right has been violated, but we do not have the right to own anyone’s repentance. We have the right to seek justice, but we do not have the right to make our own satisfaction a substitute measure for God. We have the right to admonish, but we do not have the right to turn tawbah into surrender to a human being. The phrase “he should repent” is ethically safe only when it is an invitation back to Allah, a repelling of evil with something better, and a bearing of the responsibility of admonishment — not a command for him to submit to us.
(28) In conclusion, correct tawbah in Islam must stand on a balance between God and humanity, between mercy and justice, between forgiveness and the restoration of rights, between admonishment and the preservation of dignity. Al-Haqq lets us know that only Allah is the owner of complete truth. Faqr keeps the one who admonishes humble. Understanding our position as limited human beings keeps us from claiming ownership of meaning. God-consciousness keeps the heart vigilant over itself. Responsibility turns religious speech into admonishment carried out with goodness. And wisdom then arises as the placing of all things in their correct position. When these principles are brought together, we arrive at an ethic of tawbah that is neither soft on wrongdoing nor cruel to the wrongdoer, that does not abandon the injured party, that does not humiliate a human being in the name of religion, and that does not fall into the displacement of one’s standing before al-Haqq by violating what belongs solely to Allah — namely, the heart of a human being who is on his way back to Him.
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