Dhul-Hijjah Preparation: amanas and towbah

Our second step in getting ready for Dhul Hijjah is returning all amanas to their owners. In fact it is a good idea to have a place close to the front door where you place all borrowed items that need to be returned, so they do not get mixed up with your things and you forget they were borrowed. Keeping items from their owners through negligence or forgetfulness is a serious matter. Take three days to go through your house for any book, clothing or appliance that is not yours. Rack your brain and go through your papers for any money you owe anyone, or that was given to you to give away as sadaqa that is still sitting around. Sadaqa money that has not been dispensed with on time will bring darkness and heaviness into the home.

The third step is towbah. Repentance from all past and present sin is vital before we go on haj. There are issues that you know of that you must deal with, there are others that you think are no big deal that you ignore and there still other deeds you don’t realize are sinful that you must find out about in order to avoid. Towbah requires that you stop the deed, that you intend to not go back to it and most importantly that you feel remorse for it. Deeds that you have stopped but are kind of proud of or vain about; you have not repented from. Deeds you boast to others about, “You should have seen how I used to dress…” you have not truly repented from. In the hadeeth about the prayer of tasabeeh the Prophet (saw) explains that it will forgive one of his sins: the beginning and the last of it, the past and the recent of it, the accidental and intended of it, the small and big of it and the private and public of it. Let us think along those lines in order to make specific istighfar.

Du’a of al Hasan al Basri:

O Allah, I ask Your forgiveness for any sin that calls for Your wrath
or brings me close to Your anger or turns me toward what You have
forbidden upon me or distances me from what You have called me to.
Send peace and blessings upon Muhammad and his family and forgive me
that sin and forgive all the believing men and women O Merciful One.

O Allah, I ask Your forgiveness for any sin that I repented to You
from making You and myself witness that I would not return to it, then
when shaytan and my nafs swerved me toward it, I concealed myself from
your servants knowing that I could not hide from you and I committed
what you had forbidden me to do. Despite that, You did not reveal my
sin to anyone;  rather You made me seem untainted with it in their
eyes, You even continued to shower me with your blessing as before,
all this through Your grace and patience…Your hilm. I ask You as You
have protected me from people’s knowledge of my deed in this world to
shield me from their knowledge of it in the Hereafter. Have peace and
blessings upon Muhammad and his family and forgive me that sin and
forgive all the believing men and women O Merciful One.