when it wandered off; his food and water disappeared with it, and he was left alone in a desolate wilderness with no one to help him. He searched but could not find it, so he lay down beneath a tree, expecting death and waiting for Allah to take his soul. While he was in that state—hovering between life and death—suddenly the camel’s halter became caught on the very tree above him. He seized it and cried out, “O Allah, You are my servant and I am Your Lord!” He intended to say, “You are my Lord and I am Your servant,” but his overwhelming joy led him to misspeak. The Prophet ﷺ said, “Allah is more delighted with His servant’s repentance than this man was at the return of his mount.” Such joy is beyond human comprehension: a man about to die, stripped of his wealth, his food, his drink, and his camel, then finds it standing beside him—no one can imagine the intensity of that happiness. Yet Allah is even more pleased with a servant’s repentance than that man was with his camel.

Consider what Allah says here: “So whoever receives an admonition from his Lord and desists, he may keep what has passed” (2:275). All praise is due to Allah. This means that a person who has been consuming usury, once an admonition from his Lord reaches him and he stops, will have all his previous dealings forgiven; he will not be held accountable for them—his affair rests with Allah.

However, if the admonition reaches him while people still owe him usurious sums, he must cancel those debts. He is obliged to relinquish them because Allah said, “he may keep what has passed,” whereas anything outstanding is not his to claim. For this reason the Messenger of Allah ﷺ proclaimed during the Farewell Pilgrimage—a declaration valid until the Day of Judgment—“All usury from the Days of Ignorance is abolished.” That is, every usurious transaction practiced in the pre-Islamic era is null and void. Some of the Prophet’s own relatives had engaged in such dealings before Islam. Were they exempt from cancelling those claims? Certainly not. Hence he announced, “The first usury I abolish is that of al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib.” And what was the relationship of al-ʿAbbās to the Prophet? He was his uncle—the first