return to that act in the future. If, however, you intend to go back to it whenever the opportunity arises, the repentance is invalid. Consider the example of a man who—may Allah protect us—uses his wealth to disobey Allah: he buys intoxicants with it, travels to other lands to fornicate and drink. When poverty overtakes him he says, “O Allah, I repent to You,” yet he is lying; he utters the words of repentance while planning in his mind that, if circumstances revert to what they were, he will do exactly what he did before.
This is the repentance of one who is powerless. Whether he claims to repent or not, he simply has no means to commit the sin. Some people, when stricken by poverty, say, “I have abandoned sins,” but in their hearts they resolve that if what they have lost were returned to them they would relapse into sin once more. Such repentance is not accepted, for it is the repentance of the powerless, and the repentance of the powerless does not benefit him.
The fifth condition is that the repentance occur during a time in which repentance is accepted. If he repents in a period when repentance is no longer accepted, the repentance will not help him. This is of two kinds:
- with respect to each individual himself;
- with respect to people collectively.
As for the first, repentance must take place before the appointed term arrives—that is, before death. If it occurs after the term has come, it will not profit the penitent. Allah the Exalted says: “But repentance is not [accepted] of those who persist in evil deeds until, when death comes to one of them, he says, ‘Indeed, I repent now’” (al-Nisāʾ 4:18). Such people have no repentance!
Allah also says: “So when they saw Our punishment they said, ‘We believe in Allah alone and reject what we used to associate with Him.’ Yet their belief did not benefit them once they saw Our punishment—this is Allah’s established way that has passed on…"