Question:
How is it that someone who prays five times a day, who is a Hajji, who reads Qur’an every single day, who probably never after his youth took a penny from anyone that he did not deserve or earned, who always respects and yields for the rights of others to the degree that he even hurts himself and his family, who always gives Zakat, who always helped the poor, who met with Shayhk Hisham once, finally in his late old age ends up killing someone and going to the prison for decades? Was this person a hypocrite, or Khafir? Is it to punish him for somethings he might have done during his youth? Or maybe was he psychologically/genetically unstable? What is the strongest dua you have to help him? Keep reading Esmaul Husna?
Answer:
wa `alaykum salam,
As the shuyukh of tasawwuf have explained, it is not sufficient to observe the five pillars of Islam and that is it. Islam also consists of tarbiyyah – discipline of the nafs and that is something that cannot be achieved by oneself, but requires the guidance of a guiding Shaykh of the Sufi Path. Without that, as Mawlana Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani has often explained, one moment’s “slip” by the ego can end in disaster. For that reason he teaches us to recite, as the Prophet (s) used to always recite, Allahuma la takilna ila anfusina tarfata `aynin wa la aqal min dhalika, “O Allah do not leave us in the hands of our egos for the blink of an eye or even less than that,” for the nafs of human beings is the companion of shaytan in seeking to plot the overthrow of the ruh, soul, from its station governing the Throne of the heart.
Having commited the sin of killing someone, while one of the kaba’ir does not make him a kafir. This is the ruling of the majority of the scholars of Islam (See “Not Praying: Major Sin or Nullifier of Islam? ” at “Sunni Path”. Let him recite the du`a of the Saint of Rajab, who despite having killed many people, was forgiven and granted sainthood, to the surprise of all the Sahaba.
And Allah knows best His Affairs,
Taher Siddiqui
