Turning back to God (inaba)

"Turning back" (inaba) is the seventh of the stations in Madarij al-Salikin. Ibn al-Qayyim opens it by saying that whoever settles in the station of repentance and fulfils it has settled in all the stations of Islam, since complete repentance contains them; yet each is treated separately to make clear its realities and conditions. Once one's foot is firm in repentance, one moves on to turning back. ¹

Ibn al-Qayyim gathers the verses in which God commands turning back to Him and praises Abraham for it, and says that only those who turn back gain insight and reminder from His signs. On the verse of Surat al-Rum he gives two parsings of "turning back to Him": as describing the Prophet ﷺ and his community whom the verse addresses, or as describing the people who were created upon the original nature – left to their nature, they would not have swerved from turning to Him. ¹ He notes that God declares His reward and Paradise to be for those who fear Him and turn back, and the good tidings for those who turn back. ²

Ibn al-Qayyim divides it in two. The first is turning to His lordship – the turning of all creatures, shared by believer and unbeliever, righteous and wicked, as people call on their Lord, turning to Him, when harm touches them; this does not entail Islam and may coexist with shirk. The second is the turning of His friends, a turning to His divinity, of servanthood and love, which for him comprises four things: loving Him, submitting to Him, approaching Him and turning away from all else; only one in whom all four meet deserves the name "one who turns back" (munib). The word, he says, carries the senses of hastening, returning and going forward. ²

Ibn al-Qayyim quotes al-Harawi: inaba in the language is returning; here it is returning to the Truth, and it is three things – returning to Him in amendment as one returned to Him in apology, returning to Him in faithfulness as one returned to Him in covenant, and returning to Him in state as one returned to Him in response. ² Ibn al-Qayyim explains the first: the penitent returned to God by apologising and desisting, and its completion is returning through effort in His obedience – repentance with idleness avails nothing. The second: the whole religion is covenant and faithfulness; God took His covenant from the prophets through angels or directly, from the nations through the messengers, and from the ignorant through the scholars – so whoever betrays His covenant has not turned back to Him. The third: states confirm or belie words, so as the servant answered his Lord in speech he must answer Him in state; he quotes al-Hasan: "Son of Adam, you have word and deed, and your deed is closer to you than your word." ³

Ibn al-Qayyim quotes al-Harawi that returning in amendment is set right by three things: leaving behind one's liabilities, feeling pain at stumbles, and making up what was missed. He explains the pain in two ways: one's heart aches at one's own stumble, or one aches at a fellow believer's stumble as if it were one's own, without gloating. ^{3 4} Returning in covenant is set right by freeing oneself from the pleasure of sin, by not belittling the heedless – fearing for them while hoping for oneself – and by searching out the defects in one's service. ⁴ Here Ibn al-Qayyim compares the one who struggles against the pleasure of sin with the one at peace who has been spared that struggle, holding that what the peaceful one who turns back attains is greater even if the struggler does more, and citing that Abu Bakr did not surpass the Companions by the quantity of his deeds but by something established in his heart. ⁵ He explains not belittling the heedless as hoping mercy for them and fearing for oneself, quoting an early saying: "You will not have full understanding until you detest people for God's sake, then return to yourself and detest it more." ⁵ Searching out the defects of service means examining what the self's interests mix into a deed – the matter of sincerity. ⁶

Al-Harawi's own text, the rest of Ibn al-Qayyim's commentary on the third degree of turning back, and the other commentaries on the Manazil have not yet been added.