Forgiving and excusing are not the same, though often we conflate the two. We must be clear about which is which, for when we ask the only One who forgives sins to forgive us ours, there our request is truly for forgiveness. Yet implicit in His Name Al-Ghaffur is that He also excuses us, and this is something we need recognise by thanking Him. We ask for Him to excuse us as we ask Him to forgive us for sure. But one is a hope and one is beseeching.
Forgiveness is sought upon recognising that one has done wrong; it is when one recognises ones sin and then turns to Allah for that sin to be forgiven lest it be held against us. Not only are we able to achieve forgiveness, if Allah wills, but also we will be rewarded for having admitted our guilt and turned to, and thus recognised, that all power of forgiveness lies with Allah alone. If we did not transgress and then ask for forgiveness, Allah would have destroyed us and replaced us with a people who would have.
Excusing is different, almost opposite, because it says that you didn’t mean it; it was an unintentional mistake, an error that could not be helped. Allah overlooks these shortcomings, yet it is right and proper that we ask Him to overlook them and not merely expect it. This is gratitude and to ignore His favour is ingratitude. This request is in a different form from seeking forgiveness, which is bound most correctly in the ritual washing and performance of two cycles of prayer, Salatu Al-Tawbah.
Asking to be excused is admitting one’s shortcomings in an informal manner, we might say, through du’a (supplication). Forgiveness comes in where something is inexcusable; once we have exhausted our excuses there is nothing left but to resort to seeking forgiveness. We need to be careful not to be satisfied with our excuses and go away unrepentant and self-satisfied that we had, all along, a good one. We need to doubt that we had an excuse at all. We need ruthless honesty; we need to be sure when we need to be forgiven rather than simply excused, otherwise our confusion over the two will land us in deep water, and that water might well be Al-Hamim (boiling drink of the people of Hell)!
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