'To Forgive or Not to Forgive': Ibn Arabi and the Quranic

Hermeneutic of Forgiveness

Qaiser Shahzad


Abstract:
This paper investigates some problems in the Quranic theory of
forgiveness and responds to them drawing upon the work of medieval mystic, Ibn
Arabi. There arise a number of interesting problems regarding the nature, scope
and limits of forgiveness in the Quran. We have to inquire into the meaning of
forgiveness and its relationship with some other concepts like mercy etc., and
make sense of the ambivalence of the Quranic standpoint. This ambivalence is
found on various levels. Firstly, at the level of divine nature, in addition to being
Forgiver, God is also described as al-Muntaqim, the Avenger. He says that he
forgives all sins while at the same time certain sins are declared to be
unforgivable. Secondly, it emphasizes seeking forgiveness but also forbids that
for certain classes of individuals. Thirdly, it recommends forgiving but allows
retaliation. The usual non-reductionist explication would not work as we cannot
combine the apparent contradictories: All sins are forgivable; some sins are not
forgivable. Drawing upon Ibn Arabi, we can develop an interpretation that
reduces divine forgiveness to divine mercy and as the latter encompasses
everything, the second horn of the dilemma disappears and we get what can be
called eschatological optimism.

Keywords
Islam, Qur'an, Ibn 'Arabi, forgiveness, mercy, retaliation

Forgiveness is certainly one of the most important moral values the
contemporary world needs to be reminded of. A loss of this moral value underlies
the horrible situation the world finds itself in today, as far as the international and
inter-cultural relations are concerned. The Inter-disciplinary Network is,
therefore, to be congratulated for choosing this important topic as the subject for
a global congress.

Practicing Muslims everywhere refer to the Quran for spiritual and
moral guidance and their understanding of it determines their thinking and
attitude. The classical and contemporary Muslim discourse on many important
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issues, like womens rights and the relationship of Muslims with others departs
from references to Quranic texts. Therefore, we must ask what the Quran says
about forgiveness, in order to be able to understand contemporary Muslim view
of forgiveness.
In this paper I elaborate the Quranic concept of forgiveness and the way
it is understood by the Muslims. I argue that the express Quranic teachings on the
scope of forgiveness are ambivalent. The mainstream interpretation of this
ambivalence, I attempt to show, is logically and pragmatically problematic. A
plausible alternative interpretation, I argue can be worked out from the writings
of Medieval mystic-philosopher Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi (1165-1240 C. E.), who
understands forgiveness in a refreshingly new way by relating it to boundless
divine mercy.
1. Some Relevant Quranic Terms
Maghfirah and Ghufraan are the exact Arabic counterparts of
forgiveness. The former appears 28 times in the Quran while the latter is there
only once.
1
Other derivatives from the same root appear 204 times, three of
which denote God, al-Ghaafir, al-Ghaffar and al-Ghafur.
2
Ibn Arabi is of the
opinion that these three divine names connote different degrees of forgiveness:
al-Ghaffar conveys comparative degree of forgiving while al-Ghafur is
superlative, whereas the first name is an ordinary adjective. The literal meaning
of both maghfirah and ghufraan is concealing, so forgiving a sin would imply
concealing it. Afw is another Quranic word for forgiveness but it implies, erasing
or effacing, something more effectual than mere concealing.
3
Finally the word
Safh is more effectual then both previous terms as it means not to reproach.
4

Hence, the Quran mentions three degrees of forgiveness, concealing of the sin,
effacing it and not reproaching the sinner for it. Finally, Quran has two terms
corresponding to seeking forgiveness: istighfaar which is a literal Arabic
counterpart for this phrase, and taubah, repentance or, literally, returning. The
divine name al-Tawwab denotes someone who 'returns to the servants once they
have repented'.
2. Forgiveness, Retaliation and Damnation in the Quran
Key Quranic texts on forgiveness can be divided, on the one hand, into
those which emphasize and widen the scope forgiveness and on the other those
that seem to limit it.
A. Texts Emphasizing Forgiveness
An important stylistic feature of the Quran is that majority of its verses
terminate at ascribing names to God. Among these, the most frequent are the
Forgiver (al-Ghafur) and the most Merciful (al-Rahman). On almost every page
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of the Quran one would find a verse like that, though, Forgiver is sometimes
conjoined with names other than the Merciful, for instance al-shakur, al-
Haleem, al-Afuww, al-Aziz.
5

God invites people toward his forgiveness, And hasten towards
forgiveness from your lord and the Garden as vast as the heavens and the earth,
prepared for God-fearing.
6
.
a. Divine forgiveness is subject to Gods will: He forgives whom he
wills and torments whom he wills.
7

b. Secondly the Quran also emphasizes the boundlessness of divine
forgiveness when it says, despair not of the mercy of Allah, verily Allah will
forgive sins altogether.
8
This verse has been described as the most universal and
hope-inspiring verse in the Quran. And the Prophet himself is reported to have
said that he wouldnt give it up for the whole world.
9

c. In some texts the believers are asked to forgive others including those
who do not believe, that is, non-Muslims. "Say you to the faithful, let them
forgive those who hope not for the days of Allah,"
10
"Let them pardon and
overlook. Do you not love that Allah should forgive you?"
11
"So pardon them and
pass over, until Allah sends the command."
12

d. The Quran also stresses the importance of asking for forgiveness
(Istighfaar) in many places and makes it clear that a sincere act of seeking
forgiveness is followed by granting of forgiveness from the Lord. And he who
works an evil deed or wrongs his own soul
13
and thereafter begs forgiveness of
Allah on the Day of Judgement shall find Allah forgiving, Merciful;
14
And if
they, when they had wronged their souls, had come to you and begged the
forgiveness of Allah and the Messenger had begged forgiveness for them, they
would surely have found Allah Relenting, Merciful.
15

B. Texts on Retaliation and Damnation
a. The Quran prohibited Prophet Muhammed to ask forgiveness for
people belonging to a certain section of Medinan society known in Islamic
terminology as the hypocrites and told him that God is not going to forgive them
in any case. The Quran says, addressing the Prophet, It is alike to them whether
you ask forgiveness for them or not. Allah shall not forgive them, and If you
ask for forgiveness for them seventy times Allah will not forgive them.
16
At this,
the Prophet said, God has given me the choice, to ask or not to ask for
forgiveness; actually I will ask forgiveness more than seventy times for these
people.
17

b. Once the Prophet visited the grave of his mother with a number of his
companions and bitterly wept. He later told them that he had asked Gods
permission to visit his mothers grave and seek forgiveness for her but God did
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not allow asking forgiveness.
18
The Quran says, It is not for the Prophet and
those who believe to ask for the forgiveness of the polytheists, even though they
be their relatives after it has become clear that they are the fellows of the Flaming
fire.
19

c. Certain actions are also nominated by the Quran as absolutely
unforgivable sins: Verily those who disbelieve and hinder others from the path
of Allah, then die as infidels; Allah shall by no means forgive them, and surely
Allah will never forgive that aught be joined with him.
20

d. Eternal damnation in the Hell fire is mentioned in countless places in
the Quran as punishment for disbelief, intentionally killing a believer and
adultery.
21
The Quran is particularly explicit regarding severities of chastisement
(adhab) in the Hell.
3. Classical Interpretation and its Limits
It is difficult to see how the above mentioned two sets of Quranic
verses fit together. The interpreters of the Quran have always been aware of this
difficulty. The mainstream opinion attempts to understand and interpret these
injunctions in the manner statutes are interpreted. Two seemingly conflicting
statutes are reconciled by considering one of them as an exception to or
specification of the other. Therefore, chronologically earlier statute is understood
in conjunction with and subject to the latter. This approach does put forward a
coherent picture of Quranic teachings. In some cases however, this legalistic and
non reductive approach doesnt work. One such case indeed is that of forgiveness
where the conflict is between two logically contradictory statements, viz., "O my
servants who have wronged their souls, despair not of the mercy of Allah, verily
Allah will forgive sins altogether" and "Allah never forgives that partners be
associated with Him."
22

Another clear instance of apparent ambivalence regarding forgiveness
we find while comparing IX: 80 and XXX: 24 The former reads: If you ask for
forgiveness for them seventy times Allah will not forgive them (i.e. the
hypocrites) and the latter says: That Allah may reward the true men for their
truth, and punish the hypocrites if He will, or relent toward them. Lo! Allah is
Forgiving, Merciful. Despite the absolute unforgivability of the hypocrites in the
former statement, the latter makes forgiveness to the hypocrites subject to divine
will.
In the first mentioned set of verses, the mainstream interpreters suggest
that the good news of forgivability of all sins has some exceptions, one of which
is the sin of associating others with the one true God, something that is known as
al-shirk, or polytheism. This approach also literally interprets the Quranic verses
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threatening the non-believers with eternal-damnation in the Hell-fire (khulud fi
al-naar), while reserving the exodus from hell only for the believers in Islam.
23

The mainstream approach, however, is of limited use here also because it can not
do justice to the optimistic context of the first statement. The statement is
addressed not to those who believe, that is the Muslims, but to those who have
wronged themselves, which clearly is much broad. It also states that the sins
altogether, i.e. all of them are forgivable. If a class of sins is exempted then the
statement will loose all its emotional and comforting appeal. Logically, its
universality
24
would also be affected.
Therefore what we need is an approach that would explain away the
limiting statement and thus preserve the universality of the first statement, with a
view to its spirit. I believe that such an approach is to be found, not in exoteric
and legalistic commentaries of the mainstream exegetes but in the work of the Ibn
Arabi. To his views we turn presently.
4. Ibn Arabi on Forgiveness
Ibn Arabi claims that God had made him Rahim mutlaq, someone
capable of showing mercy without any delimitation.
25
This self-description would
seem less boastful if one looks towards the unusual and extraordinary emphasis
Ibn Arabi lays on divine mercy and its implications in his work. As Toshihiko
Izutsu has shown, Ibn Arabi does not understand mercy in its ordinary sense, as
an essentially emotional attitude, but as an ontological fact or the act of making
things exist.
26
Hence the raison detre of the cosmos is divine mercy. Though Ibn
Arabi recognizes that the Quranic God is God of wrath (ghadhab) as he is that
of mercy, however, he thinks that divine mercy, being boundless also covers
divine wrath.
27
It is with reference to this boundless divine mercy, as we shall see,
that Ibn Arabi refuses to accept any limitations on forgiveness.
Ibn Arabi emphasizes the role of forgiveness in the fall, basing himself
entirely on the Quran. "The descent", he writes, "is for the sake of vicegerency
not a punishment."
28
The Quranic account of human descent, unlike the Biblical
one, does not represent the fall as a punishment. According the Quran
29
man was
originally created to be the vicegerent in the earth. So the sin was not something
that spoiled the divine plane but was fully forgiven and Adam was to be sent
down on earth anyway.
Ibn Arabi points out, comparing Gods justice (i.e. punishing) and his
grace (fadhl), that the former is always exactly proportionate to the crime or
wrong whereas the reward is always far greater than the actual good deed. He
cites the Quranic words the meed of an ill-deed is like thereunto
30
emphasizing
the last words like thereunto so that no one is allowed to be excessive in taking
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revenge. Ibn Arabi says that even God himself punishes proportionately to the
misdeed but the reward he bestows is far greater.
31

Coming to the Quran Ibn Arabi notes that the fact that 113 out of 114
chapters of the Quran start with the basmala, "In the name of Allah, most
merciful, most beneficent." This is to emphasize that the Quranic message is that
of mercy. The formula, according to him mentions divine mercy twice explicitly
(al-Rahman and al-Rahim) and once implicitly in the name Allah. This last name
encompasses all divine names, the merciful being one of them.
32
In so far asThis
is Ibn 'Arabi's solution to ambivalence in so far as the divine nature itself is
concerned.
Forgiveness is given a literal interpretation by Ibn Arabi, however, his
literalism engenders a more tolerant and humane understanding than the
literalism of the exoteric scholars. Ibn Arabi, mentions that since forgiveness
means concealing, God conceals, that is, protects human beings from either the
punishment for a sin committed or other wise against sinning in the first place. At
one place he adds that when God forgives he even makes people forget their own
previous sins and that this is the real and perfect forgiveness.
33
At another place,
he explains why it is that God only conceals the sins instead of wiping them out.
Concealing the sins is for the sake of replacing them with goodness afterwards.
34

Concerning the Quranic statement verily God forgives sins altogether, Ibn
Arabi asserts that it promises absolutely unqualified forgiveness for everyone,
forgiveness is not subject either to repentance or to wholesome deeds, nor limited
to some specific place (i.e. it is not specific to paradise). Furthermore, no sins are
exempted, "so there is no escape from extensive mercy and forgiveness for the
one who has wronged himself."
35
He has also noted in regard to this verse that it
promises forgiveness to sinners who are aware of their actions being sins, so
those who dont intend sins but only want to gain proximity to God through
actions which in fact are sinful must a fortiori be forgiven. One such group
consists of the polytheists who worship other deities besides Allah. As Ibn Arabi
understands it, they can be excused since their mistake consists not in denying
divinity but in placing it where it does not belong.
36
These people are treated at
length at various places in Ibn Arabis major work and he presents a number of
exonerations for them. As for the fact that the Quran has threatened the
polytheists with damnation Ibn Arabi makes a distinction between being in hell
and suffering chastisement
37
and says that damnation in the hell though implies
the former, it doesnt necessarily imply the latter. Hence, actually there are no
unforgivable sins in Ibn Arabis religious philosophy. As he says, God will
include everyone in His Mercy, for "Gods mercy takes precedence over His
wrath."
38
Ibn Arabi is not the first or only Muslim scholar who argued against
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eternal damnation but no one has gone the extent he goes in order to show that
the everything ends up at divine mercy and forgiveness.
Conclusion
We have seen how keen Ibn Arabi is to show that Gods mercy and
consequently his forgiveness knows no limits. Ibn Arabis theory of forgiveness
would not stop at that as he considers Godlikeness to be the greatest objective
humans should aspire to achieve.
39
Hence the message of forgiveness is not only
a message of hope for human beings but it is should also be seen in the context of
the ethics of godlikeness. Human beings must strive to assume the character-traits
of God like mercy and forgiveness.

Notes

1
The Qur'an, Chapter II verse. 285. In the references to Qur'an we first give
chapter number in Roman and then verse number, in Arabic numerals.
2
See M Ibn 'Arabi, Al-Futuhat al Makkiyyah, Dar Sadir, Beirut, no date. Volume
IV, p. 215.
3
See M al-Ghazali, Al-Maqsad al-Asna, Dar El-Machreq Editeurs, Beirut, n.d., p.
155.
4
The word occurs in the Quran in II: 109, XLIII: 89 and XV: 85. For
explanation of meaning see R Isphahani, Al-Mufradaat fi Ghareeb al Qur'an, Dar
al-Qalam, n.d., vol. II, p. 583.
5
These four epithets can be respectively seen in the Quran for example at XLII:
23, II: 235, IV: 99 and XLVII: 2.
6
Ibid., III: 133.
7
Ibid., II: 284.
8
Ibid., XXXIX:53.
9
A Bayhaqi, Shuab al-Iman, Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, Beirut, 1990, V: 423.
10
The Qur'an, XLV: 14.
11
Ibid., XXIV: 22. Compare with the Gospel: "For if you forgive men their
trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you." Mathew, VI: 14.
12
Ibid., II: 109. The usual exoteric interpreters understand by the word amr,
(command) the permission to wage a war upon the enemies of Islam, which came
with the revelation of (XXII: 39). See, for instance, Ibn Katheer, Tafseer, I: 383.
However, we would prefer the alternative interpretation which takes the word
"command" to mean "the day of resurrection" and "Allah will judge between
them on the Day of Resurrection concerning that wherein they differ (II: 113).
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13
For an excellent study of this important Quranic concept, cf. G Hourani
"Injuring oneself in the Quran in the light of Aristotle," in his Reason and
Tradition in Islamic Ethics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985, pp.
49-57.
14
Qur'an, IV: 110.
15
Ibid., IV: 64.
16
Ibid., respectively, LXIII: 6 and IX: 80.
17
M. Bukhari, Al Jami al Sahih, Kitab al-Tafseer.
18
The report is found in Muslim Sahih, Kitab al Janaaiz, Baab Istidhaan al-
nabiyy, Dar al Jeel, Beirut, n.d. III: 65. Classical commentators generally pass the
important issue why someone who died before Muhammed (peace be upon him)
received revelation is a non-believer.
19
The Quran IX: 113
20
Ibid, respectively XLIII: 34 and IV: 48.
21
See Ibid., for example: XXV: 69.
22
See Ibid., respectively XXXIX: 53 and IV: 48.
23
See for example J. Tabari (839-923 A.D.) who is of the opinion that the
polytheists who die before repenting are not included in this verse, Jaami al-
Bayaan, Muassassat al-Risaalah, Beirut, 2000, 21: 310. Also see Ibn Katheer
(1302-1373 A.D.) who says: it is wrong to take this verse to imply forgiveness
without repentance, for polytheism is not forgiven unless repented. Tafseer al-
Quran al-Azeem Dar Taybah, Madinah, 1999, VII: 106.
24
S. Aalusi (1802-1854 A.D), a later commentator on the Quran has mentioned
17 reasons for taking the verse in a universal and absolute sense. See his Rooh al-
Maaani, Dar Ehia al-tourath al-Arabi, Beirut, 2000, XXIV: 367-368.
25
Futuhaat, III: 431.
26
See T Izutsu, Sufism and Taoism: A Comparison of Key Philosophical
Concepts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p.116.
27
See Ibid., 117. On such occasions (e.g. II: 281) Ibn Arabi quotes the saying of
Prophet Muhammed to the effect that God said My mercy takes precedence over
My wrath. The saying is found in al-Bukhari, al- Sahih, Kitab al-Tawhid.
28
Al-Futuhaat, III: 50.
29
Quran, II: 30.
30
Ibid., XL: 40.
31
Ibid., III: 7.
32
Futuhat Makkiyyah, III: 9.
33
Ibid., II: 491.
34
See, Ibid., IV: 240.
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35
See Ibid., IV: 303.
36
See Ibid., III: 309.
37
See Ibid., III: 75-76.
38
Ibid., III: 263.
39
I have expounded Ibn Arabis theory in my article Ibn Arabis contribution
to the ethics of divine names, Islamic Studies, 43: 1 (Spring 2004), 5-38.

Bibliography

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2. Bayhaqi, A., Shuab al-Iman, Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, Beirut, 1990.

3. Ghazali, A., Al-Maqsad al-Asna, Dar El-Machreq Editeurs, Beirut: n.d.

4. Hourani, G., Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, ?

5. Ibn Arabi, M., Al-Futuhat al Makkiyyah, Dar Sadir, Beirut, n.d.
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Qaiser Shahzad is associated with Islamic Research Institute, International
Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He is author of Ibn 'Arabi's
contribution to the Ethics of Divine Names (Islamabad, 2004).