Struggling With Hidden Sin While Loving Knowledge and Teaching Others
Question: احسن الله إليكم شيخ I need your guidance on my situation. For the last few years I’ve been addicted to pornography and some other sins. Everything I do is in private, and in public I do not expose my sins because I fear I will be among mujahirūn. I have been put in a place where I need to give khutbah & classes to students at my university because of which people see me as someone who is righteous when in truth I’m far from that. If I don’t take that position, the students committee will bring in the people of Bidah who invite students for Mawlid and other sorts of innovation. I started memorizing Quran 2 years ago and I completed 4 ajza but due to sins I am addicted to—I stopped memorizing for almost a whole year now and I had forgotten most of what i memorized and my hard has become hard and I am unable to cry infront of Allah, and due to these sins I even sometimes delay some of my Salah and miss Fajr sometimes. At the same time, i love Ilm and people of Ilm and I want to seek Ilm— I attend the halaqah at my masjid, I am learning Arabic, I read books, I want to enrol in Islamic university— but there’s no plan I follow, I procrastinate most of the time, waste my time in things that bring no benefit—is this a trap of shaytan that is making me feel that loving Ilm is enough? What do I do when I’m in this situation? I have tried everything to stop the addiction but I’m unable to do so. بارك الله فيكم وجزاكم الله خيرا
Summary:
You are afflicted, not a hypocrite. You are in need of sincere striving, not despair and sitting back. Do not abandon daʿwah and goodness, rather rectify your inner self while continuing in goodness. Begin with small, consistent steps, not large decisions that collapse quickly. Allah the Exalted said: al-ʿAnkabūt, 69 " As for those who struggle in Our cause, We will surely guide them along Our Way. And Allah is certainly with the good-doers." We ask Allah to purify your heart, break the chain of sin from you, and make you guided and guiding, not astray nor leading others astray.
Answer:
In the name of Allah, all praise is due to Allah, and may Peace and Blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ)
First, what you are in is among the greatest plots of Shayṭān
Shayṭān does not suffice with causing the servant to fall into sin. Rather, he adds three dangerous matters to it, beautifying the sin until it turns into addiction, causing despair of repentance until the person sees himself as a hypocrite unfit for goodness, and preventing him from righteous deeds under the pretext that he is not worthy of them.
Allah gathered this meaning in His saying:
From the Qur'an:
- Āl ʿImrān, 175
That ˹warning˺ was only ˹from˺ Satan, trying to prompt you to fear his followers.1 So do not fear them; fear Me if you are ˹true˺ believers.
Some of the Salaf said, “No servant is commanded with a matter except that Shayṭān has two impulses in it, either toward negligence and deficiency, or toward excess and overstepping.” Some of the Salaf said, “Shayṭān has a whisper upon the heart. If Allah is remembered, he withdraws, and if there is heedlessness, he whispers.” Second, the difference between sin with hatred and open sinning Your falling into sin while hating it, concealing it, and fearing Allah is better than openly committing it, and it is evidence of the presence of the foundation of faith.
From the Sunnah:
- Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: 6069Narrated by Abū Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him):
I heard Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) saying. "All the sins of my followers will be forgiven except those of the Mujahirin (those who commit a sin openly or disclose their sins to the people). An example of such disclosure is that a person commits a sin at night and though Allah screens it from the public, then he comes in the morning, and says, 'O so-and-so, I did such-and-such (evil) deed yesterday,' though he spent his night screened by his Lord (none knowing about his sin) and in the morning he removes Allah's screen from himself."
From the Salaf:
- Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, may Allah have mercy on him, said,
“The believer commits a sin and remains fearful and apprehensive because of it.”
Fear, regret, and self reproach are signs of the life of the heart, not its death.
Third, it is not permissible to abandon goodness because of sin Your being in a position of daʿwah, and leaving it would open the way for the people of innovation, is not permissible Islamically as long as you do not display your sin and do not call to falsehood. The principle of the Salaf is that the lesser of two harms is borne to repel the greater.
From the Salaf:
- Sufyān al-Thawrī, may Allah have mercy on him, said,
“A scholar may be tested, so let that not be a reason to abandon the truth.”
What is obligatory is that you rectify your inner state while continuing in goodness, not that you abandon goodness due to your shortcomings. Fourth, the cause of hardness of the heart and forgetting the Qur’an Sins are a direct cause of hardness of the heart, forgetting the Qur’an, and weakness in worship. Allah the Exalted said:
From the Qur'an:
- al-Muṭaffifīn, 14
But no! In fact, their hearts have been stained by all ˹the evil˺ they used to commit!
Some of the Salaf said, “I disobey Allah and I see that reflected in the behavior of my riding animal and my wife.” Some of the Salaf said, “I was deprived of standing in prayer at night for five months due to a sin I committed.” This is not evidence of hypocrisy, rather it is evidence of the effect of sin, and its remedy is repentance, not sitting back. Fifth, treating addiction is not by admonitions alone but by cutting the causes From honesty with Allah is that you know, whoever says, I repent, while keeping the cause of sin, has lied to himself. Some of the Salaf said, “Whoever exposes himself to temptation and then says, O Allah protect me, has wronged himself.” From the practical treatment, Cut off every means that leads you to the forbidden, even if that costs you a weaker phone or monitored internet. Increase fasting. The Prophet ﷺ said:
From the Sunnah:
- Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: 5066, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: 1400Narrated by ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd (may Allah be pleased with him):
We were with the Prophet (ﷺ) while we were young and had no wealth. So Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "O young people! Whoever among you can marry, should marry, because it helps him lower his gaze and guard his modesty (i.e. his private parts from committing illegal sexual intercourse etc.), and whoever is not able to marry, should fast, as fasting diminishes his sexual power."
Commit yourself to a fixed portion of the Qur’an even if it is one page, with consistency not abundance. Be extremely strict in maintaining the Fajr prayer, abandoning it is the key to every evil. Keep righteous, honest companionship that knows your weakness and helps you, not one that glorifies your image. Sixth, loving knowledge is a blessing but not an excuse Your love for knowledge and its people is a great blessing, but if it does not produce action it becomes a proof against you. Some of the Salaf said, “Knowledge calls out to action. If it responds, it remains, otherwise it departs.” Do not make love of knowledge a cover for procrastination, but a motive for repentance and rectification. Do not make love of knowledge a numbing agent for the conscience, but a driver toward repentance. Seventh, the door of repentance is open no matter how many times the sin repeats Allah the Exalted said:
From the Qur'an:
- al-Zumar, 53
Say, ˹O Prophet, that Allah says,˺ “O My servants who have exceeded the limits against their souls! Do not lose hope in Allah’s mercy, for Allah certainly forgives all sins. He is indeed the All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
From the Sunnah:
- Sunan Ibn Mājah: 4250Narrated by ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd (may Allah be pleased with him):
“The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: ‘The one who repents from sin is like one who did not sin.’”
From the Salaf:
- ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, may Allah be pleased with him, said,
“There is no minor sin with persistence, and no major sin with seeking forgiveness.”
And Allah knows best.
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