Documents of the Right Word

god but Allah; and Muhammad ‘alaihis-salam’ is the Messenger of
Allah.”)
2– To let your acquaintances and angels know that you have
become a Muslim, you say, “Esh-hadu an lâ ilâha il-l-Allah wa eshhadu
an-na Muhammadan ’abduhu wa rasûluh.” (This statement
means, “I believe and testify that there is no god but Allah; and I
believe and testify that Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm’ is Allah’s slave
and Messeenger.”)
3– To purify the heart, to attain happiness in this world and in
the Hereafter, to be immune against sorrows, disasters, maladies,
malevolence, incantation, sorcery and assaults of jinnees, and to
attain blessings, every Muslim should say through his heart (a
certain word called) istighfâr very often daily. Istighfâr means to
say, “Estaghfirullah.”
If a person obeys the Ahkâm-i-islâmiyya, (which means the
principles and commandments of Islam,) Allâhu ta’âlâ (promises
that He) will certainly accept his prayers and invocations. It is
unnecessary to repeat the word of istighfâr or the prayer of
istighfâr throughout the night, which would cost a sleepless night.
If a person does not say the istighfâr with a pure heart, or if he only
articulates it mechanically without meditating on its meaning, it
will be quite useless to him. Once a person has expressed the word
of istighfâr three times with his mouth, he will begin to say it
through his heart. Persistent oral repetition is necessary for the
purification of a heart which has become black because of its
owner’s habitual sinning. If a person earns his living through (ways
which Islam does not sanction and therefore terms) harâm, or if he
does not perform his (daily prayers that are termed) namâz, his
heart becomes pitch black. To make a heart as black as that begin
saying istighfâr, it is necessary to say the prayer of istighfâr three
times and then to say the word of istighfâr, i.e. to say,
“Estaghfirullah,” sixty-seven times.
Final Word of
TEZKIYA-I-AHL-I-BAYT (Second Part)
We have thus confuted the spiteful and blasphemous slanders
in the book Husniyya, torn the curtain behind which its Jewish
authors are hiding themselves, and divulged their hideous
purposes. The following is a brief account of the answers which an
Islamic scholar, upon coming across the Arabic books (Haqâyiq-
– 158 –