Believers are required to reflect on their actions and hold themselves accountable

As a believer, you must reflect on your shortcomings, hold yourself accountable, and ask Allah for forgiveness.

To put this in context, we read a beautiful story in the Quran about a prophet-Yunus( AS). Yunus was sent to his people to call them to the Towheed( the ones of Allah).

After preaching to them for many years, he failed to convince them. One day, he got angry with them, and without Allah’s permission, he decided to leave them alone, thus abandoning the mission of delivering Allah’s message to the people.

Allah’s Prophets are patient and hardworking and never give up on their mission, but Prophet Yunus( AS) did that — he gave up and ran away.

On his travels to escape his people, he boarded a ship. This ship was overloaded and carrying an excess load at the time. While sailing in the middle of the sea, a storm came along, and the ship ran into trouble; the ship’s captain suggested that the only way to save the ship was to reduce its load.

People started to offload their belongings, but the problem persisted despite getting rid of substantial weight. Then, the people suspected that the problem was beyond excess load, and someone among the passengers must be guilty of something.

To find the guilty so that the rest could be saved, the people onboard the ship decided to draw lots(a practice that is prohibited in Islam). Three times out of three, Prophet Yunus lost the lot, so he was thrown overboard to save the rest.

While hopelessly drowning in the raging sea, Allah the Most High sends a whale to swallow him. In the dark, hot, unpleasant belly of the whale, prophet Yunus starts to reflect on the course of actions that led him to find himself in the belly of a whale in the middle of the ocean.

Although he made a mistake- running away without the permission of Allah, he is, after all, a prophet, a guided person and a man of upright character. He starts calling Allah, praising him, glorifying him and admitting his mistakes. See (Surah As-Saffat, 37:139–148) and Surah Al-Anbiyaa’, 21:87–88).

Allah the Most High accepts sincere duas, and prophet Yunus’s dua was indeed sincere. The whale was ordered to vomit him at shore, and there comes prophet Yunus, sick, scared, and very fragile. The story ends with good news: Allah grows a tree over him, cures and gives his prophet-Yunus his health and confidence back, and commands him to go back to his people and call them to Allah and the Towheed. With Allah’s help his people in their thousands started to accept the message and embrace Islam.

If Prophet Yunus(AS) did not reflect, not admit his sin, asked no forgiveness from Allah, and failed to praise and glorify his lord- he would have remained in the belly of the whale until the day of judgement. See(Surah As-Saffat, 37:139–148).

The moral lesson of the story is that when you, the believer, make a mistake(sin), you need to immediately recognise this( reflect) and ask Allah for forgiveness for your sins. Reflection and holding yourself accountable is virtue.

The opposite of this is not to reflect on your mistakes, and instead of admitting your mistakes and holding yourself accountable, blame others for your shortcomings.

This is precisely what Iblis( satan) did when he refused to bow down to Prophet Adam(AS) on Allah’s order. When Allah gave him an opportunity to reflect on his refusal, he showed arrogance and blamed Allah( The Most High) for misguiding him.

Then Allah cursed him and made him and his followers the biggest losers and dwellers of hellfire.

May Allah protect us from hellfire and the influence of Iblis-Aamiin.