Sins I - Avoid the Major and the Minor

People commit sins and no one is perfect. In fact, Allah did not create us to be sinless, but rather equipped us with means to minimise the amount of sin we commit. The simple Islamic definition of a sin is any act which goes against the teachings of Allah and His Messenger (ﷺ). As Muslims we should try our very best to avoid doing any sins. Sins are categorised into 2 groups: major and minor sins. 
Allah says,
 ٱلَّذِينَ يَجۡتَنِبُونَ كَبَٰٓئِرَ ٱلۡإِثۡمِ وَٱلۡفَوَٰحِشَ إِلَّا ٱللَّمَمَۚ إِنَّ رَبَّكَ وَٰسِعُ ٱلۡمَغۡفِرَةِۚ 
 “…Those who avoid major sins and shameful deeds, despite stumbling on minor sins. Surely your Lord is infinite in forgiveness” (53:32). 

Good Muslims are those who avoid the major sins and avoid shameful deeds. In avoiding the major sins, Allah will subsequently forgive our minor sins. 
Now you might ask, what are those major
 sins that we should all avoid to the best of our abilities?  We can’t go over all of them and therefore we should all spend our own time researching the different major sins. 

Some of the major sins are as follows:   

●	Associating others with Allah (shirk) – This is the only sin which Allah considers unforgivable, as it violates the main principle of Islam which is the Unity of God.
●	Murder or taking someone’s life
●	Adultery or fornication
●	Disrespecting one’s parents
●	Purposely leaving the 5 daily prayer 
●	Not fasting in the month of Ramadan when you have reached the age of puberty and are healthy to do so
●	Theft
●	Drinking alcohol 
●	Suicide 
●	Consuming usury (interest)

These major sins, as well as the other ones, should be avoided. But if you find yourself doing some of them, let’s say disrespecting parents or purposely missing prayer, then you need to seriously do Tawbah, which means you need to sincerely ask Allah to forgive you. 

So, what are some of the minor sins?  
●	Swearing
●	Name-calling 
●	Being immodest 
●	Being suspicious 
●	Talking excessively about things which are not our business

Some people might belittle the effect of minor sins and say just continue doing them without any plan of action to reduce and stop them. This is not the correct attitude due to many reasons. One of them being that you might die in that situation, and you don’t want to die in a bad state. Another reason being that the mentality of those who consistently do minor sins is that they move on to major sins, even if it happens very slowly. It’s like saying, if you constantly swear then eventually you will also lie, backbite, slander and cheat. It’s impossible to find someone who just swears and is perfect everywhere else. So, the idea is to avoid minor sins as a way to also avoid the major ones. 

So may Allah give us the ability to overcome our shortcomings, from the major and minor sins. 

We mentioned at the start that every single human being commits sin and no one is perfect. In this part of the Khutbah we will briefly talk about the ways to get forgiveness for the minor and major sins. 

The Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) said: “The five (daily) prayers and from one Friday prayer to the (next) Friday prayer, and from Ramadhan to Ramadhan are expiations for the (sins) committed in between (their intervals) provided one avoids the major sins” [Muslim].

So, we learn from this Hadith that if a Muslim does his 5 prayers and fasts in Ramadan correctly and avoids doing the major sins, his minor sins will be automatically forgiven by Allah. Moreover, we also know to continuously say Astaghfirullah, I seek Allah’s forgiveness, as much as we can during the day and night. 

For major sins, we have to go one step further and fulfil the following requirements when asking Allah’s forgiveness:
●	Firstly, recognise the wrong act that you have done and feel the guilt and ask Allah to forgive you
●	Secondly, abandon it and make the intention to not repeat the wrong act 
●	Thirdly, have a strong determination to not return to it 
●	And fourthly, if you did wrong to a person then ask them to forgive you

Another way to get rid of the sins is to just generally do good as this will help us reduce the amount of bad we do. The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "Be conscious of Allah wherever you are. And follow the bad deed with a good one to erase it and engage others with beautiful character" [Tirmidhi]. So, the message is clear from this Hadith, sincerely do a lot of good so then the good will wipe out your bad deeds. And of the best good deeds is to have good manners and so we should display the best of characters and manners. 

In conclusion, we must know about the major and minor sins and try very hard to minimise them all. We should constantly do Istighfaar, Tawbah and ask Allah to forgive us for our mistakes. And, simultaneously, we should do a lot of good deeds with the hope that it will wipe out the bad deeds. 

May Allah give us all the ability to avoid the major and minor sins and do a lot of fruitful good deeds.