A man who had killed a hundred people—did he still think he could be forgiven? After a first answer that pushes him even further into evil, he finally meets a true scholar. The scholar teaches him that a door remains open… but that he will have to change his life and take to the road.
Among the communities that lived before us, there was a man whose life had been marked by terrible crimes.
He had killed ninety-nine people.
Ninety-nine lives had been taken by his hand, and yet, at some point in his existence, something changed within him: he felt regret.
Regret is the pain one feels when one understands the gravity of a bad deed one has committed and wishes one had never done it.
This man did not merely feel this regret. A question began to become essential for him:
After everything he had done, was there still a possibility for him to return to Allah?
He wanted to get an answer.
But not from just anyone.
He asked:
— Who is the most learned man on earth?
He was looking for someone capable of telling him whether there was still a repentance for a man like him.
He was then directed to a man known for his worship.
He was a rahib, that is, a man who devoted much of his time to worship.
The murderer went to find him.
He told him what he had done.
He had killed ninety-nine people.
Then he asked him the question that had led him to him:
Could he still repent?
The man he was questioning looked at the enormity of his crimes and answered no.
According to him, after killing ninety-nine people, no repentance was still possible.
But this man of worship had just answered a question for which he did not possess the necessary knowledge.
And his answer was going to have a terrible consequence.
The Hundredth
When the murderer heard that he had no more possibility of repenting, he became angry and was upset by this answer.
Then he killed the man.
The number of his victims then went from ninety-nine to…
one hundred.
He had just committed a new murder.
And this time, he now had a hundred lives on his conscience.
One might think that after this, he would give up all searching.
After all, the one he had questioned had just told him that there was no more repentance for him.
He could have considered that everything was over.
That he had gone too far.
That there was no way back.
But that is not what he did.
Despite this new crime, he continued to search.
He asked again:
— Who is the most learned man on earth?
This time, he was not simply directed to a man who worshipped Allah a lot.
He was directed to a true man of knowledge.
The difference was immense.
The first man was a worshipper, but he did not possess the necessary knowledge to correctly answer such an important question.
The second, he had the knowledge.
And the murderer headed towards him.
The Same Question
When he arrived at the scholar, he did not try to hide what he had done.
The number had increased again.
He told him:
he had killed a hundred people.
Then he asked exactly the question he had already asked before:
Could he still repent?
This time, the answer was completely different.
The scholar answered him:
— Yes.
Then he made him understand an essential thing:
who could place themselves between him and repentance?
Despite a hundred murders, the door of repentance was not closed.
But the scholar did not stop at this answer.
He knew that it was not enough for this man to utter a few words before returning to exactly the same life, among the same influences and in the same environment.
So he gave him an instruction.
He spoke to him about another place.
A village in which lived people who worshipped Allah.
And he ordered him to leave for there.
He had to leave the land in which he lived and join these pious people.
The man had finally obtained the answer he was looking for.
Yes, he could repent.
But this repentance was now going to require something concrete from him:
to leave.
To leave his former land.
To turn his back on the life he had led there.
And to take the road towards people he did not yet know.
After a hundred victims, this man had just discovered that a door remained open before him.
The question was now to know…
whether he would actually cross it.
To be continued…
