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Are bad thoughts counted against you by the recording angels

Answered as per Hanafi Fiqh by Qibla.com

Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Are evil/wicked thoughts counted by the angel on your shoulder? because I often find myself thinking bad stuff to the people around me if they have angered me or are telling me off or have just tried to [beat me up], but then instantly thinking ”NO I don’t want that to happen, why did I even think it??!!” if I’ve thought ”drop dead” or worse, but I immediately think NO WAY bad thought, bad thought I’m going to go away now

Answer:
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Walaikum assalam

[See attached answers.]

In short, if one determines to sin, and sets one’s heart to it, it is sinful even if one does not end up committing the actual sin, as the scholars have explained.

It is mentioned in al-Bazzaziyya [a leading Hanafi reference for legal verdicts] that,

“If one inclined towards committing sin, this is not sinful, unless one fixed one’s determination on doing so. If one determined to do, one sins, but not the [complete] sin of the actual action…” [Ibn Nujaym, al-Ashbah wa’l Nadha’ir]

This is deduced from various primary texts of the Qur’an and Sunna, including:

Ibn Abbas (Allah be pleased with them) reports that our Beloved Prophet Muhammad (Allah bless him & give him peace) reported from Allah Most High that,

“Verily, Allah has written the good and the bad, and then explained it. So whoever inclines to perform a good deed but does not perform it, Allah writes it for him as a complete good deed. Then, if he inclined towards it and actually performs it, Allah writes it for him as ten good deeds to seven hundred times, to many times over. And if he inclines towards a bad deed but does not perform it, Allah writes it for him as a complete good deed. If he inclined towards it and then performed it, Allah writes it as one bad deed.” [Bukhari, 6010 & Muslim, 187]

And Allah alone gives success

Wassalam,
Faraz Rabbani

This answer was indexed from Qibla.com, which used to have a repository of Islamic Q&A answered by various scholars. The website is no longer in existence. It has now been transformed into a learning portal with paid Islamic course offering under the brand of Kiflayn.

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