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thumma ʾinna rabbaka li-lladhīna ʿamilū s-sūʾa bi-jahālatin thumma tābū min baʿdi dhālika wa-ʾaṣlaḥū ʾinna rabbaka min baʿdihā la-ghafūrun raḥīmun
Moreover, your Lord will indeed be forgiving and merciful to those who repent after they having committed evil out of ignorance and reform themselves.
— Ali Quli Qarai
Surah An-Nahl – Verse 119
119. “Yet verily your Lord, unto those who do an evil act in ignorance and afterward they repent and amend, your Lord after that will definitely be Forgiving, Merciful.”
Islam experiences no deadlocks and there is always room for reconstruction for man and the way is left open. The acceptance of repentance is a matter of Divinity and is among the methods of education. Certainly, true repentance is achieved when it is coupled with reformation and making up for the wrongdoings. Those sins which come about as a result of the domination of passions, and are not caused by rejection and out of enmity, are more within the acceptance range. Incidentally, Allah is more compassionate towards the repentant after and on top of accepting one’s repentance.
The verse says:
“Yet verily your Lord, unto those who do an evil act in ignorance and afterward they repent and amend, your Lord after that will definitely be Forgiving, Merciful.”
To conclude, one must confirm that ‘ignorance’ signifies not knowing; nonetheless it is also applied to the cases in which man usually knows the right kind of behavior, but is overwhelmed by his passion. In verse 54 of Surah Al-’An‘am, and verse 17 from the Surah An-Nisa’, ignorance is applied in this sense as well.