Doa Taubat

One famous prayer of repentence, or dua taubat, could be roughly transliterated as follow:

Ilahi lestu lil-firdawsi a’la

wa la akhwa ala nar il-jaheemi

Allah fa habli tawbata wa-ghfir dhunubi

fa innaka ghaafiru dhanb il-adzimi

This doa has been put to song, together with a lovely malay translation, by Junied, a nasheed group from Singapore associated with the Madrasah Aljunied Al-Islamiah. Madrasah Aljunied is a famous madrasah, having produced many notable scholars over the course of its nearly one hundred years, including the present Mufti of Sarawak, if I’m not wrong. It is now absorbed into the national education system, so the national curriculum is taught together with the religious sciences. You can learn more about how Singapore has absorbed the madrasah schools into their national model here at MUIS.

You can download the Doa Taubat from their website, along with several other songs. There are video recordings available on YouTube as well. According to their site, they have a new album called “Hijrah” available in stores. Unfortunately, googling around did not readily turn up a merchant site. Anyone who knows where to get a copy of the album can let me know in the comments.

The group’s recording of the Doa Taubat can be found all over, but the website of the group itself I couldn’t find after half an hour of searching. It’s puzzling too, because I found it once before a few months ago. A recording of the Doa Taubat is available to download on the site, but since I can’t locate it, I’m putting my copy here for download. It’s very nice; you should listen. I’ll take it down and link to theirs as soon as I locate their site again or some kind soul sends me the link.

The song is in Arabic and Malay, so I decided to do a rough English translation which you can find below. It’s not an exact translation: I tried to keep to the flow of the original so it could conceivably be sung in the same tune, but that meant I had to play loose with the meaning. Here it is; comments welcome as always.

Arabic:
Ilahi lestu lil-firdawsi a’la

wa la akhwa ala nar il-jaheemi

Allah fa habli tawbata wa-ghfir dhunubi

fa innaka ghaafiru dhanb il-adzimi

Malay:

tuhanku aku tidak layak / untuk syurga mu

tetapi aku tidak pula sanggup menanggung / siksa neraka mu

dari itu kurnia kan lah / ampunan kepada ku / ampun kan lah dosa ku

sesungguhnya / engkaulah penggampun / dosa dosa besar

English:

Oh my Lord I know I don’t deserve / your heaven

And yet your blazing wrath / I could never defend

So Lord rain down upon / this lowly soul / your forgiveness

Lord you and you alone / forgive and wash away / the most greivous sins

About this entry

You’re currently reading “Doa Taubat,” an entry on Bin Gregory Productions

Published:: 04.05.08 / 3pm

Category:: Islam, Language

Briefly

The Spiritual Aspirant: Sidi Khalil Moore will be in Singapore conducting a workshop for The Spiritual Aspirant, to be held 27 June to 5 July. I had the pleasure to hear Sidi Khalil speak in Detroit back in 2002 in conjunction with the US tour of Habib Ali Al-Jifri. I regret I won't be able to make the short trip across the South China Sea to attend, but I recommend it to anyone in the area. The workshop is being sponsored by Simply Islam, under the capable hands of some of the fine people who put on the Journey to Ihsan event a couple years ago, which I did attend and enjoyed immensely.

Collapse Preparedness: The transition from the USSR to the republic of Russia was a catastrophic event for the people who lived through it. The eventual (imminent?) collapse of the US will be much much worse, warns Dmitry Orlov. The USA has a Collapse Gap. Orlov realizes

that some people will react rather badly to having their country compared to the USSR. I would like to assure you that the Soviet people would have reacted similarly, had the United States collapsed first. Feelings aside, here are two 20th century superpowers, who wanted more or less the same things – things like technological progress, economic growth, full employment, and world domination – but they disagreed about the methods. And they obtained similar results – each had a good run, intimidated the whole planet, and kept the other scared. Each eventually went bankrupt.

Valuable lessons on what to expect and how to prepare follow. Read it yourself, but the condensed advice is this: Live on the margins of society. One encouraging sign that Americans are picking up the skills they will need to survive: haggling at the mall.

Brass Crescent: Nominations are open for the annual Brass Crescent blog awards organized by AltMuslim and City of Brass. Hurry on down and nominate your favorites. There's even a brand new category for Best South/Southeast Asia Blog! *cough cough*

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Grant Rettke 04.05.08 / 9pm

When folks take a prayer of repentance and put it to a very pleasant song, what is the environment/context in which you would listen to it?

Bin Gregory 04.05.08 / 9pm

This style of music - nasheed - is religious music and plugs into life here in a way not unlike Gospel in the States. It is often performed at religious functions, like this one at my local mosque after the month of Ramadan, or at religious conferences or assemblies. Nasheed does get a bit of play on the radio, on the Islamic channel, where it may come off a bit incongruous I suppose, if you tuned it in when you weren’t feeling particularly prayerful at the time. But even then, if it brings somebody back to a God-conscious frame of mind in the middle of their work day, I’d say that’s a good thing.

JDsg 04.06.08 / 9am

A sample of the song, at least, can be found here. Not that I really went out looking for it, ya know? I just happened to see that the school had a choir website and I thought it’d be interesting to see it.

Note to self: listen first, then write. What I linked to above is a sample of the song you linked to in your post, but it’s substantially different from your version. This one runs for only two minutes, has an instrumental introduction, and is sung at a slower pace. So keep your version up a little bit longer, OK?

Bin Gregory 04.06.08 / 1pm

Yeesh, why could I not locate that yesterday? Junied.net - you’d think that would come up on a search for madrasah aljunied… Thanks, JD. I’m going to add that in up above; maybe that’ll help drum up a bit of publicity for their site.

Diana 04.07.08 / 9am

Assalammualaikum,

Isn’t the song also sang by Raihan?

Correct me if I am wrong.

Bin Gregory 04.07.08 / 8pm

w/s

Yes, they have a version called “Iktiraf”. The malay translation in that song is slightly different from the Junied version, and there is an extra set of verses too. Here’s a youtube version upped by our good friend Tawel Sensei.

Irving 04.14.08 / 2am

The English translation is really heart stirring and beautiful Thank you for translating it, dear Brother

Ya Haqq!

prncess afnapana 04.19.08 / 8pm

hmmm

i like this songs because i and my team like and i hope i win at ……

Percicilan 05.10.08 / 10am

I’m a Singaporean based in KL and I do have the CD with me. Do you want one?

Nizar 05.10.08 / 10pm

I mistakenly typed http://bengregory.com/ to go to your site. I thought it was you when you were young! He does have some similarities to you!

I like Sami Yusuf

nnydd 05.15.08 / 12pm

Totally unrelated, but I just read Other Malaysia’s post that you linked to here. Certainly what he complaint about is shared by many!!

Ahmad Dhuat 05.18.08 / 4pm

Uhibbukafillah

ashraf 05.31.08 / 8pm

Do you have any idea where i can get original version like those in mosque, like it better as a bit less of romantisism

bahanji 06.17.08 / 9am

Assalamualaikum,
Does anyone know the sufi master that wrote the dua taubat. I have seen it somewhere, but as usual when I needed it I couldn’t find it. Can anyone help me please!
Jazakallah…

Percicilan 06.21.08 / 10pm

bahanji,
the sufi who wrote the doa taubat is Abu Nawas…