1- O God, be kind to me through the survival of my children, setting them right for me, and allowing me to enjoy them!
2- My God, make long their lives for me, increase their terms, bring up the smallest for me, strengthen the weakest for me, rectify for me their bodies, their religious dedication, and their moral traits, make them well in their souls, their limbs, and everything that concerns me of their affair, and pour out for me and upon my hand their provisions!
3- Make them pious, fearing, insightful, hearing, and obedient toward Thee, loving and well-disposed toward Thy friends, and stubbornly resistant and full of hate toward all Thy enemies! Amen!
O God, through them strengthen my arm, straighten my burdened back, multiply my number, adorn my presence, keep alive my mention, suffice me when I am away, help me in my needs, and make them loving toward me, affectionate, approaching, upright, obedient, never disobedient, disrespectful, opposed, or offenders!
4- O God, through them strengthen my arm, straighten my burdened back, multiply my number, adorn my presence, keep alive my mention, suffice me when I am away, help me in my needs, and make them loving toward me, affectionate, approaching, upright, obedient, never disobedient, disrespectful, opposed, or offenders!
5- Help me in their upbringing, their education, and my devotion toward them, give me among them from Thyself male children, make that a good for me, and make them a help for me in that which I ask from Thee!
6- Give me and my progeny refuge from the accursed Satan, for Thou hast created us, commanded us, and prohibited us, and made us desire the reward of what Thou hast commanded, and fear its punishment! Thou assigned to us an enemy who schemes against us, gave him an authority over us in a way that Thou didst not give us authority over him, allowed him to dwell in our breasts and let him run in our blood vessels; he is not heedless, though we be heedless, he does not forget, though we forget; he makes us feel secure from Thy punishment and fills us with fear toward other than Thee.
Give me and my progeny refuge from the accursed Satan, for Thou hast created us, commanded us, and prohibited us, and made us desire the reward of what Thou hast commanded, and fear its punishment! Thou assigned to us an enemy who schemes against us, gave him an authority over us in a way that Thou didst not give us authority over him, allowed him to dwell in our breasts and let him run in our blood vessels; he is not heedless, though we be heedless, he does not forget, though we forget; he makes us feel secure from Thy punishment and fills us with fear toward other than Thee.
7- If we are about to commit an indecency, he gives us courage to do so, and if we are about to perform a righteous work, he holds us back from it. He opposes us through passions,1 and sets up for us doubts. If he promises us, he lies, and if he raises our hopes, he fails to fulfil them. If Thou dost not turn his trickery away from us, he will misguide us, and if Thou dost not protect us from his corruption, he will cause us to slip.
8- O God, so defeat his authority over us through Thy authority, such that Thou holdest him back from us through the frequency of our supplication to Thee and we leave his trickery and rise up among those preserved by Thee from sin!
9- O God, grant me my every request, accomplish for me my needs, withhold not from me Thy response when Thou hast made Thyself accountable for it to me,2 veil not my supplication from Thyself, when Thou hast commanded me to make it,3 and be kind to me through everything that will set me right in this world and the next, in everything that I remember or forget, display or conceal, make public or keep secret!
10- In all of this, place me through my asking Thee among those who set things right, those who are answered favourably when they request from Thee and from whom is not withheld when they put their trust in Thee,
11- those accustomed to seek refuge in Thee, those who profit through commerce with Thee, those granted sanctuary through Thy might, those given lawful provision in plenty from Thy boundless bounty through Thy munificence and generosity, those who reach exaltation after abasement through Thee, those granted sanctuary from wrong through Thy justice, those released from affliction through Thy mercy, those delivered from need after poverty through Thy riches, those preserved from sins, slips, and offenses through reverential fear toward Thee, those successful in goodness, right conduct, and propriety through obeying Thee, those walled off from sins through Thy power, the refrainers from every act of disobedience toward Thee, the dwellers in Thy neighbourhood!
O God, grant me my every request, accomplish for me my needs, withhold not from me Thy response when Thou hast made Thyself accountable for it to me,2 veil not my supplication from Thyself, when Thou hast commanded me to make it,3 and be kind to me through everything that will set me right in this world and the next, in everything that I remember or forget, display or conceal, make public or keep secret!
12- O God, give me all of that through Thy bestowal of success and Thy mercy, grant us refuge from the chastisement of the burning, and give to all the Muslims, male and female, and all the faithful, male and female, the like of what I have asked for myself and my children, in the immediate of this world and the deferred of the next! Verily Thou art the Near, the Responder, the All-hearing, the All-knowing, the Pardoner, the Forgiving, the Clement, the Merciful!
13- And give to us in this world good, and in the next world good, and protect us from the chastisement of the Fire!4
1. One is tempted to translate shahawat as 'lusts', but the Qur'anic context shows that the objects of desire in themselves are not necessarily negative; the Qur'an blames only the fact that man allows himself to be occupied by them in lieu of God. For example,
Decked out fair to men is the love of passions - women, children, heaped-up heaps of gold and silver, horses of mark, cattle, and tillage. That is the enjoyment of the present life; but God - with Him is the fairest resort (3:14).
Arberry translates the term here as 'lusts', Pickthall as 'joys'.
2. Cf. 12.10.
3. These four lines refer to 2:186 and 40:60.
4. 2:201
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