Dua of Adam and Hawwa

When. After a wrong you cannot argue away — the kind you committed knowingly, where no explanation is available and none is being attempted. It is the first repentance recorded of a human being, which is why it is reached for when someone feels they have used up their excuses.

The words. Zalamna anfusana: 'we have wronged ourselves'. Zulm in Arabic is putting a thing somewhere other than its place. And the object of the wrongdoing is not Allah — it is the self. Nothing was taken from Allah by the act; the harm landed entirely on the doer. That is the whole reframing, and it is placed first, before any request. Then lanakunanna, carrying both the emphatic la- and the heavy nun of certainty at the end — a doubled emphasis that English cannot show. Not 'we might be among the losers': we will certainly be, and the only thing standing between is the condition stated just before it.

The conditional. In lam taghfir lana wa tarhamna. Two things are asked, and the second is not a repetition of the first. Forgiveness cancels the debt; mercy is what comes after, and a person can be pardoned without being brought close.

The comparison the sura makes. In the same passage of al-A'raf, the same error is met with a different response by Iblis: an argument, a claim of misdirection, no admission. The two answers to one fall are placed near each other in the text, and the difference between them is not the sin.

Where it is. The Qur'an, al-A'raf (7:23).