ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ (رضي الله عنه) — The Sharpest Mind in Arabiaعمرو بن العاص رضي الله عنه — أذكى عقلٍ في العرب

A halaqa on what happens when the most brilliant worldly intelligence finally bows to Allah — and the humility to fear your own ending

Opening

Bismillāhi'r-Raḥmāni'r-Raḥīm. All praise is for Allah, who guides whom He wills, who can take the sharpest weapon that was ever aimed at His religion and turn it into a key that opens nations, and who leaves the final judgment of hearts to Himself alone. We send peace and blessings upon our beloved Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, upon his family, his companions, and all those who follow his way until the Day of Judgment.

My brothers and sisters — tonight we come to the last companion in this series, and in some ways the most complicated. A man who was, by common agreement, the single most intelligent, cunning, and politically brilliant human being in all of Arabia. They called him Dāhiyat al-ʿArab (دَاهِيَة العَرَب) — the shrewdest, the most astute, of all the Arabs. For years, that staggering intelligence was aimed directly at destroying Islam. He fought the Prophet ﷺ at Badr and Uhud. He was one of the architects of the confederate army at al-Khandaq. He traveled to a foreign king to try to have the first Muslim refugees dragged back in chains. If there was a plot against Islam, his mind was usually behind it.

And then Allah turned his heart — and that exact same mind, that same cunning, became one of the greatest engines for the spread of Islam in history: the conqueror of Palestine and Egypt, whose reach extended to the very lands of Gaza and Rafah that weigh on our hearts today.

This is the story of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ (عَمْرو بْن العَاص), raḍiyAllāhu 'anhu — the shrewdest of the Arabs, whom the Prophet ﷺ called "one of the righteous of Quraysh." And it is a story that ends not in a blaze of glory, but in something far more honest and human: an old man weeping on his deathbed, unsure of himself, clinging to lā ilāha illā Allāh.

Why This Story Matters Tonight

Before I begin — hold two questions with me, because this life carries two lessons that pull in different directions, and we need both.

The first is about your gifts. ʿAmr had a gift — a razor-sharp, world-class intelligence — and for years he spent it in the service of falsehood. The gift itself was never the problem. Intelligence, charisma, strategic brilliance, a way with people — these are neutral. They serve whoever owns your heart. The very same cunning that fought the Prophet ﷺ, once ʿAmr's heart submitted, became a tool that brought entire nations to Islam. So the first question is: the sharpest thing about you — your intelligence, your talent, your influence — what is it currently serving? Because it will follow your heart wherever your heart goes.

The second is harder, and it comes from how his life ended. ʿAmr was a Companion, a conqueror, beloved enough that the Prophet ﷺ entrusted him with command — and yet he died afraid, weeping, saying: the later part of my life, I just don't know. A man who had done so much, unsure at the end how he would be raised. And there is something profoundly important in that for every one of us who thinks our good deeds have secured us. So the second question is: am I living with the humility to fear my own ending — to never take my final standing with Allah for granted, no matter what I've accomplished?

Part One: The Most Cunning of the Arabs

Let me first show you who ʿAmr was, because you cannot understand the transformation without understanding the raw material.

Imām al-Dhahabī (الذَّهَبِيّ) records that ʿAmr was called Dāhiyat al-ʿArab — the shrewdest, most astute of the Arabs — and Dāhiyat Quraysh (دَاهِيَة قُرَيْش), the shrewdest of Quraysh. He was the politician of the Arabs. When people wanted to describe genius-level cunning, they used him as the measuring stick. On top of that, he was a poet of Quraysh, a warrior of Quraysh, a horseman of Quraysh — he combined nearly every quality the Arabs prized in one person.

And there is a detail that explains his whole psychology. ʿAmr was older than ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (عُمَر بْن الخَطَّاب); he used to say he remembered the night ʿUmar was born. This placed him in a unique spot: he was too young to be one of the ancient elders like Abū Jahl (أَبُو جَهْل), but too old to be one of the youths like Khālid ibn al-Walīd (خَالِد بْن الوَلِيد). He was, as they described him, "the oldest of the young and the youngest of the old." He sat right in the seam between the generations — which is why, unlike the young men who only came out to Uhud to avenge fathers lost at Badr, ʿAmr fought the Prophet ﷺ at both Badr and Uhud. He was that committed.

And subḥān Allāh — look at how Allah was preparing him without his knowledge. ʿAmr was the most well-traveled of all Quraysh. As a merchant, he had journeyed again and again to Shām (الشَّام) — Syria, Palestine, Jordan — and to Egypt, and to Abyssinia, and to Yemen, and to the lands of modern Libya. He had built personal relationships with the kings and generals of both the Roman and Persian worlds. Decades before he would return to those exact lands as a Muslim general, he already knew their terrain, their cities, their fortresses, their politics, from the inside. Allah was training the future conqueror of Egypt while ʿAmr thought he was just doing business.

Part Two: The Enemy Who Went to Abyssinia

ʿAmr's enmity to the Prophet ﷺ ran even deeper than Khālid's. Khālid was a soldier — call me to the battle and I'll win it. But ʿAmr was a schemer. He was in lockstep with his father, al-ʿĀṣ ibn Wāʾil (العَاص بْن وَائِل), plotting to intercept the Prophet ﷺ and persecute the Muslims at every turn.

So when the earliest Muslims fled to Abyssinia (الحَبَشَة) — to the protection of its just Christian king, the Najāshī (النَّجَاشِيّ) — it was ʿAmr whom Quraysh sent to drag them back. And here you see his genius turned to evil. He didn't just show up and make demands. He came the night before with gifts and bribes for every one of the king's generals and advisors, getting them all on his side first. Then he engineered his request to the Najāshī with a politician's precision: he framed it as a simple domestic matter — these are troublemakers, not on your religion or ours, just hand them back and we'll deal with them. It was, in effect, an ancient anti-refugee campaign, expertly run.

But the Najāshī was just. He said: what kind of king would I be if I did not hear their side first? — and the scholars note that this is the essence of justice: to hear both parties and not be driven by bias. He summoned the Muslims. And Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib (جَعْفَر بْن أَبِي طَالِب) rose and gave one of the most beautiful summaries of Islam ever spoken — "O King, we were a people of ignorance, worshipping idols, eating dead meat, committing abominations, cutting off family ties, the strong devouring the weak — until Allah sent us a Messenger whose truthfulness and trustworthiness we knew, and he called us to worship Allah alone…"

ʿAmr's plan began to unravel. So he played his sharpest card — a card designed to exploit the king's own faith. He told the Najāshī: ask them what they say about Jesus, son of Mary. He was certain the Muslim position would sound like blasphemy to a Christian king. But when Jaʿfar recited the verses of Sūrat Maryam about ʿĪsā (عِيسَى) and his mother, the Najāshī wept until his beard was wet, and his bishops wept, and he picked up a stick and said: "By Allah, Jesus does not exceed what you have said by the length of this twig." And he told ʿAmr: these people are under my protection. ʿAmr had traveled all that way, spent all those bribes, and failed — for the first time in his life, out-thought. The scholars say even the verse of Sūrat al-Māʾidah about the Christians who weep when they hear the truth was connected to that scene. And the Najāshī, in secret, accepted Islam himself.

Part Three: The Duʿāʾ, and the Verse from Sūrat Āl ʿImrān

ʿAmr came home humiliated — but not softened. If anything, he grew angrier. His own father, al-ʿĀṣ, died after the Prophet's ﷺ supplication against him. His brother Hishām (هِشَام) — who had accepted Islam — was tortured for years. And ʿAmr threw himself even harder against the Prophet ﷺ: fighting at Badr, commanding a flank at Uhud, and helping architect the massive confederate assault at al-Khandaq (الخَنْدَق), the siege that was meant to wipe the Muslims out entirely.

And it was in this same era of Uhud that the Prophet ﷺ, wounded and worn down, supplicated against a number of the leaders of Quraysh who were fighting and persecuting the believers. And here is where this talk touches something very close to home for us — because it connects directly to the verses of Sūrat Āl ʿImrān (سُورَة آل عِمْرَان) that we have been living with.

At Uhud, when the Prophet ﷺ had his tooth broken and his face bloodied, he said, "How can a people prosper who have done this to their Prophet while he calls them to their Lord?" And in the Fajr prayer in that period, he raised his hands against several of the Quraysh chieftains by name. And Allah revealed — as we have in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, from Ibn ʿUmar — one of the most striking moments of the Qur'an responding directly to the Prophet ﷺ:

Feel the weight of that. Allah was telling His Prophet ﷺ, about the very enemies he was praying against: this is not yours to close. The decision of whether they are guided or punished belongs to Me alone. And subḥān Allāh — a number of those very men the Prophet ﷺ prayed against in that era went on to accept Islam and become some of its champions. ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, who was fighting the Prophet ﷺ in exactly these battles, is one of the clearest living proofs of that verse: an enemy Allah was quietly preparing to guide. How many people have we written off — decided they are hopeless, beyond change, not worth the duʿāʾ? Āl ʿImrān 3:128 is Allah's answer: that judgment was never yours to make.

Part Four: The Night His Mind Finally Bowed

So what changed? After all those years, after al-Khandaq failed, ʿAmr sat with some trusted friends from Quraysh and did what a brilliant strategist does — he read the board honestly. He said: by Allah, the affair of Muhammad ﷺ is rising, no matter what we do to stop it. And his plan, ever the pragmatist, was cold: let us go to the Najāshī and take refuge there. If our people in Mecca somehow win, we lose nothing. And if Muhammad ﷺ wins — better to be under the Najāshī than under Muhammad's power in Mecca. Notice — even now, this is not yet faith. It is calculation.

He went to Abyssinia with gifts. And when he entered the Najāshī's court, he found there a messenger of the Prophet ﷺ — ʿAmr ibn Umayya al-Ḍamrī (عَمْرو بْن أُمَيَّة الضَّمْرِيّ) — who had come on the Prophet's ﷺ own errand. ʿAmr's old ignorance flared: he actually asked the Najāshī to hand the man over so he could kill him. And the Najāshī — who was like a father figure to ʿAmr — struck him on the nose so hard it nearly broke, and said, in effect: ʿAmr, when will you wake up? You are asking me to hand over the messenger of the man to whom the same angel comes that used to come to Mūsā.

And that — the exact same testimony Waraqa ibn Nawfal had given at the very beginning of revelation, now on the lips of this just Christian king — was what finally cracked ʿAmr's heart open. He said: at that moment, faith entered me. This man, who had watched the Prophet ﷺ for years and felt nothing, was finally reached — through a source his sharp mind respected, a wise king he trusted. He turned to the Najāshī and said: will you take my pledge to Islam? And the Najāshī extended his hand, and ʿAmr accepted Islam — making the Najāshī, subḥān Allāh, perhaps the only tābiʿī, a man who never met the Prophet ﷺ, to take the shahādah of a man who would be a ṣaḥābī.

There is a lesson here we cannot miss: sometimes a person needs to hear the truth from someone they already respect before it can land. ʿAmr had the Prophet ﷺ right in front of him for years. It took a trusted outsider recognizing the truth for ʿAmr to finally see it. Never underestimate what it means for a searching heart to see someone they respect affirm the truth.

Part Five: Islam Wipes Out What Came Before

On the road to Madīnah, ʿAmr met two other men making the very same journey for the very same reason: Khālid ibn al-Walīd and ʿUthmān ibn Ṭalḥa (عُثْمَان بْن طَلْحَة). Khālid said, "I'm going to accept Islam — this man is truly a Prophet, I have no doubt." And ʿAmr said, "By Allah, I've come for the very same thing." The sons of Quraysh's fiercest enemies, arriving together to submit.

And now watch the scene that holds the deepest lesson of ʿAmr's conversion. When they reached the Prophet ﷺ, Khālid gave his pledge, and ʿUthmān gave his pledge. Then ʿAmr came forward — and, ever the negotiator, he pulled his hand back. The Prophet ﷺ said, in effect, what is it now, ʿAmr? And ʿAmr said:

He had a mountain of a record — years of war, plots, persecution — and he wanted assurance. Now look carefully at how the Prophet ﷺ answered, because it reveals his integrity. He did not say, "Yes, ʿAmr, just for you, I forgive it all" — because that would be to invent a special exception to win a convert. Instead he said:

Do you see the difference? The Prophet ﷺ didn't offer ʿAmr a personal favor. He pointed him to a law of Allah that was already true for everyone: when you enter Islam sincerely, Allah wipes your entire slate clean. ʿAmr didn't need special treatment — he needed only what every convert receives. And that is a mercy available to every single one of us: whatever is behind you, however heavy, Islam wipes out what came before it. You do not carry your old file into your new life with Allah.

Part Six: The New Muslim Given Command

What happened next tells you how completely the Prophet ﷺ trusted this transformation.

Within weeks of his conversion, the Prophet ﷺ sent for ʿAmr, told him to bring his weapons and armor, and appointed him commander of a military expedition — Dhāt al-Salāsil (ذَات السَّلَاسِل). Think about that. A man who had been Muslim for a matter of weeks, who had fought the believers in every battle — and now he is placed in command of an army that included Abū Bakr (أَبُو بَكْر) and ʿUmar themselves. Three hundred of the best, under the leadership of the newest convert. If the Prophet ﷺ were not divinely guided, this was an enormous risk. It was also the Prophet's ﷺ way of building a man — of showing ʿAmr, and everyone, that his past was truly behind him.

And ʿAmr's response to that first appointment showed his heart had genuinely changed. When the Prophet ﷺ mentioned he would gain wealth from it, ʿAmr said: "O Messenger of Allah, I did not accept Islam for the sake of wealth — I accepted it out of desire for Islam, and to be with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ." The man who once did everything for gain now needed the Prophet ﷺ to know his motives had changed. And the Prophet ﷺ reassured him gently: "Wholesome wealth is excellent for a righteous man."

The Prophet ﷺ also began, publicly, to love him — the same way he showed love to Khālid, turning yesterday's enemy into today's beloved. He testified: "The two sons of al-ʿĀṣ are believers" — ʿAmr and Hishām. And in one narration: "People accepted Islam, but ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ truly believed."

But ʿAmr was also honest enough, later, to tell the truth about that love. There is a famous, and rather charming, moment where ʿAmr — now secure in the Prophet's ﷺ favor — asked in front of the Companions: "O Messenger of Allah, who is the most beloved of people to you?" He was hoping, humanly, to hear his own name. The Prophet ﷺ said: "ʿĀʾisha." ʿAmr said, "No — I mean among the men." The Prophet ﷺ said: "Her father" — Abū Bakr. "Then who?" "Then ʿUmar." And ʿAmr said, "So I stopped counting, for fear he would never reach my name." He learned his place among the beloved — and he learned it with humility.

Part Seven: The Sharp Mind in the Service of Allah

Now the same brilliance that had fought Islam went to work for it — and it changed the map of the world.

After the Prophet ﷺ passed away, ʿAmr served in the wars against the false prophet Musaylima (مُسَيْلِمَة) and the apostasy. Then, under ʿUmar, he came into his own. ʿUmar said of him: "It is not fitting for ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ to walk upon the earth except as a leader" — some men are simply built to command. ʿAmr drove deep into Roman territory. At Ajnādayn (أَجْنَادِين) and al-Yarmūk (اليَرْمُوك), his armies converged with Khālid's and Abū ʿUbayda's, and together they brought the Roman Empire to its knees. ʿAmr personally conquered most of Palestine (فِلَسْطِين) — the entire southern half — setting the stage for ʿUmar to come and take the keys of Jerusalem peacefully.

And here is a detail that lands heavily today. As ʿAmr turned toward Egypt, he stationed himself and his Companions in Rafah (رَفَح) and the region of Gaza (غَزَّة) — and all his letters back to ʿUmar in Madīnah were sent from there. The Companions, camped in Rafah. May Allah restore to the people of Rafah and Gaza the tranquility and honor of those days.

Then Egypt. ʿUmar was cautious — we already have the Romans and Persians; leave Egypt. But ʿAmr had a plan, and only about four thousand men against a vastly larger force. He knew the land — he had traveled it as a merchant decades before. He knew, too, that the native Coptic Christians (الأَقْبَاط) of Egypt were oppressed by their Roman rulers. And he carried a teaching of the Prophet ﷺ: that they would open Egypt, and that its people had a bond of protection and kinship (dhimma wa raḥim) with the Muslims — kinship through Hājar (هَاجَر), the mother of Ismāʿīl (إِسْمَاعِيل) — so treat them well. And ʿAmr did. The Copts were treated with a justice they had not known under Rome, and many entered Islam freely — for "there is no compulsion in religion." He built the city of Fusṭāṭ (الفُسْطَاط) — the "city of tents" — which grew into old Cairo, and there the Companions built the mosque that still bears his name to this day: Masjid ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ. This is why, to this day, Egypt holds ʿAmr in its heart.

The shrewdest mind in Arabia, once it bowed to Allah, opened Palestine and Egypt to Islam. That is what one gift can do when its owner's heart finally submits.

Part Eight: An Honest Death

And now we come to the ending — and I have chosen to end the entire series here, with this scene, because it may be the most honest and humbling death in all of these stories.

First, I have to be truthful with you about the hardest part of ʿAmr's life, and I will do it the way our scholars have taught us. In the great fitna — the tragic civil strife among the Muslims after the martyrdom of ʿUthmān (عُثْمَان) — ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ sided with Muʿāwiya (مُعَاوِيَة) against ʿAli ibn Abī Ṭālib (عَلِيّ بْن أَبِي طَالِب), and his political skill played a role in those events. This is real, and I will not hide it from you.

But I also have to be fair to him, because there is a caricature of ʿAmr — the cynical opportunist chasing power and position — and the scholars point out that this caricature rests on weak and abandoned narrations, not authentic ones. The authentic picture is different and more human. ʿAmr was a man of principle. When ʿUthmān was besieged and ʿAmr saw he could not save him, he left Madīnah rather than be present for the killing of the Khalīfa. And when the news came that ʿUthmān had been murdered, ʿAmr wept bitterly and cried out, "Yā ʿUthmānāh! I mourn for modesty and for religion" — and he went to Muʿāwiya to seek justice for the blood of the murdered Khalīfa. Whatever errors he made in what followed, he was not the schemer of the cynical version; he was a grieving Companion navigating an impossible tragedy.

And here is how the People of the Sunnah approach what happened between the Companions: we hold our tongues. These were people of enormous rank who strove to reach the truth — some were correct and earned two rewards, some erred and earned one, and the reckoning of what passed between them belongs to Allah, not to us. We do not sit in judgment over them, we do not curse any of them, and we ask Allah to be pleased with all of them. And the most powerful witness to this restraint is ʿAmr himself — because he was honest enough, at the end, to be unsure about that very chapter of his life.

Listen to his death, narrated in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim. ʿAmr was dying, over ninety years old, and his son ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAmr (عَبْد الله بْن عَمْرو) — himself one of the great scholars of this Ummah — was with him. And ʿAmr began to weep. He divided his life into three phases. He said: there was a time when no one hated the Prophet ﷺ more than I did, and had I died then, I would surely have been of the people of the Fire. Then he said: then Allah put the love of Islam in my heart, and I came to the Prophet ﷺ… and when I pledged, he was the most beloved of people to me, and I could not even fill my eyes with looking at him out of awe — if you asked me to describe him, I could not, for I never looked at him fully. Had he died then, he said, he had hope he would be of the people of Paradise.

"But then," he said, "after that, I was tested with authority and other things — and I do not know whether these things are for me or against me."

Do you feel the weight of that honesty? A Companion. A conqueror. A man the Prophet ﷺ loved and trusted. And at the end he is not boasting of Palestine or Egypt or his own brilliance — he is weeping, saying: the last part of my life, I just don't know. His son tried to comfort him — the Prophet ﷺ used to bring you close and put you in charge, doesn't that mean something? And ʿAmr, with piercing humility, said: my son, I don't even know if he did that because he truly loved me, or because he was trying to soften and win over my hard heart. I cannot rely on it.

And then this shrewdest of all the Arabs — the man who could out-think any king — did the simplest thing a human being can do. He raised his finger to the sky, and he said:

And he kept repeating lā ilāha illā Allāh, lā ilāha illā Allāh until he passed away with those words on his tongue. All the cunning, all the conquests, all the intelligence the world stood in awe of — and in the end he clung to the one thing that actually saves: there is no god but Allah. Allah granted him death upon the kalima, over ninety years old.

The Lessons

Let me bring this back to us, sitting here tonight.

One: Your sharpest gift will serve whatever your heart serves. ʿAmr's intelligence fought Islam for years and then opened nations for it — the same gift, pointed in opposite directions by the state of his heart. Whatever your sharpest quality is — your mind, your charm, your influence, your skill — it is neutral. Fix your heart on Allah, and every gift you have follows it into His service. Leave your heart to this world, and those same gifts serve this world.

Two: Never write anyone off — that judgment was never yours. Allah told His Prophet ﷺ about the enemies he prayed against at Uhud: "Not for you is the decision at all" (Āl ʿImrān 3:128) — and a number of those very enemies, ʿAmr among them, became champions of Islam. The worst opponent became the conqueror who spread Islam across Egypt. That person you've decided is hopeless — the relative, the friend, the public figure you've given up on — make duʿāʾ for them instead of against them. Guidance is Allah's to give, and He gives it to people we'd never expect.

Three: Islam wipes out what came before it. ʿAmr came with a mountain of a past, and the Prophet ﷺ told him the slate is wiped clean — not as a favor, but as a law of Allah for everyone. Whatever is behind you — whatever you're ashamed of, whatever you think disqualifies you — when you turn to Allah sincerely, you do not carry that old file forward. Stop letting your past decide your future with Allah.

Four: Sometimes truth lands only through someone we respect. ʿAmr saw the Prophet ﷺ for years and felt nothing — until a wise king he trusted affirmed the truth, and his heart cracked open. Be that trusted voice for the people in your life, and be humble enough to receive the truth even when it comes from an unexpected direction. Pride about who delivers the truth has kept many a person out of it.

Five: Fear your own ending — never take your standing with Allah for granted. This is the great lesson of his death. A Companion and a conqueror still wept at the end, unsure how he would be raised. If ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ did not presume upon his good deeds, who are we to feel secure? Live with that humility. Do your utmost, and still fear — still ask Allah for a good ending — because it is the ending that counts, and none of us has it guaranteed.

Six: When the Companions differed, guard your tongue. ʿAmr was caught up in the fitna and made mistakes he himself grieved — but the cynical caricature of him as a power-hungry opportunist rests on weak narrations, not authentic ones; the real ʿAmr left Madīnah unable to save ʿUthmān and wept at his murder. Our way with everything that passed between the Companions is restraint: we do not curse them, we do not take sides against them, we assume the best, we reject the weak reports that smear them, and we leave their account to Allah — asking Him to be pleased with them all. If ʿAmr's own son and the scholars after him approached his hardest chapter with mercy rather than condemnation, so must we. Learn to hold your tongue where Allah has hidden the reckoning.

Closing

O Allah, the One who turned the sharpest mind in Arabia from fighting Your religion to serving it — take every gift You have given us and bend it fully into Your service.

O Allah, the One who told Your Prophet ﷺ "the decision is not yours" — teach us never to despair of anyone's guidance, and make us people who pray for others, not against them.

O Allah, the One whose Islam wipes clean whatever came before it — free us from the weight of our pasts, and let us walk toward You unburdened.

O Allah, the One who granted ʿAmr death upon lā ilāha illā Allāh — do not let our accomplishments make us secure, keep the fear of a bad ending alive in our hearts, and grant us, at the very end, to leave this world with the kalima on our tongues.

O Allah, make us of those who guard their tongues about Your servants, who assume the best, and who leave to You what You have kept hidden.

O Allah, restore to the people of Gaza and Rafah — the very lands where the Companions once camped — safety, honor, and victory, as You once gave it to the believers before them.

O Allah, gather us with ʿAmr, and with all the Companions of Your Prophet ﷺ, and with Your Messenger ﷺ himself, in the highest gardens of Firdaws.

Āmīn.

And may Allah's peace and blessings be upon our Messenger Muḥammad ﷺ, his family, and his companions.

Sealing the Gathering (Kaffārat al-Majlis)

Let us close the way the Prophet ﷺ taught us to seal any gathering — asking Allah to forgive whatever slips passed in it:

Subḥānaka Allāhumma wa bi-ḥamdika, ashhadu an lā ilāha illā anta, astaghfiruka wa atūbu ilayk.

"Glory be to You, O Allah, and praise be to You. I bear witness that there is no god but You. I seek Your forgiveness and I turn to You in repentance."