The Effect of Istighfar on State and Trait Anxiety

Abstract

Istighfar (seeking forgiveness of Allah) and tawbah (repentance) are as old as at least the human history. Anxiety is also a need of human nature. Human develops the strategies to cope with challenges. One of them is religious coping. One of the religious coping ways is istighfar. Constantly performing istighfar may make easier to deal with anxiety. Thus, in this study, the state-trait anxiety scale was applied to the final year undergraduate students. The experimental and control groups of 20 persons were comprised of students with higher anxiety level. The experimental group was told to do istighfar 100 times per day during one month. In the end of this practice, a decrease was observed in the state-trait anxiety average of experimental group.