I'm 21-year-old man. I started praying last year I have a girlfriend who I want to marry. We both did wrong things: we were together in the bed we kissed and hugged each other, but we didn't sleep together. We want to return to the way of Islam and we decided to have the punishment we deserve on the Islam way. What is the punishment we deserve? We did that 5-6 times; every time we did that we regretted it, but we did the same mistake again and again.

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

We thank Allah, The Great and Almighty, since you still have a religious conscience and an attentive heart. Your regret for doing misdeeds and fear of consequence constitute an evidence that your hearts are honest and animated. What you did is, in fact, a sin that you have to give up sincerely and decide not to return to it again, since death may take one by surprise. So, be careful of persisting on such a sin or its like. This means that you have to break such a relationship between you both, and then, to resort to the Sharee’ah way that must be between a man and woman; i.e., taking the necessary steps for legal marriage (after repentance).

After that, you have to take the right path of the righteous.

We ask Allah, The Great and Almighty, to help you to do what He likes.

As for kissing and hugging each other, there is no specific punishment for such a deed, but you have to repent and break your relation so long as you have no Sharee’ah relation; i.e., by marriage. In other words, you are a non-Mahram man to this woman until you marry her.

Allah knows best.