Weathering The Storm Standing Firm On Our Principles

Weathering The Storm: Standing Firm On Our Principles

Dr. Yasir Qadhi

Opening Praise and Salutations

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ سَابِغِ النِّعَمَا، وَخَالِقِ الْإِنْسَانِ مِنْ بَعْدِ الْعَدَمِ، فَالْحَمْدُ ثُمَّ الْحَمْدُ ثُمَّ الْحَمْدُ لَكَ حَمْدًا كَثِيرًا طَيِّبًا يَا رَبَّنَا، أَعْطَيْتَنَا خَيْرًا كَثِيرًا رَبَّنَا، سَتَرْتَ عَنْ كُلِّ وَرَاءٍ عُيُوبَنَا، ثُمَّ الصَّلَاةُ بَعْدَ وَالتَّسْلِيمِ، عَلَى النَّبِيِّ الْمُصْطَفَى الْكَرِيمِ السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

All praise is due to Allah. We praise him as he and only he deserves to be praised. And we ask Allah for the blessings of this world and the blessings of the next. And we ask protection that Allah protects us from the evils of our souls and the evils of the whisperings of shaytan.

And we pray that Allah sends his peace and his salutations and his blessings upon the most perfect worshipper and the final messenger sent to mankind, our Prophet Muhammad (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ).

The Early Message of Islam: Social Reform and Human Equality

As to what follows, when our Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) began preaching the message of Islam, what exactly was the message? Many of us will immediately say he was preaching tawheed. And that's true, he was.

There's no denying that that is the crux of what he came with. But what many of us fail to recognize was that from the very beginning of the prophetic message, there were fundamentals that were also being taught. There was a call for social action.

There was a call to change societal norms and practices. For example, the very first prohibition of the Quran was about female infanticide. Don't kill female girls.

Islam's Revolutionary Social Principles

This is a social change. Islam didn't just come with theology, didn't just come with rituals. There were principles that affected society itself.

And some of these principles, dare I say all of them, were politically incorrect. They were principles that the Arabs, the pre-pagan peoples of Arabia, did not comprehend or appreciate. And one of the earliest messages that our Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) came with, and also one of the most politically incorrect, was the message of human equality.

The Historical Context of Inequality

Now, pause here before I get to the issue of what I'm talking about. Realize that before the coming of our Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ), no philosopher, no theologian, no society had ever claimed that all human beings were equally human. I know it sounds pretty straightforward.

I know it sounds like a given. But the fact of the matter is that every society and every race and every civilization deemed itself to be superior to other civilizations. The Chinese felt they were better than everybody else.

The Romans looked down to the Persians. The Persians looked down to the Greeks. The Greeks looked down to the Arabs. Every civilization felt we are the best morally. Nobility wise, we're number one and everybody should be subservient to us. And even within every race, there was a hierarchy and paradigm.

The Pre-Islamic Arabian Class System

It's not as if the Arabs said, oh, we are all Arabs together against the Persians. We are all Romans against. No, even within one particular society, there was a clear hierarchy.

Rich, elite, nobleman, lineage, blood. Who is your grandfather? Where were you born? How much money do you own? Arabia is the classic example. If you were the chieftain or the son of a chieftain, you were treated very differently than if you were somebody from another tribe.

If you were a Qurashi versus a non-Qurashi, why were the non-Qurashis persecuted? And in early Mecca, nobody harmed Abu Bakr as-Siddiq. Nobody actually lifted a finger against our Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) for the first 6 or 7 years. Why? Because it took a long time for them to overcome the taboo of a Qurashi hitting another Qurashi.

They brutally attacked Ammar ibn Yasir. They killed his father Yasir and his mother Sumayyah. They massacred some of the early Sahaba. They tortured Bilal. They beat Abdullah ibn Mas'ud to a pulp. Why? Because they weren't from the Qurash.

The Revolutionary Message of Human Equality

And even within the Qurash, there was a clear hierarchy. Our Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) came, and he began preaching a message that to the best of my limited knowledge, was unheard of in all of human history. And if I am incorrect, please correct me.

I do not know of a single person before our Prophet Muhammad (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) who came with such an explicit message of universal human equality. All human beings are equal in the eyes of Allah. It doesn't matter who your father or mother was.

It doesn't matter your skin color. It doesn't matter your social status. In the eyes of Allah, all of you are equal.

Except with what you yourselves do with your lives, which is taqwa, which is content, which is character, which is akhlaq. Then you can compete with one another.

The Famous Declaration of Hajjatul Wada

Now we all know what the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) said at the end of his life in Hajjatul Wada'ah. We've memorized it. We've been taught this since our kindergarten and our Sunday schools:

He said that. A few weeks before he passed away (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) in front of the largest gathering that he ever spoke in front of, he gave five paragraphs. One of them was about economic equality.

One of them was about treatment of women. One of them was about the universal equality of all human beings. And he explicitly said that famous line, "All of you are from Adam, and Adam came from dust. There is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab, of a white over a black, except with taqwa."

Early Implementation of Equality

We all know that. How many of us know that 23 years before he said that, from the very beginnings of Islam, there was the message of human equality.

This is ingrained in the Quran. It was in the very basic preachings of early Makkah. And that is why of the first converts were those who had never heard this message.

Bilal ibn Abi Rabah, Ammar ibn Yasir and his father Yasir and his mother Sumayyah, Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, who was a non-Qurashi from a lowly tribe of Yemen, Khubayb and Suhayb al-Rumi, and Khabbab ibn al- Arat, and all of these sahaba who were not from the Quraysh, they were from the earliest converts.

And the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) was publicly preaching that the slaves and the slave owners are equal in the eyes of Allah, except with taqwa. Guess what happened?

The Quraysh's Problematic Response

This message proved to be more problematic for a segment of the Quraysh than the message of tawheed versus idolatry.

Let me repeat that. The message of human equality proved to be more problematic for some of the Arabs because they were ingrained. It was something that was from generation to generation.

Society is based on this hierarchy of social strata, of the structure of class. Which class are you born into, you will stay there by and large till you die. Your skin color, your blood, your tribe, your lineage, your wealth, it dictates how you're gonna be treated.

Universal Historical Context

Pause here, footnote. This is the default in the majority of mankind. Medieval Europe was the same, Christendom was the same, up until the advent of modernity.

This was the way the world worked. Class, society. You're born into a class and you're treated according to that class.

And our Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) said, "No, everybody is equal." Some of the Quraysh, they didn't have a problem with tawheed. They didn't have a problem with rejecting idolatry.

They were open to the idea. True, some of them weren't, but some of them were open to the idea of giving up idolatry and worshipping Allah. But they could not overcome this aspect.

The Compromise Proposal

It was a stigma, social taboo, that a slave owner sits with the slave, that the Arab sits with the non-Arab, that the fair-skinned sits with the dark-skinned. They could not imagine it.

So, a group of them, when the message of the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) began spreading and more and more people converted to Islam, amongst them is Uthbah ibn al-Rabi'ah, Shaybah ibn al-Rabi'ah, Mut'im ibn Adi, others.

By the way, if you read their seerah and their biographies, if you read their stories, by and large, these are from, I call them the noble enemies. They were ignoble enemies, and they were noble enemies. They were enemies of the Prophet (صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) who didn't stoop that low that they threw a carcass on him, or that they smeared him.

The Proposal to Abu Talib

So they sent a message to Abu Talib. And they said to Abu Talib, "Look, tell your nephew that if he gives us the special privilege that we were born into, and he does not allow the slaves to sit with us in his gatherings, because we have heard that the slave master and the slave sit next to each other when they're in front of him. And we will not go and be humiliated by sitting down with people of different colors, and different races, and are slaves, and we all be equal. Go tell your nephew that when we come, we'll be willing to listen to his message, but he has to get rid of this clause in the religion."

At least for us. They didn't even say by the way, they didn't even say that it has to be universally repealed. They simply said, "We will not be able to abide by that clause."

The Temptation and Internal Pressure

So when we come, and this is the stories of Ibn Hisham, when we come, then he has to kick out Bilal. He has to tell Khabbab that they're not welcome. Ibn Mas'ud is not gonna sit in our gatherings.

Ibn Mas'ud is a lowly hired hand. He's an immigrant. Literally, the vernacular today, Ibn Mas'ud would be an immigrant.

Ibn Mas'ud was not a slave. Ibn Mas'ud was basically from another lowly Arab tribe who had come seeking work in Mecca. Literally, the type of mentality we see in America, in England and whatnot, the anti-immigrant type of mentality.

Ibn Mas'ud was that. Bilal of course was a slave. So these Quraish said, "We will not sit in a gathering with those people."

The Discussion in Dar al-Arqam

The books of Tafsir mention a very awkward story. And if you listen to my seerah, you know that I don't shy away from these awkward stories. And I'd rather you hear it from me than from anybody else.

Because when you really contextualize, there's nothing awkward about it. If it's presented in the proper manner, it makes complete sense. Here on a silver platter, you have some VIP names, no, VVIP names being presented.

There was a discussion in Dar al-Arqam about this issue. Should we compromise on this principle? A very famous sahabi, I will not mention his name because perhaps some of you might misunderstand and these are more academic lectures, but you all know his name and we all love and respect him.

But in the end of the day, he thought this would be better for Islam, one of the great sahaba. And he is great, even if he said this, it is a natural thing. A very famous sahabi said, "Ya Rasulullah, give them what they want."

Allah's Clear Response

So what if Bilal sits outside for an hour a week? So what if Ibn Mas'ud is told he's not welcome for that particular time slot? We will get Mut'im Ibn Adi, the one that is the most respected in all of Makkah. We will get the krem de la krem of the Quraysh, of the Banu Abi Shaybah, the people whom everybody love.

At this, Allah revealed multiple verses in the Quran that we recite to this day.

"Do not ever expel those people who are praying to Allah morning and evening. Don't ever get rid of them for the sake of others."

"If you get rid of them, you would have done zulm against them."