Dear Friend,
Do you like helping Palestinian children? Then I hope you’ll join me in giving to PCRF. Thank you
for being the first! May God bless you.Here’s the link:
https://pcrf1.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/pcrf1/campaign.jsp?campaign=14&fundraiser=621119&
Thanks for reading last week’s piece about not living prophetically. Even if you’re a shaykh, most people can relate to the fact that to be human, is to fail to apply our virtues. We live in a time of great fitna, when the ego becomes the arbiter of most of our affairs. “Do you” could be the campaign for my generation (late millennial).
What if we shifted towards character as the basis for who we are?
Our relationships are a huge part of what makes us successful or unsuccessful.
Picking the right person to be your person, through the ups and downs, makes a huge difference to your success in this life and the next.
For Muslims, the person we pick is the Prophet (S). He (S) is the one we emulate, the one we praise, the one we tie our behavior to. His good character is timeless.
Birthday of the Beloved
We are in a special time of the year known as mawlid season. Rabi’il Awwal is the month of the Prophet Muhammad (S)’s birth.
It is the time of year loved by so many of us who are totally in love with a man we have yet to meet.
This dunya, this created world, has few genuine pleasures. Maybe mango mousse cake or the beauty of a magnolia tree are pleasures for you. The greatest light that God has bestowed upon this creation is the light that He sent through the messenger Muhammad ﷺ.
I use (S) as an abbreviation for ﷺ. For Muslims, it’s necessary to say “Peace and blessings be upon him” every time his name is mentioned out of love and respect, and (S) is a shorthand for the Arabic. Muhammad (S) literally means “the praised one.”
Muhammad (S) was born in Makkah in 570 and was sent as a "mercy to mankind" (Quran 21:107). He (s) was a man of love, patience, courage, generosity, and wisdom, who excelled in all his roles and inspired millions across the globe. He preached kindness, compassion, spiritual equality, and philanthropy. He literally transformed society. He was an outcast, and a misfit, born with the trauma of losing both his parents early in childhood. He (S) owned so few things, he named all of the objects in his home. He (S) literally would let his grandkids play on top of him in prostration while leading congregational prayer. He (S) would stand up when his (favorite) daughter Fatima entered the room.
He (S) was beyond, beyond anyone you can imagine in his character.1
Here’s a passage from Sura Kahf (The Cave) in which God instructs him to say, “I am only a man like you.”
Muhammad (S) is the final prophet sent after Abraham, Moses, and Jesus (may peace be upon them all) to revive their teachings and complete the revelations.
Muhammad (S) was a man who experienced the full range of human emotions from grief and despair to joy and victory. He (S) was a father and a grandfather, a servant and a leader, an orphan and a widower. The testament of who he was intimately, how he slept how he walked how he spoke all of it is knowledge Muslims hold.
He (S) taught us how to approach our spouses, how to cherish children, how to deal with scandal and tribulation like the grief of losing your loved ones, or burying your kids.
He (S) is and continues to be the most incredible testament of what it means to be human.
Today I wanted to explore how he dealt with scandal.
We covered this in our family halaqa with Amin, a former phD candidate turned chief data scientist of a company. Amin has been teaching as a side hobby since 2010, before there were so many kids, and in the 15 years of teaching, he has patiently led our group of families in seeking beneficial knowledge. He is the only one I know who has turned down Harvard twice, once to go to Wharton and once to go to Princeton. He knows the hadith books like the directions to his house, and he writes and speaks Arabic fluently.
At these gatherings, when I should be listening, I get distracted by the little kids playing or the food spread. I wonder sometimes if I have the attention span of a squirrel. Most people don’t write 500-word essays in their free time, so hopefully this essay makes up for the fact that I haven’t raised my hand to answer questions at halaqas in about a decade. 2
But something about this month’s halaqa kept me riveted.
There is a story of how Aisha (RA) was traveling back with a caravan. She had to use the bathroom and ended up behind the rest of the group. One of the companions found her, and escorted her back to town. She was not visible to him and she traveled in this box-thing that had to be carried on a camel. When she came into town with this random companion, salacious rumors were spread about her fidelity, her character.
The Prophet (s) heard these rumors spread by hypocrites. In fact, the rumors were spread by a relative of Aisha, accusing her of being unchaste. One of the heroes of that time period also spread rumors. No one is above gossip-mongering. The Prophet (S), the most gentle of men, did not know what to do but he asked God. He was hurt but did not reproach her. She was sick at the time too and wasn’t aware of what was being said about her for a while. But when she heard what people were saying about her, she was upset. Her testimony is extraordinary and has been preserved in our tradition. Aisha (RA) says :
"Whenever the Holy Prophet went out on a journey, he decided by lots as to which of his wives should accompany him. Accordingly, it was decided that I should accompany him during the expedition to Bani al Mustaliq. On the return journey, the Holy Prophet halted for the night at a place which was the last stage on the way back to Al- Madinah. It was still night, when they began to make preparations for the march. So I went outside the camp to ease myself. When I returned and came near my halting place, I noticed that my necklace had fallen down somewhere. I went back in search for it but in the meantime the caravan moved off and I was left behind all alone. The four carriers of the litter had placed it on my camel without noticing that it was empty. This happened because of my light weight due to lack of food in those days. I wrapped myself in my sheet and lay down in the hope that when it would be found that I had been left behind, a search party would come back to pick me up. In the meantime I fell asleep. In the morning, when Safwan bin Mu'attal Sulami passed that way, he saw me and recognized me for he had seen me several times before the Commandment about purdah had been sent down. No sooner did he see me than he stopped his camel and cried out spontaneously : "How sad! The wife of the Holy Prophet has been left here!" At this I woke up all of a sudden and covered my face with my sheet. Without uttering another word, he made his camel kneel by me and stood aside, while I climbed on to the camel back. He led the camel by the nose-string and we overtook the caravan at about noon, when it had just halted and nobody had yet noticed that I had been left behind. I learnt later that this incident had been used to slander me and Abdullah bin Ubayy was foremost among the slanderers.(According to other narrations, when Hadrat Ayesha reached the camp on the camel, led by Safwan, and it was known that she had been left behind, Abdullah bin Ubayy cried out, 'By God, she could not have remained chaste. Look, there comes the wife of your Prophet openly on the camel led by the person with whom she passed the night.')
"When I reached Al-Madinah, I fell ill and stayed in bed for more than a month. Though I was quite unaware of it, the news of the "Slander" was spreading like a scandal in the city, and had also reached the Holy Prophet. Anyhow, I noticed that he did not seem as concerned about my illness as he used to be. He would come by, but without addressing me directly would inquire from others how I was and leave the house. Therefore it troubled my mind that something had gone wrong somewhere. So I took leave of him and went to my mother's house for better nursing.
"While I was there, one night I went out of the city to ease myself in the company of Mistah's mother, who was a first cousin of my mother. As she was walking along she stumbled over something and cried out spontaneously, 'May Mistah perish!' To this I retorted, 'What a good mother you are that you curse your own son -- the son who took part in the Battle of Badr.' She replied, 'My dear daughter, are you not aware of his scandal mongering?' Then she told me everything about the campaign of the "Slander".(Besides the hypocrites, some true Muslims also had been involved in this campaign, and among them who took leading part in it, were Mistah, Hassan bin Thabit, the famous poet of Islam, and Hamnah, daughter of Jahsh and sister of Hadrat Zainab). Hearing this horrible story, my blood curdled, and I immediately returned home, and passed the rest of the night crying over it.
"During my absence the Holy Prophet took counsel with Ali and Usamah bin Zaid about this matter. Usamah said good words about me to this effect:'O Messenger of Allah, we have found nothing but good in your wife. All that is being spread about her is a lie and calumny.' As regards Ali, he said, 'O Messenger of Allah, there is no dearth of women; you may, if you like, marry another wife. If, however, you would like to investigate the matter, you may send for her maid servant and inquire into it through her.' Accordingly, the maid servant was sent for and questioned. She replied, 'I declare on oath by Allah, Who has sent you with the Truth, that I have never seen any evil in her, except that she falls asleep when I tell her to look after the kneaded dough in my absence and a goat comes and eats it.'
"On that same day the Holy Prophet addressed the people from the pulpit, saying:'O Muslims, who from among you will defend my honor against the person who has transgressed all bounds in doing harm to me by slandering my wife. By God, I have made a thorough inquiry and found nothing wrong with her nor with the man, whose name has been linked with the "Slander". At this Usaid bin Hudair (or Sa'd bin Mauz) according to other narrations) stood up and said, 'O Messenger of Allah, if that person belongs to our clan, we will kill him by ourselves, but if he belongs to the Khazraj clan, we will kill him if you order us to do so.' Hearing this Sa'd bin 'Ubadah, chief of the Khazraj clan, stood up and said, 'You lie you can never kill him. You are saying this just because the person belongs to our clan of Khazraj. Had he belonged to your clan, you would never have said so.' Hadrat Usaid retorted, 'You are a hypocrite: that is why you are defending a hypocrite.' At this, there was a general turmoil in the mosque, which would have developed into a riot, even though the Holy Prophet was present there the whole time. But he cooled down their anger and came down from the pulpit."
Aisha (RA) reacted like any woman would: she cried; she was mad; she could not defend herself, not really. The issue of a woman’s character was actually a political thing.
So God sent down a verse exonerating her.
How does a man react when his beloved wife Aisha is accused of infidelity?
The Qur'an does not give us an account of the prophet's life.
On the contrary, it does not show us the Prophet from the outside at all, but rather takes us inside his head, where God is speaking to him, telling him what to say, how to react to people who ridicule him. When his (S) wife is accused of infidelity and scandal, he (S) is patient, calm, and dignified. She does not try to prove her innocence and he does not demand proof either. He remains quiet.
It was a time of immense fitna, or chaos.
Religion is about Love.
Shaykh Osamah Salhia spoke about “the Role of the Prophet ﷺ in Our Spiritual Lives” at a dhikr gathering last year. He said our love for the Prophet (S) is the doorway to revolutionizing our religion. Religion is about true love, and knowing and loving the Prophet (S) is critical to our religion of Islam.
Love has immense sway on our character and behavior.
Human beings gravitate towards whom they love, those who have empathy and excellence. Learning from how the Prophet (S) loved, and how he showed his love has a tremendous lesson for us. He (S) forgave those who wronged him or might have wronged him. He (S) said it best with this supplication:
“O Allah grant me Your love and the love of those whose love will benefit me with You. O Allah, whatever you have provided me of that which I love, then make it strength for me for that which You love. O Allah, and what you have kept from me of that which I love, then make it for me a period of rest in that which You love.
How do Muslims have a loving relationship with the Prophet (S)?
Love for the Prophet (S) manifests in how we treat other people.
Love is the source of life for the heart. When there’s love and devotion to the Prophet (S) in our hearts, there’s a transformation in our behavior.
Centering faith on the love of the Prophet is possible because he was a human being. It is easier to know him as a man because of the extensive writings about his life, what he said, what he did. The greatest lessons are in how he behaved with people.
A Question or Two For You
Is there someone you feel love for who you have yet to meet?
Is there someone you wish you could have met just to say how much they mean to you?
Are there ways in which you have been transformed by reading the seerah (the biography of the Prophet)?
Have you written a love letter recently?
When you say beyond, you have to say it like how Afsheen says it.
I don’t know why I’m so easily distracted when it comes to everything else except writing this substack. Neurodivergence? I don’t know.
The more I learn the more I like