Omar Suleiman – The Firsts – Abu Sufyan Ibn Harb RA
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the complex history of the Prophet's name, including his military career and daughter, and highlights the importance of his actions, such as protecting Islam and loving religion. The history of the Battle of BPD, including the loss of Muslims and the return of the Prophet's son, is also discussed, along with the return of the Prophet's son and potential consequences. The importance of finding a solution to racism and tribalism, showing respect for the Prophet's actions, and balancing forgiveness is emphasized. The history of the Prophet's actions, including forgiveness, is also highlighted, along with the need for discipline and ethics in leadership positions and show respect for his actions. The end of the Islam era is also highlighted, with the need for discipline and ethics in leadership positions and the importance of showing respect for the Prophet's actions.
AI: Summary ©
Welcome back to the first, I ask Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
to accept all of your Ibadah in Ramadan.
May
Allah allow all of our deeds that we
perform to be accepted. Forgive us for our
shortcomings in Ramadan and after Ramadan.
So tonight,
we're going to be looking into probably one
of the most complex
companions of the Prophet
in the entire Sira.
Because when you think of him, you always
think of him on the opposing side of
the Prophet
And I have to admit that I was
once going to give a hutba.
A few years ago, there was someone who
was a high profile convert.
This was maybe 6, 7 years ago, and
I was thinking to myself, we should name
the Khutbah the Curious Case of Abu Sufyan,
because the Prophet
treats this man in such a way
that is so unfathomable when you consider
the profile of Abu Sufyan and his enmity
towards the Prophet
for 2 decades.
From the very beginning
all the way until Fatiha Mecca, he's not
just one enemy of the Prophet
He's always the ringleader. He's always there amongst
those that are conspiring against the Prophet
and it would not be an exaggeration to
say that this might have been the most
hated man to the Muslims if you think
about the cumulative seerah of the Prophet
when you said the name of Abu Sufyan
in Madinah, it evoked a certain sentiment
because this was the man that was always
organizing against the
Prophet And so SubhanAllah, as we talk about
him, you don't just come to appreciate the
end of the story.
You come to appreciate the mindset of a
man who somehow is won over to the
Prophet
and who somehow the Prophet
can tolerate
despite everything that he's done against Islam.
And his history is rich and believe it
or not, SubhanAllah, this is actually one of
the harder
lectures to pack into 1 hour because of
the depth of the story
of this man, Abu Sufyan
So his name, first and foremost,
is Sahar ibn Harb
ibn Umayyah nai'Abdishams.
So Sahar is his actual name, which means
rock, right? Sahar
ibn
Harb, the rock, the son of war. That
would be the translation of his name, and
subhanAllah, how fitting of a name it actually
is to him. His name Abu Sufyan
is actually a kunya that his father supposedly
had. So there's debate about where he got
the name Abu Sufyan from because he doesn't
actually have a name or a son named
Sufyan,
right?
So either his father was named Abu Sufyan
and he wanted to carry
the kunya, the nickname of his father,
or Sufyan,
which means swiftness. It could mean like a
storm, represents a certain character in battle, right?
Someone who moves like a storm, or it
was a characteristic
that Abu Sufyan
wanted to be named after. So his name
is Sahar ibn Harl.
He has two nicknames,
Abu Sufyan, which is his most famous nickname.
And then the other, Kunya, is the one
that is actually after his oldest son, which
is Abu Hanvalah.
So his actual technical name is Abu Hanvalah,
after his oldest son.
As I said, the most hated man to
the Muslims and SubhanAllah, when you think about
the Hadith of the Prophet
about the man who killed 99 people from
Bani Israel and then killed a 100 and
still found forgiveness from Allah,
this is probably the only men or one
of the only people in the Sira that
you can pinpoint and say, he actually killed
a 100 Muslims.
And so this hadith actually has to apply
to him, and he didn't just kill any
99 or 100 people. He killed a 100
of the best people on the face of
the earth, the best of the generation of
the companions
of the Prophet
Yet somehow Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will spare
him until the very end and until he
has an
opportunity to convert to Islam. So he obviously
comes from a very powerful family,
and his reputation in Islam
of being a warlord is inherited from his
father.
So his father,
Harb, whose name is War,
was actually the leader of Kinana in what's
known as Harb al Fujar,
the early,
wars of the days of ignorance, the tribalistic
wars. His father was the main leader
of Quraysh,
and his father is known for being a
warlord.
And his father is also sort of looked
at amongst the generation before him as the
successor to Abdul Muttalib in terms of being
the leader of Mecca.
So Abu Sufyan is inheriting
nobility, is inheriting
power. He's inheriting war. He's inheriting the responsibility
of 1 of the 3 archtribes of Mecca,
Benu'Abdishamps.
He is being groomed to be the leader,
and he's literally a copy of his father.
Now because his father dies before Islam, it's
harder to get much information about him, but
it seems to be that everything about Abu
Sufyan that you learn is true of his
father
as well. And he comes from this rich,
noble, powerful
tribe. Benir Abdishams
was known not just for their ability in
war, but they were known for running the
caravans,
all of the trade to Hashem, right, which
which Abu Sufyan will be famous for. Who
is
Who are the richest companions that come to
your mind from the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam's
companions?
Uthman ibn Affan, radiAllahu anhu, was the cousin
of Abu Sufyan. He's also from Banu'Abdashamps,
right? So you think about the aristocrats of
Makkah, the people who have all the money,
the people who have a concentration of power.
His father-in-law is Utba
ibn Mabi'ah, who's one of the chieftains of
Mecca.
And we learned quite a bit about him,
and he's one of the staunch opponents of
the Prophet
as well.
And
it's too hard to talk about his whole
family, because Abu Sufyan had 7 wives in
total and way too many children to count.
So children and grandchildren,
plentiful.
7 marriages total. His 2 most famous wives,
the first one
is Hind bint Uitba, who we're going to
talk about. Hind bint Uitba ibn Rabia.
Hind being the woman who was famous for
what?
For chewing the liver of Hamzah
Right, so this is the wife of Abu
Sufyan
and his other
wife, Safia bint Abilaas,
who's the aunt of Uthman and the mother
of Habibah
the wife of the Prophet
Abu Sufyan's sister, I'm not going to go
too much longer in the family tree, I'm
just going to move on inshallah. His sister
Arwa is the wife of Abu Lahab
And some of the scholars of Tafsir say,
the woman carrying the wood is actually speaking
to
the sister of Abu Sufyan,
okay, who's the wife of Abu Lahab. Right?
So one of the wives of Abu Lahab
is the sister
of Abu Sufyan
He's known as
that in the times of war, when the
banner was handed to the senior amongst them,
when things became difficult and everyone had to
retreat, Abu Sufyan
is the head of Quraysh, the amir of
Quraysh that the people always retreat to.
So he occupies
this lofty position
in the life of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam.
He's also older than the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam. And this is one of the interesting
things that's narrated about him. It's narrated that
he was 20 years he was born 20
years before the Prophet
and he died 20 years after the Prophet
So he lives an extremely long life, anywhere
from 10 to 20 years older than the
Prophet
And basically,
he was most famous for
his
caravans,
the large amount of trade that he used
to do with the world around.
So he used to go out to a
Sham frequently, to Palestine, to Syria,
frequently.
He used to go out to Yemen frequently.
He used to run the marketplace of Mecca
during the pilgrimage seasons.
So when you think about all of the
leaders, the Abu Jahalas and Abu Lahabs of
the world, Abu Sufyan is the one that
kind of has the smarts of the caravans
that go out and how the caravans come
in. The merchants that come from Yemen and
that come from Syria know Abu Sufyan as
the point person, and Abu Sufyan knows them
when he goes to Yemen and Asham.
And he's someone that has a lot to
lose when the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam declares
his Islam.
Why?
Because military power, he's afraid of losing.
His wealth, he's afraid afraid of losing because
all the exploitation, all the Riba, all of
the interest and usury and the power that's
occupied there.
And of course,
beyond that, seniority. He's looked at
as occupying this point between the eldest of
Quraysh, the eldest leaders of Quraysh, and then
the younger generation. He's kind of situated between
the 2 generations.
And so he's the natural
next leader
of Quraysh.
And as soon as he sees the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam declaring Islam,
despite knowing everything he knew about the Prophet
like Abu Jahal, he immediately thinks, bani abdishams,
We can't do it.
I'm going to fight you.
There is no way that I can concede
that you are a prophet of Allah
because if I concede that you are a
prophet of Allah, then I lose my position.
This is all just to give you a
little bit of a background before we get
personal, insha'Allah,
in the life of this man,
Sahar ibn Harb Abu Sufyan
Now, what happens?
When the prophet
announces his prophethood,
Abu Sufyan
is not someone who takes the immediate violent
reaction of Abu Jahl.
Abu Sufyan is someone who's trying to think
of the most diplomatic way
to strategically undermine the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam,
and that speaks to a little bit of
his mind.
Right?
He's a lot less volatile
than Abu Jahal is. So he's not someone
that you see pouncing on the Muslims, pouncing
on the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, suddenly
pulling out his sword and fighting people. He's
someone who's constantly planning in the background and
scheming
as to how to stop Islam
from growing
in Mecca.
And they used to say that the 3
wise men of Quraish who all became idiots
when Islam came to Mecca, Abu Jahan, whose
name was Abu Hakam, the father of wisdom,
Rutba, the father-in-law of Abu Sufyan, and Abu
Sufyan,
they all took,
subhanAllah, things that were completely
opposite
of what their stances would have been in
the days of ignorance in regards to the
Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So everything was counterintuitive
about how they responded to the Prophet
But still, in keeping true to his character,
he's someone who schemes against the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam. And he's someone who will incite
the violence, but who rarely be actually seen
holding the sword and actually
abusing
people in public, because he's kind of trying
to maintain a reputation.
He's also someone that continues his trade routes
even during the first several years of Islam.
So many of the the Meccans go on
high alert. Right? They're like, we have to
we have to solve this rebellion from the
inside and squash this message.
Abu Sufyan still goes to Yemen. He still
goes to Hashem. He still carries on growing
his business and growing his trade
while he's scheming against the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam
in Mecca.
Now one of the things that happens
is that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala tests
each and every single one of these men
by someone of their own family, their closest
relatives becoming
Muslim in the earliest batch.
So his daughter,
Habiba
RadiAllahu Ta'ala Anha,
is considered to be the 2nd
person from Banu Umayyah to embrace Islam after
Islam
She's the second from the tribe
to embrace Islam. She's one of
one of the first Muslims, his own
daughter.
And this caused a lot of trouble to
Abu Sufyan. It was embarrassing to him.
Now she's married
to Ubaydul Abnu Jahsh, so she's not technically
living with him, but it's still a huge
embarrassment that his own daughter would embrace the
Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's message at a very
early point of the call to Islam.
And of course,
his own daughter, as well as his cousin
Uthman, are both amongst those that migrate to
Abyssinia to escape the persecution
of Mecca.
So Abu Sufyan's daughter embraces Islam,
along with her husband,
along with her cousin Uthman.
They flee the persecution
of the likes of Abu Sufyan and Utbah
and others,
taking place in Mecca.
Now Abu Sufyan, this is to give you
some important context to the Battle of Badr.
To him, all of the wealth of the
Muslims was fair game,
including his own family.
So once his own relatives
go to Abyssinia, he confiscates their homes, he
sells their homes, he includes it amongst his
caravan.
So he's actively stealing the wealth
of the Muslims, including his own relatives,
and consuming that and making it part of
his caravan and basically making his caravan
larger and larger and larger and larger. The
reason why this is so important is that
when you get to the Battle of Badr,
it all starts with the caravan of Abu
Sufyan.
Right?
And you can imagine
what precious wealth is in the caravan of
Abu Sufyan, who shows no regard for the
wealth of the Muslims, including
his own in laws. And there's a very
famous story about Abu Ahmed Abd ibn Jaish
and his home, which was considered one of
the best of Meccan. He was a blind
man. His home being stolen from him,
sold, and then included in the caravan, the
money being included in the caravan
of Abu Sufyan.
So he takes these caravans, and how does
Abu Sufyan basically save face?
So I want to give you just this
this high level. When you read about the
Munafiqun, I'm sorry, when you read about the
kuffar, the disbelievers of Mecca spending money
in charity and expecting a reward,
it's usually talking about Abu Sufyan.
Because the way Abu Sufyan covers for all
this exploitation
and the way that he covers for all
of the stealing and all of this abuse
with his wealth is that he gives a
lot of money and charity.
Right? He finances many of the military endeavors
and the tribal endeavors of Quraish.
He does a lot that earns him face
amongst his people, but subhanAllah, all of it
is being spent, fee sabidha shaitan, in the
way of the devil. Right, and to actually
oppress
and to actually
harm.
Now with all of that,
Abu Sufyan
comes to learn
that his daughter, Habiba,
receives a marriage proposal from the Prophet, sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
Think about this marriage,
because Habiba's husband dies in Habashah, and we
talked about her
already in this series.
Habiba is in Abyssinia, a widow.
The prophet is in Madina.
Abu Sufyan is in Mecca.
The prophet
sends a marriage proposal to Habiba
in Abyssinia.
The news of that reaches Abu Sufyan, who's
trying to kill the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
in Madinah. Talk about an international, like this
is before Zoom to cash were even a
thing. Like
this is all happening international across borders
in very different political climates.
But to give you an idea of the
mindset of Abu Sufyan,
and the way that he thinks, and how
tribalistic
of a man that he was,
when he heard that Habiba
received the marriage proposal from the prophet, Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam,
he said the words,
that that is a noble stallion who should
not be rejected.
You know what? I'm trying to kill the
man,
and I can't stand him. But at the
same time, the Prophet comes from a noble
lineage.
And so at the end of the day,
my daughter is marrying someone from a noble
lineage. I'm okay with this. I'm still gonna
try to kill him,
but I'm okay with this. At the end
of the day, my daughter is in good
hands now. She's now part of,
again, the continuation of a noble lineage. So
he's got a very strange tribalistic
mindset, and he enters into this arena of
opposition to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
from these very base places.
Right? It's not like
a noble type of opposition.
Right? It's
tribe
and money.
Tribe and money, tribe and money.
Now after the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam escapes
and flees to Mecca, this is where the
story now really starts to take shape.
Abu Sufyan is still now in the second
tier
of the main opposition to the Prophet because
his elders are still alive.
Right? So Abu Jahal is still alive, Abu
Lahab is still alive, Utbah is still alive,
Omayyah is still alive, Alwalid Mughira is still
alive, Al Aas is still alive. Right? These
are still sort of the elders to Abu
to Abu Sufyan that are opposing the Prophet
Abu Sufyan is in their group, but he's
still slightly younger than them.
The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, as he flees
to Madinah,
he commissions
these raids on the caravans
to try to intercept some of what was
stolen from the Muslims. And so as the
caravans are going out to
Assam and as they're going out to Yemen
and they're returning, the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
is trying to intercept some of those caravans.
So what happens with the Battle of Badr?
Camels
and over 50,000
dinars worth of goods. It had much of
the consumed and stolen wealth of the Muslims.
And so the prophet
sends a battalion,
not an army, a battalion
to try to intercept that, which which explains
why you had such a small number of
people on the side of the Muslims that
weren't equipped for a battle
when bad that happened. They didn't have camels.
They didn't have horses. They didn't have their
full armor. They had things that could keep
them light in the desert, right, while they
tried to intercept
the caravan of Abu Sufyan.
Abu Sufyan hears about the plan of the
Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
So he diverts his caravan, his huge caravan,
and he has
40 guards to that caravan. So you can
see how much he treasures that wealth.
So you got a whole
army of sorts
protecting the caravan,
and he takes a different route.
He alerts Abu Jahl and the leaders of
Mecca,
and then they go out to meet the
Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
and that small group of Muslims
around the area of Badr. And that's how
the Battle of Badr is going to take
place, right? So Abu Sufyan
escapes the Battle of Badr technically because his
job is to actually safeguard his caravan from
the Prophet
and from the Muslims
before the Battle of Badr.
However,
most of the leaders
of Quraysh are present in the Battle of
Badr.
Some of them didn't wanna go out,
including, by the way, the father-in-law of the
prophet the father-in-law of Abu Sufyan himself, Ritzba.
He really didn't feel like it, but Abu
Jahl was insisting. In fact, you have narrations
of Abu
Sufyan saying, look, we've got the caravan safe.
There's no need to to engage in battle
now. Abu Jahl is the one who's insisting
on trying to wipe out the Muslims while
we have them vulnerable.
So Abu Sufyan, his job was to protect
the caravan.
Abu Jahal is shaming the other leaders to
go to battle with the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam and take advantage of the situation and
to kill their own sons,
right, in this battle
and has a vengeance to him that everyone
else is just kind of going along with.
Abu Sufyan is not participating.
However,
his oldest son Hamdullah and another one of
his sons participates in the Battle of Badr,
as well as his father-in-law
and essentially all of his in laws,
from the side of Hind bin Tutba.
Now I want you to think of the
commencement of the Battle of Badr.
As the Battle of Badr is getting started,
if you remember, in the beginning of the
battle, there's a duel.
The duel that starts off the Battle of
Badr, where you have 3 Muslims come forward,
and 3 of the opposing side come forward,
the duel on their side
includes the family.
All 3 of them are the family of
Abu Sufyan's in laws.
You have Uthba bin Rabia, his father-in-law.
You have Shaiba,
the brother of Uthba,
and you have
Walid.
I'm sorry. Yeah. Walid. So you have Walid
ibn Utbah, Shaiba, and Utbah.
All of them
are from the same family coming out to
fight the Muslims.
And between Hamza
they finish all 3 of them.
Okay. So all 3 of them are killed
in that battle.
Meaning
that by the time Hind
hears this, you can understand now where that
vengeance is coming against Hamzah
that you killed my father and you killed
my brother.
Right. She wants revenge on Hamza because Hamza
technically is the one
who killed her father and her brother in
those duels.
As for Abu Sufyan himself,
his oldest son Hamdullah died
as a kafir on that day. He died
as a disbeliever fighting the Muslims that day.
So he's one of the casualties on the
side of the mushrikeen.
He had another son who the prophet, sallallahu
alaihi wasallam, had as a prisoner,
but the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, let him
go. So he's one of the captives of
Badr who was let go. All the captives,
of course, were let go at some ransom
in hopes that it would soften the hearts
of the people of Mecca. It didn't soften
the heart of Abu Sufyan or Hind at
all. Right? That his other son was let
go, even though the aggression
was coming
from their side.
Hence comes the Battle of Uhud.
Now the first
war, the first battle that Abu Sufyan is
going to
appear
as
the leader, the absolute leader of, is the
Battle of Uhud.
He's going to lead Uhud against the Prophet
and he's going to lead
Handak,
the siege of Madinah,
and the Battle of the trench against the
Prophet
So he is the core leader, the supreme
leader
of both of those battles
because everyone else that was of that level
had already perished in Badr.
So all of his colleagues, all of those
that were at his level or senior to
him had died in the Battle of Badr.
And now they are coming
to Uhud
with a sense of pure vengeance and hatred
towards the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam,
and there is none that has more hatred
in her heart than Hind Mint Urtba, than
his wife Hind,
who wants revenge
for the murder of her father and the
murder of her brother.
I mean, she's the one bringing out the
women to the battlefield. She's got the war
drum. She's authoring poetry.
Right?
Basically
saying to the men that if you
lose this battle, then don't come home, right,
then we will not accept you back into
our homes if you flee from this battlefield.
She is the one who is leading the
group of the insiders,
right,
in the Battle of Uhud
and demanding the mutilation
of the companions of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam, specifically
Hamzah
And she's the one that promises Washi
his freedom.
If he kills Hamza and brings to Hamza,
the, brings to her the liver of Hamza
so that she could chew the liver of
hamza, radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu, as an act of
humiliation.
SubhanAllah,
as this battle takes place, I want you
to just imagine the Qadr of Allah. Because
when we talk about, like, why me? There's
a lot of why me's in the family
of Abu Sufyan.
Both Abu Sufyan and Hind almost got killed
on the day of Uhud.
SubhanAllah, how Allah spared them.
As for Hind,
if you remember
the story of Abu Dujana, radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu,
When Abu Dhujana radiAllahu anhu cut across the
battlefield,
he made it so quickly through the lines
of the believers that he got all the
way to the women that were beating the
drums and singing the song, and he was
cutting so fast and slicing so fast,
he ended up and he said, I had
my sword right on top of a woman,
and she gasped.
And Zubayd is watching this whole thing,
and she was singing the lines of incitement.
And who was it? Hinds bintur'utba.
And Abu Dujana had his sword,
then he pulled the sword back.
SubhanAllah,
Az Zubayr, and by the way, she's an
active participant in this battle, if you think
about it. She's going around beating the drums,
telling them to go forward and to kill.
And you're in a moment of heat.
As Zubair asked Abu Dajjana what happened,
and he said
that when I reached her or when I
was going through and I realized that it
was a woman that was under me,
I found the sword of the Prophet SallAllahu
Alaihi Wasallam too noble to use it to
strike a woman. I wasn't going to use
the sword of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
to strike a woman, so he spared her.
Now you would hope that that would have
softened her heart a bit, right? It didn't.
The vengeance was still consuming her. And SubhanAllah,
it was her, and it was the wife
of Amr bin 'as, and it was the
wife of Ikram Abin Abi Jahal,
and all of these women who would become
Muslim one day, who were beating the drums
and calling for the body parts
of the companions of the Prophet
in revenge for those that were killed
in the Battle of Badr.
So Hind survives
due to an act of nobility
from
Abu Dujana
As for Abu Sufyan,
SubhanAllah, it's actually really interesting.
The very famous
hamdullah, who's known as
the one who the angels washed.
The very famous hamdullah, the young man
he actually got to Abu Sufyan on the
battlefield, and he managed to knock him off
of his horse.
And he was just about to kill him,
but then, Shaddad ibn Aswad killed him from
behind.
So Abu Sufyan was on his back about
to die on the day of Uhud. What
a miserable fate it would have been, right?
And instead,
Allah spared him.
Was martyred, and hamdulillah was taken up to
the heavens and washed.
And by the way,
and subhanAllah,
the irony continues.
The son of Hanbalah
that was born
from that night, meaning this, you know, his
wife was pregnant that night,
The son of Hanbalah that was born would
later on go on to be martyred by
the grandson of Abu Sufyan, Yazid ibn Muawiyah.
So it's
just the twist of fate
happening over and over again, right?
So Hind was under the sword of Abu
Dujana.
Abu Sufyan was on his back, hamdala, over
him
and both of them somehow by the Qadr
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala survived that day.
Right?
As time goes on,
as Uhud commences, Abu Sufyan was commanding the
middle,
Ikrimah on the right, Khaled on the left,
and we know that Khaled radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
was able to,
carry out the defeat of the Muslims with
his strategy.
After
that massacre of the companions takes place,
The most famous conversation after Uhud is between
UHd
and Abu Sufyan.
Abu Sufyan chanting
with Khalid
and Ikrima
and Amr bin Ahas
calling out
and asking while the prophet is covered in
blood and barely alive,
Muhammad. Is Muhammad amongst you?
And the prophet says, Laatul Jeebu, don't answer
him.
Is Abu Bakr amongst them? The prophet says,
don't answer.
Is Omar amongst them? The prophet says, don't
answer.
Abu Sufyan celebrates.
That means we killed them. That means we
won.
We won. We killed Muhammad SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
We killed Abu Bakr. We killed Umar.
And that's when Omar responds and says,
You've lied, oh enemy of Allah.
Allah has preserved that which causes you disgrace.
And that's when the
slogans start to come out.
And
Abu Sufyan calls out to Omar,
and he says,
We have ursa, and you have no ursa.
We have Lat, we have starts to call
out the names of their gods.
Prophet says, respond and say,
Lakum. Allah is our protector. You have no
protector.
Or'luhu
Hubal. He's calling out, may Hubal be exalted.
The prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam says to Umar
radiAllahu anhu respond to him and say, Allahu
a'la wajal.
Allah is higher and more exalted.
Abu Sufyan says, a day for a day.
Our dead for your dead.
Prophet says, you can respond and say,
your dead are in the fire, our dead
are in paradise.
So Rousseffian
is flustered
and frustrated on the battlefield
because we're supposed to win here, but this
doesn't feel like a win.
Right? The Muslims still have such moral clarity,
it doesn't feel like a win, and SubhanAllah,
he survives the Battle of Uhud. As for
Hind,
she carries out
that despicable act.
And I just want you to think about
that, SubhanAllah, Sayyidushuhada.
The master of the martyrs on the day
of judgement, Hind is the one who had
his chest cut open, who took his liver,
who chewed his liver and spit it out.
And, subhanAllah, she dies a Muslim.
We talk about people meeting in Jannah.
What a meeting.
Right?
Aren't you the woman,
you know, subhanAllah, that chewed out?
Allah
knows best. This is how the Qadr of
Allah works. Right? People that repent and redeem
themselves later on.
In any case,
after Uhud,
actually, if you think about it, all of
these stories have showed up in different salhabah,
but when you put it all together in
a narrative,
massacres of Marouna and the massacres of Arrojir,
the massacres of more companions that were ambushed
than the total companions that were martyred in
Uhud.
Abu Sufyan is the one
who is torturing Khobayb ibn Adi,
And as he's being crucified
and he's being cut limb by limb and
the blood is dripping from him, Abu Sufyan
says, bring him down. Let me ask him
a question.
Think about Abu Sufyan,
psychological
torture,
and he stands in front of Khubaib,
and he says to him,
if Muhammad
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam could be in your place
right now, would you accept it? Wouldn't you
rather that instead of you taking this beating
and being cut up into pieces like this,
wouldn't you like that Mohammed SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
be in your place?
And Khubaib said to him, Wallahi,
I would not even accept
a thorn pricking the messenger of Allah Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam in place of what I'm going
through right now.
Abu Sufyan,
he said,
So I've never seen a man in my
life
who is loved the way that Muhammad is
loved by his companions. I don't get it.
This doesn't make sense.
Meaning, if you kind of follow the logic
of Abu Sufyan,
all of what he thought,
he knew in terms of how human beings
and societies function is falling apart.
In the aftermath of Uhud, we were supposed
to win, but we didn't win.
We really didn't feel like we won.
I'm torturing this man and breaking him down.
He's being cut up into pieces and crucified.
And he still has this clarity,
and it drives him crazy.
What is it about you?
And Muawiyah, who was a child at the
time, he says that when Khubaib made the
dua,
Oh Allah, count them and kill them all
1 by 1 and don't spare a single
one of them. Mu'awiya says, Abu Sufyan,
my father, because I was a kid, he
threw me to the ground to my back,
and he laid down on his back,
worried about something coming down from the heavens
to strike him.
That was the power of the dua that
was made against him.
Somehow he survives.
He doesn't wake
up. SubhanAllah, look at the stubbornness
that takes place.
Abu Sufyan is in Mecca.
Abu Jahl is gone, Abu Lahab is gone,
all of them are gone. He is the
one who now says,
Let us lead a siege on Madinah.
And let's end this once and for all.
So Abu Sufyan is the leader
of this effort now
to carry out a genocide in Medina, to
remove the Muslims from the face of the
earth
and wipe them all out. He is the
one who's galvanizing
the Bedouin tribes,
galvanizing all of the Meccans, and he says,
I will personally put all of my wealth
on this. Whatever it costs,
we have it. And that's the thing, he
was being praised for his sadaqa. How ironic.
He was being praised for his charity in
Mecca. Look at how noble Abu Sufyan is,
he puts his money where his mouth is,
right? Puts all of his personal money into
this noble effort of trying to wipe out
this group of people.
So Abu Sufyan
leads the largest army in the history of
the Arabs
against Medina
and places Medina under siege
for
that month of tribulation.
Subhan'Allah, in this, by the way,
there's something to pay attention to, which is
that his daughter was not in Medina. She
was still in Abyssinia, right? So that's something
to keep in mind here.
Second thing is,
Hudayfah ibn al Yamam
has the narration about how difficult things are
becoming. So you're always getting this peak of
Abu Sufyan on the other side,
as he's leading these efforts against the Prophet
Hudayfa was the one, radiAllahu anhu, the Prophet
commissioned to go and to find out what
they were planning as the Dua of the
Prophet SAWS for wind to blow upon them
and for difficulty to come upon them was
making it too difficult for the army from
Mecca to survive
outside of the trench. Eventually, the frustration was
growing.
So Hudifah was sent on this mission
to basically go and spy
and to get the news. It was a
very difficult mission. So he goes out at
night,
and he pretends to be one of the
Meccans. So he crosses the ditch,
pretends to be one of the Meccans,
and he says,
Faqam Abu Sufyan ibn Uhar Abu Sufyan stood
up, and Abu Sufyan was a large man.
Huge man, huge in his posture,
right? Similar to the way that Abu Jahl
is described and Khalid is described, radiAllahu anhu.
He has a huge posture, and he has
a booming voice.
And he says that Abu Sufyan stood up,
and so I, you know, I looked as
if I'm receiving orders. I'm in the ranks
of the Mushrikeen.
And he said,
Every one of you, check the person that's
next to you. He had a sense that
he was infiltrated.
Abusafian is smart. He's like, something feels off
about this gathering.
We've got a we've got a spy in
the gathering.
So Abu Sufyan says with a booming voice,
everyone check the person that's next to you.
So Hudayfa, he's smart.
He says,
he said, so I took the man next
to me and I said, man, man, man,
who are you? Who are you? I started
shaking up the man next to me. And
I shook him up so much that he
didn't even ask me who I was. Like
I said it with such confidence in my
voice that I was one of them. Who
are you? Tell me who you are.
Subbu Sufyan,
he asked, he said, Are we all clear?
Everyone said, We're all clear.
So Hadayfa said, subhanAllah, and this is so,
so much.
He said, and then I had a clean
shot of Abu Sufyan, Like, I was standing
right next to him, and I could have
killed him.
And he said, and I thought about it,
but then I remembered that the prophet, sallAllahu
alaihi wasallam, said, don't cause any commotion. So
he said, I went back and forth with
myself because I was there. I crossed and
I was right next to him. I could
have easily just taken him out right then
and there. It's another
time.
Your life is right there.
And he said, No, but I remember the
Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, said, don't cause the
skirmers.
So he said, you know, I decided to
put my weapons away,
cross back the handuk.
I came back,
and he said that I was absolutely exhausted.
I went back to the Prophet
and the Prophet was was in salah. He
was praying,
and the Prophet
threw me a shawl, basically as a blanket.
Right?
And he said that, I immediately, I wrapped
myself in the shawl of the Prophet I
knocked out, I went to sleep, and the
Prophet woke me up and said, Kumya, no
man. Get up sleepy head. Wake up.
Noman was literally a nome.
He was
making fun of his name, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
but basically as a means of lightening it
up, right? And telling, tell me what happened.
So Hudayfa explained to the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam what happened with Abu Sufyan. Says, You
Rasulullah, I had a clean shot,
but you told me not to cause commotion,
so I left him. So Saba Sufyan survived
Badr because he was protecting the caravan.
He survived Uhud on his back.
He survived the dua of Khubayb.
He survived Khundak right in the reach of
Hudayf ibn al Yamal. Allah is clearly sparing
this man for a reason.
Because otherwise,
his fate should be like the fate of
everybody else.
Why is all of this happening?
Then comes afterwards obviously, Hudaybiyah,
the Treaty of Hudaybiyah. So he's led these
two
attempts to wipe out the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam. It didn't work,
right? At least not a total wipe out
of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam and the
companions.
Soon Hudaybiyah happens, the Treaty of Hudaybiyah.
And when the Treaty of Hudaybiyah happens, it
gives Abu Sufyan a chance to basically resume
his caravans, and the Prophet's like him to
resume his da'wah.
Right, so the peace treaty
allows the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam to send
his letters to different parts of the world
to do da'wah,
and Abu Sufyan is going to take a
break from war, or so he thinks. He's
going to take a break from battle and
get back into his wealth, get back into
trading.
Right? We have a truce for now.
So Abu Sufyan,
he tells this story.
He says, so I went on and this
is in Al Bukhari. It's actually one of
the first ahadith that you find in Sahih
al Bukhari, the book of faith,
in the beginning of Revelation.
He says that
I got to Jerusalem.
And SubhanAllah,
as he arrived at Jerusalem
with his companions, may Allah
liberate Al Quds, Allahumma Ameen.
Harakal,
who was the leader of Rome,
had just received the letter of the Prophet
calling him to Islam and it caused him
panic.
Why? Because Harakkil saw a dream
that indicated that the Prophet had come,
and he was a devout Christian,
and that the son of the circumcised one
had come, meaning someone who's reviving the way
of a.
S.
And things had just settled down with the
Persians, so
the Romans just defeated the Persians. They'd recovered
their city. They'd recovered their cross. They'd recovered
all of their
sort of heba, their nobility.
And now he receives this letter
calling him to Islam.
And it really startles him because it coincides
with the dream that he has. And on
top of that, it happened to be in
trading season.
So Herakar says, is anyone here from Mecca?
So he said, Abu Sufyan just showed up
with his 2 companions.
So Herakkil says, bring them to me. So
Abu Sufyan thinks he's getting a break
from all of what's happening right now. He's
pulled to the court of Heraclius,
of Heraclius.
And Heraclius says, which one of you
is
the closest
to the man who claims to be the
Prophet?
So Abu Sufyan says in terms of lineage,
it's me.
I'm technically a distant cousin of the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam or Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
So harakr says,
come here, stand in front of me.
And he told the companions of Abu Sufyan,
come back, come behind him. Stand behind him.
I'm gonna ask him some questions.
If he tells a lie, let me know.
I'm gonna take his head off.
So you're gonna tell me the truth.
You guys are gonna make sure that he's
telling the truth,
or else he's
dead. Right? Saba Safyan
has to tell the truth about the Prophet
or else he risks death. So he's like,
if it wasn't for the fact that these
2 men behind me might actually indicate that
I told a lie,
then I would have said some things differently
about Muhammad
but I had
to be honest.
So he says
that the questioning then commenced, so he asked
me, and it's a long hadith.
I won't go into the details because in
and of itself is a beautiful
narration.
What is his
family status amongst you? And Abu Sufyan said,
He belongs to a noble family
amongst us. Heraclius says, has anyone amongst you
ever claimed to be the same before him?
Abu Sufyan says, no.
Has anyone from was anyone from his ancestors
a king? No.
Heraclius says, who follows him, the elite ones
or the downtrodden?
Abu Sufyan says it's the downtrodden.
And he said, are his followers
increasing or decreasing?
Abu Sufyan says, Belyazidun, they're increasing.
Like he's having to swallow every single answer.
He has to just say what it is.
And he says, and SubhanAllah, this is so
powerful. He said, does anyone leave his religion
out of being dissatisfied with his religion after
faith enters into their heart? Meaning,
it's understandable if you persecute people out of
Islam, like you fight people until they leave
Islam,
or you make it so difficult that some
people leave Islam. But are you finding mass
apostasy amongst them because the religion just didn't
turn out to be what we thought it
was?
I said, no.
Everyone that's becoming Muslim is staying Muslim.
Right? In fact, despite the persecution,
they're insisting
more.
And Heraclius says, have you ever accused him
of telling lies before he made the claim
to prophethood? So no, we knew him as
Asadah Al Amin. He was trustworthy and truthful.
Never told a lie.
Did he ever break promises before? Nope. He
never broke a promise.
So he said
that with all of that,
you know, what is it? He said, well,
right now, subhanallah, this is really interesting. So
he never broke a promise. So Abu Sifiyan
thought of something. He said, but right now,
we have a surah. We have a truce,
and we still don't know how he's gonna
behave with that truce. So he might break
this promise.
So we still have to wait to see
the verdict is still out,
on him.
And Heraclius says, have you ever had a
war with him? You ever been to battle
with him? Abu Sufyan said, yes. Heracl said,
what happened with those battles? He said, sometimes
he's victorious and sometimes
we are victorious.
And haraqib said, and what does he command
you to do?
He said he tells us to worship Allah
and Allah alone
and to renounce the way of our,
ancestors.
And he orders us to pray to speak
the truth,
to be modest, to keep good relations with
our families.
And so Heraclius, he's asking the translator
to basically give him. So there's a mutarjum.
There's a translator between him and Abu Sufyan
as he's getting all of this.
Heracl goes back, and based on his theology,
his understanding of Christianity,
he basically says, all 10 ways that you
just answered prove to me that he's a
prophet of Allah.
So he went 1 by 1,
and he said, I asked you this and
you answered this way.
And this is the way of a prophet.
So you could look up the long hadith
of Abu Sufyan in Heraclius.
The point is, at the end of it,
Abu Sufyan said that, I told the 2
guys that were with me,
I said,
the way of Muhammad is becoming so compelling,
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, that he's got kings
of the Romans afraid of him. Like he's
become the conversation.
We thought this was just an affair between
us and the desert.
But he's got the kings of Rome
talking about him.
And he said, At that moment,
He said, I knew from that day
that
he was going to attain victory until the
day that Allah would enter me into Islam.
Like, that's when I kind of knew that
this was not going to go well for
me.
SubhanAllah,
what ends up happening?
Who broke the treaty, the Meccans or the
Prophet
The Meccans broke the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah.
And Abu Sufyan
is a smart man,
and he recognizes that the Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam's Ummah has grown because in this period
of Dawah, so many more people have become
Muslim.
We can't afford to go to battle with
the Muslims right now. This isn't the same
Muslim community
from
the year before.
Right? They've grown. There are thousands that have
been added to their ranks.
So Abu Sufyan wants to salvage the truce
even though it was an ally tribe to
him that attacked an ally tribe to the
Muslims and broke the truce.
So he panics, and that's when he comes
begging,
and he starts going to different people. He
tries to speak to the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam, and the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam turns
away from him.
Abu Bakr turns away from him. Omar turns
away from him. Khaled and Amr, his 2
former companions turn away from him, like you're
not getting it yet. You're not waking up
yet to the reality
of Islam. He tries with Fatima.
Fatima has nothing to do with him. He's
going and he's pleading with people, but he's
trying to use the same diplomacy,
and the Muslims in Medina don't have the
appetite for it anymore.
It's like, look, we're not doing this anymore.
We're not playing this game with you anymore.
So then he went to Habiba, his daughter,
because remember,
after Handak and Khaybar, the Muslims from Abyssinia
came to Medina. So he's gonna meet his
daughter for the first time
in almost 15 years.
She fled persecution that he was part of.
And
he knocks on the door,
and Habiba
is sitting in her home,
and she's sitting on the mattress, the one
mattress that they had in in the house
of the
Prophet
And she quickly folds it up and she
sits on it.
Meaning you're not sitting on this mattress.
So he says,
Is it too noble for me or am
I too noble for it? Like, what's going
on here? Why can't I sit like you
on this thing?
And she
said, this is
the bed of the Prophet
and you're not worthy of sitting on the
same bed as the one of the Prophet
subhanAllah, to her own father.
Talk about a slap in the face, like,
you're talking about nobility and, you know, trying
to preserve something of your dignity and trying
to preserve your honor, your own daughter says,
you're not worthy to sit on the bed
of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
And he's realizing, subhanAllah,
that it's not just Khubaib.
It's not just harakal. It's not just a
few of these Muslims, his own daughter.
This affair
of Islam is growing to a point that
it becomes completely irresistible.
Now, Habiba, by the way, they said that
the longest two Sajdas that she made were
the day that her father and her brother
became Muslim. So she loved her father and
will find a relationship that returns after Abu
Sufyan becomes Muslim. But right now, Abu Sufyan
is rejected.
He comes back to Mecca.
Basically, the Prophet is making plans
for Fatiha Mecca in Ramadan,
and he really knows that he doesn't stand
a chance.
At that point,
he goes to his old front,
Al Abbas
Al Abbas is the uncle of the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
He hid his Islam for many years.
It's uncertain when he actually embraced Islam, publicly
embraced Islam, but he lived in Mecca. He's
involved in the marketplace. He has an old
relationship with Abu Sufyan.
Abu Sufyan comes to Abbas,
and he's confiding in the Abbas, that he's
basically running out of options.
Al Abbas is telling him, listen, just embrace
Islam and give it up.
Just stop.
Like, you've gone too long. Allah has given
you too many chances.
Stop. It's time for you to wake up.
It's time for you to embrace Islam.
You're still not getting it.
But Abu Sufyan still is plotting, still trying
to find a way
to intercept,
to salvage, to preserve.
So the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam is talking
to Abbas
as he's camping on the outskirts of Mecca,
as he's making preparations to enter into Mecca.
So the Prophet tells us that,
you know,
invite Abu Sufyan to your house,
let him stay with you and then when
the morning comes, bring him to me.
Bring Abu Sufyan to me.
So Abbas says that Abu Sufyan came to
my home. He spent the night in my
home,
and then I told him, let's go see
Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, let's go see the
Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
So he says,
so when we got to the Prophet
when the Prophet
saw Abu Sufyan,
he said,
Woe to you, O Abu Sufyan.
Isn't it time for you to realize that
there is no God but Allah?
Isn't it time for you to figure this
out?
Come on, enough.
Isn't it time for you to realize,
Subbu Sufyan responded to the Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam, he said,
Kindness. He said,
by my father or may my father and
mother be sacrificed for you.
What a noble and kind man that you
are. Right? He's praising the Prophet
manners,
and he says,
He said, you know, at this point, to
be honest with you,
I'm starting to think that if there
was
Allah, So he's basically telling the Prophet look,
ask for La ilaha illa Allah,
it's making sense to me now. I'm starting
to get it that you have one God
that is guiding you to this path.
Then the Prophet
says,
Woe to your Abu Sufyan.
Isn't it time for you to realize
that I am the messenger of Allah?
And he says,
He
said, listen, to be honest with you, until
now,
it's not settling with me.
So So he's still being stubborn with the
Prophet He's saying, till now,
I can't say it.
Al Abbas,
he says to him,
He said, Just go ahead and become Muslim.
He says,
before your neck gets struck. Right? Because Abbas
recognizes that this situation is tense, and he
doesn't know what the Prophet is planning to
do in terms of forgiveness. Right? This general
amnesty.
But, like, you fought him so much, you've
committed so much harm.
Come on.
Stop. Just say, la ilaha illallah, Muhammadan Rasoolullah.
So in any case,
Abu Sufyan
said it,
but he still wasn't really there.
He said it just in the situation.
But in his mind and his heart, he's
still plotting. He's still,
I'm not really there yet.
So he kinda said it in a moment
of just the situation
and to save himself in the situation.
Abbas calls the Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
This is a really,
like, subhanallah, if I could say that there's
one lecture that
people of da'wah and leaders need to understand,
and honestly, as a community, who's redeemable and
who's not,
This is a really important lesson here. Prophet
could say the heck with him. I'm done
with him anyway.
Who's gonna What are the repercussions if I
do away with him?
And Abbas is saying, You Rasoolallah,
Abu Sufyan likes to be praised. Like
he likes to be recognized in a gathering.
So he says, give him something, like throw
him a bone
as you're coming into Mecca
so that he can feel better about this
entire situation. The Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, could
say, 'arudhubillah,
this man fought the Muslims, he killed Muslims.
He's an enemy of Allah. I don't care
about his feelings. Why do I care about
his feelings?
It's the day of victory.
But the prophet, salallahu alaihi wa sallam, takes
into consideration.
He says, okay.
For the sake of Allah, for the sake
of Islam, for that bigger picture,
I'll do it. Even though this is technically,
isn't it playing to
some a disease in his heart? I mean,
it's pride.
But there's a bigger play here.
If I win over Abu Sufyan,
that's going to dramatically change the tensions in
Mecca.
The Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam is after the
heart of Abu Sufyan,
and he's looking to the bigger picture. He's
not going to succumb to that moment. And
someone, a young person out of purity might
say to the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, right?
How could you? You Rasulullah, why are you
showing respect Abu Sufyan? Forget Abu Sufyan. Isn't
that the whole context of like, why are
you giving the spoils of war to these
people in Mecca? Why don't you treat these
elites of Mecca the way that they treated
us? This, this and that. Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam says, fine.
And until the last moment, Abu Sufyan is
still
not sure,
and he still kinda got it in him,
and Abbas is saying to him, woe to
you, Abu Sufyan.
Stop.
Right?
Admit it.
Come to terms with this. He is Rasulullah.
Then the Prophet says,
as he's coming into Mecca, the famous words,
This is the announcement of the prophet
Whoever enters into the house of Abu Sufyan
is safe,
and whoever enters into the Haram is safe,
and whoever closes his door is safe. Can
you imagine Abu Sufyan like, woah.
Think about that recognition.
He recognized me like that?
So the prophet, salAllahu alaihi wasalam, said that
to him, and Abbas is saying to him,
give it up.
Stop.
Right? Allah spared you and gave you an
opportunity.
Now SubhanAllah, if you think about how many
tensions the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam has to
has to navigate here, because this is not
just about attaining a military victory.
While this is happening, Sa'ad ibn Ubada
from the Ansar, one of the greatest of
the Ansar,
he's walking in and he has the banner.
And he says,
Today is the day of slaughter. Today is
the day of revenge.
Today, we will make halal the Kaaba, meaning
we're going to come back and we're going
to do to these people what they did
to us. Abu Sufyan
complains to the
prophet about that.
What does the prophet
do? He doesn't say your problem, not mine.
Abu Sufyan
takes the banner away from Sa'd ibn Ubada
that today is a day of mercy. Today
is not a day of slaughter.
Today is a day that the Kaaba is
honored. Today is not a day that the
Kaaba is made halal. No, no. This is
not what we're doing today.
So Sa'ad ibn Ubada, and remember the name
because Sa'ad ibn Ubada is one of the
earliest ansar.
He has that He could have been a
caliph of the Muslims, by the way. He
has the banner taken away from him, and
the Prophet
is easing the tensions.
There's another
Or there are several skirmishes that take place.
Abu Sufyan still has a lot of jahl,
a lot of ignorance in him, the way
he's going to act.
Bilal radiAllahu anhu gets up on the Kaaba,
Abu Sufyan is like, I You know, I'm
not You know how they they have that
saying, if I speak?
He says, I'm not gonna say anything
because if I do, the heavens and the
earth will testify against me, but he's disgusted.
Basically, that racism, that tribalism instills aside him.
He's looking at Bilal
standing on the Kaaba calling the Adhan.
And according to many of the scholars, that's
where Ya'iuhan Nas,
the verse of the quality was revealed at
that time.
So Busufian swallows it,
but he's still messed up, like he still
has some some concepts that are not right.
This is not an easy Islam here. This
is a very
complicated case of Islam.
Then what happens?
Bilal
Amar ibn Yasir
Suhayb Ar Rumi,
they walk past Abu Sufyan
on the day of Fatih Makkah.
And they look at him,
and they say to him
that,
We swear by Allah,
The swords of Allah did not reach the
neck of the enemy of Allah like they
should have.
Like Abu Sufyan, you're lucky
we didn't get to you before the prophet,
salallahu alaihi wasalam, let you go. Now by
the way, I mean think about this. One
of the beauties of this, subhanAllah, moment,
all of the tortured slaves of Mecca
lived to see the conquest of Mecca. They're
there in Fatih Makkah,
subhanAllah.
And they're seeing the day of victory. And
now the elites that survived are under their
power.
Look how complicated this gets.
Abu Bakr radiAllahu anhu was thinking like the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam about settling things
down, calming down tensions. We need to win
people's hearts to Islam here. We need to
solve problems.
We can't let this happen. So Abu Bakr
he says to Bilal and Suhay bin Amma,
he says to them,
Are you saying that to the leader of
Quraysh, the Elder of Quraysh
and their noble one?
So when that happens,
Abu Bakr comes to the Prophet and he
tells the Prophet what happened. So do you
understand what happened here? Bilam
Amar Suhayb, who were honored on the day
of Mecca, on the day of Fatih Makkah,
just threatened Abu Sufyan, who the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wasallam forgave.
Abu Bakr
admonished
Bilal and Suhay bin Ammar for speaking that
way to Abu Sufyan. What do you think
the Prophet is gonna do here?
The prophet sallaihi wasalam says to Abu Bakr,
O Abu Bakr, you may have upset Bilal,
Suhayb and Amar.
And if you upset them, you may have
upset your Lord.
SubhanAllah, the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam is trying
to win the heart of Abu Sufyan, but
he's not going to diminish today Bilal and
Suhayb
and Ammar and those early. And this is
the wisdom of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
the generosity of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
that
we're not replacing
We're not replacing these firsts who became Muslim
and sacrificed everything with these leaders of Quraysh.
Brothers, if you can move in, InshaAllah, to
as much as possible so that those that
are coming in can sit inshallah. We're not
going to replace them this day.
But at the same time,
the Prophet
is trying to win their heart. So Abu
Bakr goes back to Bilal and Ammar and
Suhayb, and he says to them,
Did I,
Did
I make you upset? Did I anger you,
oh my brothers?
And they said,
May Allah forgive you, oh our brother. You're
Abu Bakr. Of course, we're not mad at
you. So Abu Bakr, Alhamdulillah. So he had
to
make sure that he didn't upset Bilal and
Suhayb and Ammar because the prophet
understands what? That what Bilal and Ammar and
Suhayb
underwent at the hands of the likes of
Abu Sufyan is not like what Abu Bakr
underwent at the hands of Abu Sufyan.
These are different people. The Prophet
understands that these are different types of emotions
that he has to navigate.
So SubhanAllah, after that, the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam enters into Mecca.
Fatiha Makkah takes place.
The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam attains his victory.
Abu Sufyan's heart
is settling into Islam. Why? Because
he's seeing that the Prophet
all the skepticism he has about him is
going away. In one narration, he says to
the Prophet
and Ibn
Abbas
says that the Muslims
The Muslims would not even look at Abu
Sufyan, like he was disgraced on that day,
even though the Prophet forgave him. He still
was kind of humiliated like everyone hated him,
right? He was the chief enemy of the
Muslims for all these years.
So Abu Sufyan came to the Prophet
and he asked the Prophet
three things.
He said,
you know, to affirm the marriage of Habiba,
which the Prophet
did
to
take,
Muawiyah, his son who was young at the
time
to serve as a scribe, tajalu katibin bayni
udayk, he did.
And he said, You Rasulullah,
and make me a commander
in the Muslim army so that I could
fight for the Muslims the way I fought
against the Muslims.
Prophet said, Lakadalik.
Okay.
And even the narrator of the Hadith says
that the Prophet
would not have given that to him had
he not asked that the Prophet did not
want to respond
negatively
to his asks. The Prophet
is conferring and he's seeing the situation as
it's taking place in this regard.
Hind Mint Utbah comes forth with the
wife of Eikhram Abi Jahal. Hind
is terrified of what she's going to find
from the Prophet
She spit out the liver of his uncle
Hamza and no one was more beloved to
the Prophet
than Hamza
I mean, put yourself in that situation. Like
you think about Yusuf
and when the Prophet said,
and he's repeating the words of Yusuf, he's
also emanating the spirit of Yusuf. Like this
is deep. This is not just like some
people that did some bad things to you.
This woman
carved out and spit out the liver of
your uncle.
And you know what? The Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam received her with warmth, marhaban.
Welcome.
She said, You Rasulullah, I seek your forgiveness
for all that I've done in the past.
I bear witness that there is no God
but Allah and that you are the messenger
of Allah,
Prophet immediately accepted it from her.
No blame on you today. It's over.
We're not gonna have to go through this
ever again.
Subhan'Allah, Abu Sufyan is forgiven, and he's starting
to realize
he's forgiven. Hind is forgiven, that this is
not a game, that there's no loopholes to
this, that there's nothing that is actually out
of the ordinary to this. And he comes
to the Prophet
and he says,
says
to the Prophet Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, may
my mother and my father be sacrificed for
you. He said, what a noble man you
are.
I fought you,
and what a noble opponent you were in
battle. And then I made peace with you,
and what a noble man you were in
peace.
May Allah reward you with good. What does
this translate into?
All of this, and again, you could have
a lot of people said, why are you
treating Abu Sufyan like this? He's an enemy
of Allah. We have to take revenge.
What's gonna be the outcome of this?
Immediately after Fath Makkah, Hunayn happens, the Battle
of Hunayn
and these Bedouin tribes
who are gathering up ambush
a much larger army of the Muslims, but
it gets very, very severe
in battle.
And guess what? As the Hawazan
ambushed and many people fled the battlefield,
The Prophet
looks to his right and to his left,
and who does he find on the battlefield
fighting right next to him? He finds Ali
He finds Al
Abbas
He finds Abu Bakr and Omar. He finds
Usam Abu Nuzayd, and then he finds Abu
Sufyan,
refusing to leave his side on the battlefield
and fighting courageously.
You know, the
Respond to evil with that which is better.
Your severe enemy will become your loving friend,
your protective friend. This is the
ayah. Abu Sufyan is a man of loyalty.
He's got a certain mindset, a psychology to
him.
If at this point, Islam hadn't settled in
his heart, and if at this point, he
would have seen something from the prophet that
was to his previous moral self, he would
have been like, forget this. This is an
opportunity. I'm gonna join those guys. Go back
and take Mecca.
But he stands guard with the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam, despite, by the way, being almost
20 years older than the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam. So he's old right now,
and he fights until the very last moment
warding off the attack.
After Hunayn,
Ta'if happens.
This is really gonna blow your mind.
In Ta'if,
he's next to the Prophet
fighting,
and he loses an eye in Ta'if.
Abu Sufyan,
who fought the Prophet, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, all
these years had an eye that was plucked
from him.
And he comes to the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi
wasallam,
with an eye completely destroyed.
And he says, ayna usibatfisaabilayahu
Rasulullah.
My
eye was cut for the sake of Allah,
O Messenger of Allah.
Prophet
says,
If you want, I'll make du'a and Allah
will bring back your vision.
He says,
Abu Sufyan, if you desire,
instead of this eye of yours, you'll get
Jannah.
He said, Al Jannah.
I'll take Jannah.
See the shift in mindset?
Same Abu Sufyan,
shift in mindset.
I'll take Jannah. And the Prophet
gave him
a 100 camels.
And the Prophet gave him 40 uqiyah of
gold, a lot of the spoils of war.
Now this will give you another perspective, another
lens. Who did the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
take the banner away from when they were
coming into Mecca? Sa'ad ibn Ubada, the leader
of the Ansar.
That famous incident.
Sa'ad ibn Ubada is the one who comes
to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and
says, You Rasulullah,
look, some of the people are saying
stuff.
What is it? You Sa'ad, and he said,
some of the Ansar are saying that now
that you've come back to Mecca, you're going
to leave us behind
because of the spoils that you're giving to
the people of Mecca that were, you know,
it's done. And that's the famous gathering where
the Prophet gathers the Ansar.
And he assures them that these people go
home with their camels, with their sheep, with
their money. You go home with Rasulullah
This man
successfully managed and won the hearts
of the Ansar,
Abu Sufyan, Abu Bakr, Bilal, Suhayb, all in
the same
incidents,
that in and of itself is a sign
that he's the Messenger of Allah. And when
Qur'an says that if there was no other
proof of the Prophet Prophet except for his
Sahaba, that's enough of a proof. This is
it.
And of course, greater than that is the
Quran. He managed to settle all of them
and to get them all on the same
page.
I'm going to move forward, insha'allah,
towards
the end of this,
which is Abu Sufyan was commissioned to destroy
Allat,
The same man that was shouting in the
battlefield, hubal Allatuluzah.
He's one of those who goes and who
destroys Allat, the idol that he was once
beating his chest over.
Abu Bakr
appoints him as a leader of Najran,
Abu Sufyan fought against the Muertadeen, those that
apostate it. Again, if the Prophet hadn't treated
him that way, if Islam didn't settle on
his heart, don't you think he would have
took it as an opportunity and just joined
the ranks of the apostates and tried to
retake power in Mecca? Fought against them.
Then comes the time of Umar radiAllahu anhu,
and again, it gets complicated.
Umar radiAllahu anhu doesn't like to play politics,
doesn't really care much about your feelings.
So when the lines would take part in
front of Umar,
Umar
would arrange the lines in front of his
house in accordance of what?
The earliest
people to embrace Islam get preference. So when
you show up in front of the door
of Omar, he literally judges the line by
Asabih Khan al Awun, by the first. So
all of you that became Muslim later, to
the back of the line. I don't care
who you are.
So Abu Sufyan shows up to the door
of Amir ul Momineen, and there's a relationship.
There's lineage there. They're from that same sort
of elite class,
and Umar sends him to the back of
the line, Bilal, Amar, Suhayra all upfront.
And Abu Sufyan is grumbling
about being sent back to the line, like
this is he's still not used to this.
This is new.
And that's when Suhail ibn Amr
said to him,
You guys should just be mad at yourselves.
That they were called and we were called.
They rushed to accept Islam. We were slow
to embrace Islam.
They took the door. We shut the door.
Therefore, we have no one to be mad
at except for ourselves,
except it.
So Abu Sufyan still has to kind of
get used to this new reality.
With that being said,
what is the end of his life?
And I'm sorry, I went over time, SubhanAllah,
but it's truly profound.
He went out to a Sham
as a Mujahid fi Sabilillah. He's one of
those people who just knows the battlefield. He
knows
he's a leader. He has to be a
leader. The prophet gave him a leadership position.
Abu Bakr gave him a leadership position. Umar
gave him a leadership position in the battlefield.
But he was very old.
And he's fighting in the Battle of Yarmouk
under Khalid,
this battle where all of those leaders of
Quraysh, subhanAllah, are going many of them will
die as shuhada, will die as martyrs. Their
akhlaq have been completely refined. Their noble manners
are now on full display.
And Abu Sufyan,
on the Battle of Yarmouk, was fighting under
the banner of his son,
Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan. Not to be confused
for Yazid ibn Muawiyah, Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan.
And as he was fighting under the banner
of his son,
he was calling out, he was seen calling
out on the day of Yarmouk You Nasralla
Ik Tarib, O victory of Allah, come near.
Allah, Allah, Innakum Ansarul Islam.
Allah, Allah, you are
the helpers of Islam, the pride of the
Arabs. These
people are the helpers of polytheism
and the pride of the Romans. Allahumahadayawmun
min ayamik Allahummaanzin
nasraq.
Oh, Allah, this is a day from your
days, oh, Allah.
Let your victory come upon us. Let your
help come upon us.
And the Muslims won, but guess what?
Abu Sufyan was struck in his other eye.
So, SubhanAllah,
both of his eyes
were struck, Fis Abilillah.
Same man that used all those years of
his life planning against Islam.
And when he passes away,
he dies close to the age of a
100 years old
in the khilafa of Uthman
his cousin,
in Al Madinah.
His daughter, Habiba
the wife of the Prophet
is the one who
basically
carried out the rituals surrounding his death
and that,
you know, taught through her own experience how
to grieve the loss of a parent.
And here he is in Madinah now, Salatul
Janaza in Madinah on Abu Sufyan.
It is one of the weirdest moments in
history for people.
Think about it.
Abu Sufyan held this city under siege and
tried to kill us all.
And now he's being preyed janazah upon in
Madinah and being buried in Al Baqir.
Abu Sufyan, who once was shouting out like
a maniac just a few miles away in
Uhud, Uhulu hubal, may hubal be exalted,
has Uthman saying, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu
Akbar,
and bearing him amongst the companions of the
Prophet
What does it show you, dear brothers and
sisters?
The power of redemption,
the wisdom of the Prophet
You Mukallib al Karoo Fabbid Qalbi A'ar Adinik.
May Allah turn may Allah keep our hearts
firm on his path
and turn the hearts even of people that
we think are impossible to have their hearts
turned. And that's why you don't give up
on your and you show your noble ethics
with that
And next week,
we're actually going to talk about the other
Abu Sufyan. There's an interesting thing that some
of the sahaba, when they're named after someone,
like Uthmar ibn Madruun and Uthmar ibn Affan,
they get overshadowed.
There's another Abu Sufyan that we'll talk about
next week, inshaAllah, who is actually closer to
the Prophet