Zaynab Ansari – Muslimah Media The Firsts Sumayyah bint Khayyat
AI: Summary ©
A representative from Muslimah Media discusses the story of Sumay granted her backstory as a slave woman in Mecca during the time before Islam. She explains that Sumay knew of the names of the Prophet sallahu alaihi wa sallam and that her faith was stronger than her father's. She also discusses the importance of her strength in Islam and encourages her to support the Muslim Women's-point of Reference for Women.
AI: Summary ©
I'm Zaynab, and I am here with you
with Muslimah Media Channel. And today's story is
about Sumayyah
bint
Hayat,
and Sumayya is also one of those special
firsts.
She was the first martyr in Islam, but
I wanna tell you a little bit about
Sumayya's backstory.
So try to envision for
a few minutes the environs of Mecca, right,
and you might have already heard the story
of Khadija, how Khadija comes from a very
elite background and Khadija,
financially supports the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. She
is the first person to believe in the
message of Islam.
Sumayya
comes,
also with, I think, a strength of faith
that is comparable to that of Khadija's,
but Sumayya comes from a drastically different background.
Whereas Khadija
comes from the elite,
Sumayya was a slave woman,
and her husband was also enslaved.
So Sumayya,
if you think about it, being a slave
woman in Mecca during this time
ensured that Sumayya was going to face a
very harsh
set of social conditions.
So when you think about the fact that
Samayya was willing to sacrifice everything in the
name of her faith, that makes her story,
you know, even more inspiring and even more
amazing.
Now her husband was Yasser ibn Aamer and
her son was was, was Ammar, ibn Yasir.
Right? So she is known as,
Umma Ammar
and like I said, Sumayya was a slave,
her husband was a slave, and after they
had
Amarah, it was said that their owner might
have freed them. But at any rate, she
and her husband, and her son for that
matter, were still treated
by the elite of Mecca as basically people
that they could victimize at will. Right?
So one of the things that we read
about in the story of Samayyah is that
she and her family, for example, because of
their faith, because they boldly proclaimed their faith
in Allah
they rejected the polytheism,
the idolatry of the Meccans because they said
that Muhammad was was Rasoolullah.
The Meccans were determined sadly to make an
example of them, so they would drag them
out into the desert
under the heat of the burning sun. It
was said they would actually be sort of
like encased in iron armor and be placed
in the burning sun essentially to sort of
burn alive. So these are the sorts of
things that they went through. They were publicly
beaten and whipped and humiliated.
They were taunted
And again, the Meccans were able to do
this because
Sumayyah and Yasir al Ammar didn't have the
recourse that, say,
others would have had. So the Prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam, we know very much that
the Meccans wanted to torture him, but they
were prevented from doing that because he was
still under the protection of Abu Talib and
Bani Hashim, right, his clan. Abu Bakr, for
example, one of the earliest Muslims, but he
did have the protection, right, of his of
his tribe, for example.
But because Sumayya and Yasir Ammar were unaffiliated
with, you know, with with a clan or
a tribe, they didn't have
that particular level of protection. So the Meccans
were sadly able to subject them to all
sorts of brutality
but they never wavered. And what's really interesting
is that
the story, when you look at the family,
the mother, the father, the son,
that you see that of all the 3
of them, Simeon's
faith was the strongest.
And because her faith was the strongest she
was probably tortured the most. Abu Jahl himself,
who as we know was an inveterate opponent,
an enemy of Islam, would personally torture Samayyah,
and he was the one that actually ended
her life.
As we know he actually
takes a spear and he stabs her through
her abdomen
and kills her, and Samayya according to the
account of Imam Ahmed literally becomes the first
person to die
in the way of Islam. I mean imagine
that a woman
who is a slave who has no clan
or tribe
and that that makes a very powerful statement
I think in the environments of Mecca
that this type of woman is willing to
kind of like
sacrifice her life for this religion. And these
are the people who were coming to Islam.
These are the people who found empowerment and
upliftment and dignity in the message of Islam.
It was people like Samayyah, the oppressed, the
poor, the downtrodden.
This woman was so strong in her faith
it was said that even as Abu Jahl
would beat her and humiliate her that she
would defy him by smiling,
right, and by invoking the name of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala and every time he tried
to get her to say the names of
the idols, she would say the name of
Allah Allah the one and in his rage
he killed her. And you know Samayya's story
really just really does stay with us because
her strength is kind of is it really
is transmitted to those around her and she
is memorialized
from the very earliest days of Islam as
being one of the first Muslims. Indeed, it
was mentioned that there were only a handful
of people in that time who dared publicly
announce their Islam. They were the prophet himself,
peace be upon him, then Abu Bakr,
then,
Ammar,
then Sumayyah,
then Bilal, then Suhaib, and then Al Mikhdad
or Al Khabab depending upon the narration.
So for Sumayyah to be in the company
of those people is amazing and the Prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam said to them
that he told them be patient, be steadfast,
verily you have been promised paradise. And indeed,
Sumayyah
is one of those people who was promised
paradise in the very early days of Islam,
and we ask Allah
to give us just a measure of the
courage that Sumayyah had. So this is Zainab
with Muslimah Media. Thank you so much.
This is Zaina, but I really hope you
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