Retaliation

With the release of the latest slander against Islam, whose name I will not even mention, I have become reflective on our state as an Ummah. We are the Ummah of the Prophet of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, and as such we are supposed to follow his example. I must question whether or not we are doing this in this time. What did our beloved Prophet do when the ignorant would accost him? We all know the story of the man who came to the Prophet and demanded more of the spoils of war. Did the Prophet snap back at him? No. When Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, stood up to defend the Prophet, did he allow it? No. Instead, the Prophet gave the bedouin what he demanded was due to him. Now, what resulted from that? The bedouin accepted Islam.

What do we do when we are accosted? Do we ask the attacker what right of theirs we have violated? No. We stand up ready to attack, just as Umar had done. Someone speaks poorly about Islam out of sheer ignorance, and because they feel threatened, and we attack back. The truth is manifest from error. We should rely upon Allah, not on what meager actions we think will help. When we attack our accuser, we only confirm what they are saying. Instead of advocating inane boycotts of a whole nation, maybe we should ask our accuser what we can do to help the situation. The Prophet was always more willing to be wronged than to wrong another. The examples are clear. We should really study the example mentioned above, as well as the treaty of Hudaybia. The Prophet want to make sure that people, even non-Muslims, got their due. This is our duty. We must give people their due, even if we wrong ourselves in the situation.

There is, of course, a caveat in the above. We cannot violate our Deen in fulfilling the rights of other people. If they demand that we do something haram, then we cannot budge on this issue. If they demand that we leave an obligation, then we cannot budge on this issue. However, if they demand that we have short changed them in some way, then we must make it right. And most importantly, we must do it out of love and concern.