A good society is one in which one can freely criticize and rebuke others

A good society is one in which one can freely criticize and rebuke others

1987 12 December 12 A good society is one in which one can freely criticize and rebuke others (105) If happened once that a certain group of people had a grudge against Abdul Aziz ibn Abu Bakra. On one occasion they even went to the extent of knocking him down. His son ran to his assistance, but his father told him not to make a move. “Really,” he said, “if anyone has to die, I would prefer it to be myself.” His son asked him why. “I am afraid,” Ibn Abu Bakra answered, “that I should be alive at a time when I will not be able to call for righteousness and forbid evil, for then there will be no good in the world.”

The Price of Truth

1987 12 December 12 The Price of Truth (340) The contemporaries of Mohammed ibn Abdullah (may peace be upon him), finding it hard to believe that God had chosen such an ordinary man to be His messenger, refused to acknowledge his prophethood. Mistakenly under-rating him, they asked why God had not chosen one of the great men of Taif or Mecca for prophet hood – thinking of Urwah ibn Masood of Taif and Walid ibn Mughirah of Mecca. It is a matter of history that the Prophet conquered Mecca and only withdrew from the siege of Taif to Medina when it became too protracted.

It was at this time that God enlightened Urwa ibn Masood as to the Truth. He then followed the Prophet until he met him in Medina, whereupon he accepted Islam. When he sought the Prophet’s permission to go back to his own people to call them to Islam, the Prophet warned him that they would offer resistance. But he replied, “O Prophet of God, I am their leader. They hold me as dear as the eyes in their heads.”

So he took his leave of the Prophet and journeyed to his home town, where he gathered together the townsmen and announced to them, from a raised platform, that he had accepted Islam. When he called upon them to follow the same path, they responded by shooting arrows at him from all sides, fatally wounding him.

It is sad reality that most leaders attribute the continuance of their leadership to their willingness to fall in line with the wishes of their followers. They know full well that any move to run counter to them would mean their rejection or even their brutal assassination, as in the case of Urwah ibn Masood. Urwah had followed the Truth, but it was a Truth which was alien to his people. From the position of an honoured leader, he had fallen in their eyes to that of the lowliest of creatures. They did not stop to think that their action, carried out in such haste, would be to their eternal shame.