THE POLICY OF THE PROPHET

Here verbal advice does not mean issuing statements in newspapers, making speeches and staging protests. It only means that when one finds some perversion in a ruler, one should pray for him, and meet him by appointment in private and try to make him understand his shortcomings in total sincerity and with expressions of well-wishing. When another Companion asked the Prophet how to perform the duty of enjoining good and forbidding evil to the rulers, he replied: If you must do it, it should be done in complete privacy, with no one else between you and the ruler. Similarly, Islam differentiates between individual and congregational action. In individual action, only one’s own life is in danger (when an action is confined to the individual sphere, only an individual suffers the consequences). But in congregational initiatives, the lives of thousands of people are involved. It is therefore but natural that the command in each case is not identical. An incident connected with the migration provides a pertinent example. When Umar emigrated from Makkah to Madinah, he took his sword, bow and arrows then came to the Kabah. The Quraysh leaders were seated there in the courtyard. First he circumambulated the Kabah, then performed two units of prayer. Finally he approached the Quraysh leaders and said to them: “Whoever wants his wife to become a widow and his children to become orphans should come and see me outside the city.” (The Quraysh were persecuting everyone, particularly those who were migrating to Madinah, that was why Umar threw down this challenge to them.) Then Umar set off for Madinah and none of them followed him. But, unlike Umar, the Prophet migrated secretly. As we know, in the thirteenth year of the Makkan period, the Quraysh leaders met at Dar-al-Nadwah (Meeting Hall) to decide upon the steps to be taken to remove him from their path. The following night, a few young men wielding swords surrounded his house. But the Prophet, to avoid any confrontation, had quietly left the place at night under the cover of darkness. In this move the Prophet maintained such great secrecy that, although he had to go to Madinah from Makkah, he went in the opposite direction and remained hidden on the way for three days inside the cave of Thaur. Then he reached Islam always advises proceeding wisely and judiciously, and certainly does not favour acting on impulse.