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Assalamu 'Alaikum wa Rahmatu Allahi wa Barakatu
dear brothers and sisters.
Welcome back to the first short batch that we're doing
insha'Allahu ta'ala at the end
where we are covering some of those companions that
embraced Islam very early on,
but we only have a few details about their lives so that we
can revive their memory bi'idnillahi ta'ala.
Now, as I said last time,
this is actually one of my favorite incidents,
not because the incident that he is famous for
takes place in early Islam, but subhan'Allah
because it is one of those turning points in Islamic history
that shows you just what the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
was able to generate in these young men and women around him
that faced all sorts of persecution for their faith and
refused to turn back on their heels.
So we find today Abdullah ibn Hudhafah as-sahmi
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu. He is the brother of Khunais
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu, who we spoke about last time.
And as we mentioned, Abdullah ibn Hudhafah was too young
to partake in the battles alongside the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
He was brought to embrace Islam by his older brother,
then taken on the migration with his older brother, Khunais.
And so everything that he does is inevitably
and undoubtedly a part of the credit of Khunais as well,
but he didn't get a chance to show that devotion
to the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
until later on in life as he grew a bit older.
And so with Abdullah ibn Hudhafa,
not having the ability to fight in Badr,
despite again, being someone who had already made the Hijra
because he wasn't old enough or to fight in Uhud,
we find that the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
used him for a very specific incident
and the two types of incidents or the two incidents
that he is most famous for both involve
his stance in the face of a tyrant,
and this is what I want to weave together inshaAllah Ta'ala
in this short episode;
that when the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam says
the greatest Jihad,
the greatest striving in the path of Allah
is Kalimatu haq 'inda sulthonin ja'r
to speak a word of truth in the face of a tyrant.
This is the man that spoke a word of truth
in the face of the two greatest tyrants of his day,
the tyrant of the Persians and the tyrant of the Romans.
In the time of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
he was the person who the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
ordered to take the letter
to Kisra of Persia, calling him to Islam.
And when the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam appoints you
to take a letter to Kisra calling him to Islam,
and also, you know, this letter is a letter
that has major consequences politically
for him as well, right?
So, sending him to the most arrogant tyrant of the day
in Kisra is dangerous for Abdullah.
There is a chance that Abdullah might even be killed
in this mission and the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
told him
I want you to take the letter and deliver it to him by hand.
Your order is to take this letter and to stand in front of
Kisra and to deliver it to him by hand.
Now, who narrates this incident?
Al-Shifa' bint Abdullah Al Adawiyah radiAllahu ta'ala Anha.
So Abdullah ibn Hudhafah, radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
he goes to Kisra completely unphased,
and he goes up to him and, you know, Kisra has a messenger
to receive the letter from Abdullah, he says no,
my Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam commanded me
to deliver the letter to the hand of Kisra.
So he insisted that he will hand the letter
directly to Kisra.
When Kisra reads the letter from the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
saying to him from Muhammad the messenger of Allah
to Kisra, the great one of Persia.
And he says to him aslim taslim,
become Muslim, accept Islam, you will find salam.
And you would have the reward of the belief
of all of your people.
And if you refuse, then you would have the disbelief,
the punishment, you would bear the burden
of the disbelief of all of your people.
Now, Kisra did not like the letter.
So he tore the letter up
in front of Abdullah ibn Hudhafah,
he threatened him and he threatened the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam and of course would also go on
to even try to plot the assassination of the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
So when Abdullah ibn Hudhafah radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
got back to the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
and told him what happened, he was not phased.
He did not lose his composure in the face of that tyrant.
The Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam said
mazzak allahu mulkah
may Allah tear up his kingdom the way he tore up
that letter and subhan'Allah from there,
it was, you know, coup after coup
assassination after assassination,
sisters assassinating brothers,
children assassinating parents,
and the Persian empire went through complete internal
disarray. And that was from the dua of the Prophet.
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
And this was the stance that we found from
Abdullah ibn Hudhafah radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
in the face of Kisra.
So I wanted to give that incident as a pretext
for the incident he is really famous for,
which is actually with the Byzantines, okay,
with the Romans.
When he was sent out in the battles against the Byzantines,
and this was in the time of Omar ibn Al Khattab,
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu, Khunais' radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu's
father in law,
and he arrives at the Byzantines, he was captured.
And when this group of Muslims was captured,
Heraclius says that I want you to bring to me
a captive amongst them who is considered
a leader amongst them, most noble
and is considered senior to the rest of them.
So they said Abdullah ibn Hudhafah is your man.
So they went and they brought Abdullah ibn Hudhafah
from his cell, and he stood him in front of him,
and he said to him, listen, tanassar.
He said to him, renounce your religion, become Christian.
He says, usharikuka fee mulki
I will give you half of my kingdom.
So he's testing his faith first and foremost,
before he even persecutes him,
because he sees that there is a mind game to be played here,
and there is a way to break the Muslims in a different way,
as hundreds of them are being held captive.
So he says, I will let you free
and give you half of my empire,
so long as you renounce Islam, your religion
and embrace our religion of Christianity.
So Abdullah responded to him, and he said wallahi
if you gave me everything that you had,
forget about half of your empire,
you give me your whole empire, the entire Roman empire,
and you give me everything that the Arabs possess as well.
Give me your empire and give me the empire of the Arabs.
I will not renounce my religion of Islam
even for the blink of an eye.
subhan'Allah, Look at that strength, right?
You're standing in front of the leader of his people,
the leader of a brutal empire and absolutely no fear.
So Heraclius says, let me try something else with him then.
So he says, put him back in his jail cell.
And then he says, I want you to send him
the most beautiful woman to seduce him in his cell.
Let's see if we can break him that way, okay?
So he refused the empire,
half of the empire to leave his religion of Islam,
which would have had serious implications in the morale of
the Muslims, right?
Those that were captive, and those that would hear about
what happened to Abdullah ibn Hudhafa radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
So he says send him the most beautiful woman in his cell
and let her seduce him.
So Abdullah ibn Hudhafa is in his cell,
and they push this woman to seduce him in his cell.
And he turned away from her
with whatever direction she came at him from.
So if she came to his right, he turned to his left,
and if she came to his left, he turned to his right.
He wouldn't even look at her, completely unmoved.
And she tried all sorts of things to seduce him.
But subhan'Allah, he maintained his faith,
even in that regard.
So he fought the different temptations that were being
given to him, and this woman came out
after completely giving up,
and she said, I've never seen anything like this man.
It's like, he's made of stone.
It's like, he's a statue or something.
He's completely unmoved by anything
that I did to seduce him.
Like he didn't flinch, subhan'Allah
with that type of temptation.
So the admiration is growing in Heraclius,
even though he's trying to break him.
He says, you know what, then starve him,
and don't give him any water for three days.
Let's see what happens to him then.
So let's start him and dehydrate him for three days.
So he left him in a cell, no food, no drink for three days.
And then, at the end of the three days,
look at the next tactic, torture tactic.
He says, take him some pork and some wine.
Let's see if he eats pork and he drinks wine.
Now, from an Islamic perspective,
he actually could do that, right?
I mean, he has the excuse to consume alcohol at that point,
and he has the excuse to eat that pork.
But this is not about fiqh here,
in terms of halal and haram, and darura,
and what's necessity,
no, this is a different type of game
that is being played here.
So he refuses as well.
And Heraclius, he says, doesn't your religion allow you
to consume this in hardship?
He said, yes, but I didn't want to give you the pleasure
of a companion of the Messenger of Allah SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam eating and drinking pork and alcohol and wine
so that you could mock the religion of the Messenger.
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
So he refused the temptation of empire.
He refused the temptation of seduction.
He refused the temptation of eating and drinking
even when he was starving, and it would have been
halal for him to do so. So he says, you know what,
put him in the position of crucifixion.
So put him in the position of crucifixion.
So they hang him up to be crucified,
and then he says, bring forth the warriors
and throw spears and shoot arrows at him
all around his face, all around his body parts,
so that he feels the pressure in every direction.
So subhan'Allah, just imagine, he's strung up,
and they're shooting the arrows,
and they're throwing the spears at him.
And they're just missing every part of his body,
including his head.
And he doesn't flinch.
Who is this man? What are you made of, you know?
Subhan'Allah, this is a man that
became Muslim as a child with the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam and there was a different type of iman and yaqeen
that was cultivated inside of him,
faith and certainty, that was cultivated inside of him.
So he doesn't flinch and Heraclius says, bring him down.
So, because he didn't do anything at that point,
he makes him an offer again.
He says to him, listen, tanassar.
leave your religion, embrace mine.
I will give you half of my empire,
and I will marry you to my daughter.
He says, no, absolutely not.
There's nothing that would cause me to leave my religion.
So then Abdullah ibn Hudhafah radiAllahu Anhu
narrates something actually very painful,
and it shows you the mindset of these tyrants.
He said that he then ordered for a container of boiling oil,
hot boiling oil to be brought in front of him.
And then he called for another one of the Muslim prisoners.
And he took that Muslim prisoner, and he had him thrown into
the container of boiling oil right in front of
Abdullah ibn Hudhafah.
And he said that as soon as that man was thrown in,
he started to shout frantically,
and it was only a matter of seconds, subhan'Allah,
that his flesh was burnt off of his body
and his bones rose to the top.
I mean, that is another level of torture and cruelty,
and that is something that could
truly break a person, right?
Even a person who is seemingly unbreakable, to see that
happening in front of your eyes with that brutality,
and to know that what's being said to you,
is that your next if you don't comply, subhan'Allah,
what a test.
So after that happened, Heraclius then says,
pick him up and throw him in the container as well.
As Abdullah ibn Hudhafah is picked up,
and he's about to be thrown into it, he starts to cry.
So what is he thinking?
He's thinking that I finally got him. I broke him.
Okay, he's about to cry. Clearly, he's afraid now,
that what's going to happen to him is what happened
to his companion. So he says, bring him down,
bring them back to me.
So as he is brought back to him, he says to him that,
you know,
once again, accept half of my empire,
renounce your religion.
He said, no.
He said, well, why did you cry? I mean,
aren't you afraid of what I'm going to do to you?
He said, no, that's not why I was crying.
He said, then why were you crying?
He says, subhan'Allah, tamannaytu annali mi'atu nafs
He said I wished I had a hundred souls,
tulqa ha qada fillah
and each one of those 100 souls
would be sacrificed for the sake of Allah
Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la.
I wasn't crying because I was afraid.
I was crying because I knew this was the end.
This was Shahadah.
This was that martyrdom that we had seen
so many of our companions go through.
And I had wished that I could give everything for Allah
Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, a hundred times over.
So he said, subhan'Allah, what is this man? You know,
Ajiba minhu. He was so shocked by him.
So he's come to this realization
that I tried to break him in every way,
and he's refusing to be broken, right?
So what does he say? He says, I've got to do something now
to salvage my own tactics in front of my people, right?
So he says to Abdullah,
he says kiss my forehead and you can go free.
All you have to do now is kiss my forehead,
and you can go free.
Abdullah said I don't want to kiss your head,
and I don't want you to kiss my head.
Even that's not happening.
He said to him, if you kiss my forehead,
I'll let 60 of you go.
So he's negotiating now how many prisoners will be released
in return for him just doing this, kissing his forehead,
to affirm his superiority after refusing to be broken
by his tactics.
So he says to him, he said, no, wali jamee'an muslimeen
He said, if you want me to kiss your head,
you don't just free 60 captives,
you free all of the Muslims.
I'll kiss your forehead, if you free all of the Muslims.
he said fine. Lee jamee'an muslimeen.
All 300 of them can go free if you kiss my head.
So Abdullah finally went up to him
and he kissed his forehead.
And then he took those Sahabah and those tabi'een
back to Medina, and when they got to Medina,
look what Omar ibn al Khattab radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu did.
Omar radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu went up to Abdullah,
and he kissed him on the forehead,
as he had kissed the emperor's forehead.
And then he ordered all of the Muslims to also go up to
Abdullah and to kiss his forehead, radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
because subhan'Allah he did not do that.
He did not hold back
the saving of the Muslims because of his ego.
This was all for Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la.
So honor and humbling yourself is for Allah,
Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la.
and that was something that's demonstrated by Abdullah,
and that was something that was demonstrated by Omar.
And Abdullah ibn Hudhafa radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu continued
to strive in the path of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la
until the khilafa of Uthman radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
where he would die in Egypt in the year 33 after Hijra
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
So, another one of as-sabiquun al-awwalun
The firsts who we did not really get to see shine,
though he embraced Islam very early on.
We didn't get to see shine until the khilafa of Umar
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu wa anhum ajma'een
JazakAllahu khayrun and
I'll see you all next time inshallah.
Was Salaam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuhu
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