Abdullah ibn Abdillah ibn Ubayy

ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAbdillāh ibn Ubayy was a sincere Companion and the son of ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy ibn Salūl, the leader of the hypocrites, a striking contrast to his father's persistent duplicity. When rumors reached Madinah that the Prophet (ﷺ) was considering the execution of his father for the "al-aʿazzu minhā al-adhall" remark made during the return from al-Muraysīʿ (5 AH), he went out to meet the returning army and told the Prophet (ﷺ) directly that, raised as he was in the tribal customs of pre-Islamic loyalty, he did not believe he could bear seeing another man walk the streets of Madinah having killed his father, and would be compelled to kill that man himself, incurring the sin of killing a fellow Muslim over a father he already knew to be guilty. He asked the Prophet (ﷺ) to command him to carry out the execution instead, so the burden of the act would fall on no one but himself. The Prophet (ﷺ) refused, telling him instead: "Lā, bal aḥsin ṣuḥbatahu", no, rather be good to him, and promised that ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy would be treated well as long as he lived among them.

Relieved but still furious with his father, ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAbdillāh stood at the gate of Madinah and personally barred his father from entering the city until the Prophet (ﷺ) gave explicit permission. When his father eventually died, it was ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAbdillāh who, moved by filial mercy, asked the Prophet (ﷺ) for his own cloak to use as a burial shroud and for him to pray the funeral prayer over his father, both of which the Prophet (ﷺ) granted before the later revelation of Q 9:84 forbade praying over or seeking forgiveness for any of the hypocrites. ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAbdillāh himself was martyred a few years later in the Wars of Riddah during Abū Bakr's caliphate.