Duʿāʾ For and Against People: When the Prophet ﷺ Prayed Against, and For

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

A common misconception is that one may never be harsh, and never make duʿāʾ against anyone. This is simply wrong. At the Siege of Ṭāʾif, when the Companions gave up and prepared to leave, they begged, "Yā RasūlAllāh, make duʿāʾ against Thaqīf", for Thaqīf were stubborn, had sprung the trap with Hawāzin, and had cost Muslim lives. They were not asking something novel: by the eighth year they had seen the Prophet ﷺ supplicate against people before.

❧The precedents

He made duʿāʾ against the Aḥzāb when the ʿAṣr prayer was delayed at the Trench; against, by name, those who set the carcass upon his back as he prayed, and every one of them was killed at Badr; and for a full month in the Qunūt against the tribes who massacred the Companions at Biʾr Maʿūnah and al-Rajīʿ (over which Qurʾān was revealed). The Qurʾān itself is full of this: Mūsā prayed against Firʿawn, Nūḥ against his people, while the tenderhearted Ibrāhīm and ʿĪsā prayed for their misguided folk. Both are prophetic ways, like the temperaments of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar.

❧Against a wrongdoer, even a Muslim

The general rule is to pray for guidance; but it can be right and necessary to pray against. Hence all the aḥādīth of daʿwat al-maẓlūm, the supplication of the wronged: دَعْوَةُ الْمَظْلُومِ ... لَيْسَ بَيْنَهَا وَبَيْنَ اللَّهِ حِجَاب, "there is no veil between it and Allāh." If a Muslim has wronged you, stolen, embezzled, slandered knowingly, you may supplicate against him by name; how much more against a ṭāghiyah, a Firʿawn of our times, the tyrant of Syria and his like. To pray for such a one's guidance is permitted; to pray for his destruction is equally permitted, and often the more fitting.

❧Yet for Ṭāʾif: he prayed for them

And what did the Prophet ﷺ himself do with Ṭāʾif? He prayed for them, not against, "O Allāh, guide Thaqīf and bring them." So the general rule stands: be merciful. Having forgiven them once already, why should he not forgive them again? Within a few months they would come to Islam.