The Companions Were Human: The Anṣār and the Spoils

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Another benefit: even the best of people can be moved by worldly desire, by wealth, power, ambition, and that inclination is not, in itself, a mark of weak faith. Faith shows in whether one is checked when reminded.

❧The Anṣār's disappointment

When the enormous spoils of Ḥunayn were poured out upon the new Meccan converts, Abū Sufyān, al-Aqraʿ ibn Ḥābis and their like made millionaires overnight, fortunes of a hundred thousand camels here, ten thousand dīnārs there, not a single penny went to the Anṣār. And they said their bitter word: "When it is the call to war, we are first to the line; when it is money, he gives it to his own relatives, the Quraysh." To be disappointed in the Messenger ﷺ is itself a grave thing, a kind of kufr, yet they were human, and any of us in their place might have said far worse.

"I am a man of the Anṣār." The Prophet ﷺ gathered them alone in a tent, none but the Anṣār present, and spoke to their hearts until they wept: "Are you not content that the people go home with sheep and camels, while you go home with the Messenger of Allāh among you?" And: أَنَا امْرُؤٌ مِنَ الْأَنْصَار, "I am a man of the Anṣār; were it not for the accident of my birth I would be one of you, and if all mankind went one way and the Anṣār another, I would go with the Anṣār." They sobbed and begged his forgiveness.

❧The lesson

This is īmān. To have the waswasah does not negate faith; Shayṭān whispers to all. The point is the believer who is da'īf yet إِذَا ذُكِّرَ ذَكَرَ, "when reminded, remembers." We wrong the Companions when we make them into angels, for then they can no longer be our role models, they were the best of human beings, but human: they wanted wealth as we want it, and were kept in check.