The Slander Spreads, and Aishah Learns the Truth

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Freshly humiliated by his exposure as a hypocrite in Sūrat al-Munāfiqūn, ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy ibn Salūl seized on Ṣafwān ibn al-Muʿaṭṭal's entirely innocent escort of ʿĀʾishah back to the army, she alone, on his camel, catching up near the rear of the march where the hypocrites traditionally positioned themselves, and began spreading a slander before the caravan had even reached Madinah.

ʿĀʾishah herself, entirely unaware, returned home and fell seriously ill with an ordinary fever, bedridden for a full month. During this time she noticed only that the Prophet (ﷺ) was less openly affectionate than usual when he visited to check on her health, brief, formal visits rather than his customary warmth, which she found puzzling but did not suspect the real cause of.

❧THE ACCIDENTAL REVELATION

Once recovered, ʿĀʾishah went out with Umm Misṭaḥ, her mother's first cousin, effectively an aunt figure, to relieve herself, as was customary before homes had indoor facilities. On the way back, Umm Misṭaḥ tripped on her garment and, privately furious at her own son Misṭaḥ over his role in the affair, blurted out a curse against him. ʿĀʾishah, unaware of anything, rebuked her, how could she curse a veteran of Badr, a man whose status was already well established in the community only a few years after the battle? Assuming ʿĀʾishah already knew what was happening, Umm Misṭaḥ then explained directly, the moment ʿĀʾishah first learned the content of the slander against her.

By some accounts she fainted on the spot, then returned home in a state of grief far worse than the physical fever she had just recovered from. When the Prophet (ﷺ) came to check on her again, unaware she now knew, she asked his permission to spend the night at her parents' house, composing herself enough to seek verification from those she trusted most, rather than confronting anyone directly in the moment. (Dr. Qadhi notes this episode as a basic fiqh precedent that a wife requires her husband's permission to stay overnight elsewhere, even at her own parents' home.)

At her parents' house, she asked her mother, Umm Rūmān, directly what was being said and why she had been kept in the dark. Umm Rūmān tried to console her without confirming or denying anything specific: "My daughter, ease yourself, rarely does a woman have a husband who loves her as much as yours loves you, without other women talking." ʿĀʾishah, still unable to believe anyone could say such things, cried through the entire night without sleeping.

❧THE CULPRITS

ʿĀʾishah's own account, preserved in the Qurʾān's phrasing itself (referring to the one "who took charge of it"), names ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy as the originator, a conclusion scholars unanimously accept. Because Ibn Ubayy was the pre-Islamic leader of the Khazraj, the bulk of his hypocrite following came from that same tribe, not because the Khazraj were worse people than the Aws, but simply because tribal loyalty followed their chieftain, a pattern Dr. Qadhi highlights as an object lesson in how a single corrupt leader can implicate an entire community through nothing more than inherited tribal allegiance.

Beyond the hypocrites, three sincere Muslims were also guilty, not of inventing the lie, but of repeating and circulating it: Misṭaḥ ibn Uthāthah (Abū Bakr's own second cousin, whom he financially supported), Ḥassān ibn Thābit (the Prophet's ﷺ own poet), and Ḥamnah bint Jaḥsh, whose sister Zaynab bint Jaḥsh was ʿĀʾishah's genuine rival among the Prophet's (ﷺ) wives, Ḥamnah's motive, unlike the other two, appearing to be a deliberate attempt to damage that rival by association. When the Prophet (ﷺ) separately asked Zaynab herself what she knew of ʿĀʾishah, she refused to say anything but good, famously replying that she would not let her ears and eyes bear false witness, ʿĀʾishah herself later said "her dīn protected her tongue," even though the two women were genuine rivals with real personal tension between them.