Umar's Objection, and Abu Bakr Puts Him in His Place

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

ʿUmar voiced what many Companions were feeling. He went to the Prophet ﷺ with a string of rhetorical questions: "Are you not the Messenger of Allah?", "Yes." "Are we not upon the truth and our enemies upon falsehood?", "Yes." "Then why do we accept humiliation in our religion (al-daniyyah)?" The Prophet ﷺ answered, "I am the Messenger of Allah, I will not disobey Him, and He will help me", a reply, Dr. Qadhi notes, ʿUmar could not argue with. ʿUmar shifted ground: "Did you not tell us we would circle the House?" "I did, but did I say this year? You will do it next year." Dr. Qadhi stresses that ʿUmar's anger (ghīrah) sprang not from ego or wounded Jāhilī pride but from love of Islam and a feeling that the religion had been trampled, yet it still exceeded its bounds, since the Prophet ﷺ embodies Islam and ʿUmar does not, and emotion drives a person to what he later regrets.

Still agitated, ʿUmar went to Abū Bakr and put the same questions to him. Abū Bakr rebuked him: "O man! He is the Messenger of Allah and will not disobey his Lord, so hold fast to his saddle-strap, for by Allah he is upon the truth." And he gave, unprompted, the very same answer about circling the House the next year that the Prophet ﷺ had given, without the Prophet ﷺ having told him. Dr. Qadhi reads this as clear proof of Abū Bakr's superior understanding (fiqh): though hurt himself, he trusted that Allah and His Messenger knew what he did not. It also reveals a firmer side of the normally gentle, tearful Abū Bakr, the same man who had cursed vilely at al-Ḥudaybiyyah, and who alone could later steady ʿUmar at the Prophet's ﷺ death, of which ʿUmar said it was as if Abū Bakr had cut his legs from under him.

ʿUmar later said, "So I did deeds for that", freeing slaves, fasting, praying, hoping Allah would forgive his outburst, and admitted that had any leader other than the Prophet ﷺ imposed that clause, he would never have accepted it. Nor was he alone: the Companion Sahl ibn Ḥunayf, decades later at Ṣiffīn, urged men to hold their own opinions suspect against the Qurʾān and Sunnah, confessing that on "the day of Abū Jandal" he had felt the treaty so wrong that, could he have rejected the Prophet's ﷺ command and escaped it, he would have. Dr. Qadhi draws two lessons: that sincere Tawbah shows itself in changed deeds, as ʿUmar's did; and that respectfully disagreeing with and arguing a point before a leader is permitted in Islam, ʿUmar tried several lines with the Prophet ﷺ himself, even as ultimate, unconditional obedience belongs to Allah and His Messenger alone.