The Conversion of Abu Quhafah

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Perhaps the oldest man alive in Mecca was Abū Quḥāfah, Abū Bakr's father, blind, barely able to walk, and long opposed to the message. As the Prophet ﷺ took the pledges, Asmāʾ bint Abī Bakr led her grandfather by the hand toward him. The Prophet ﷺ said to Abū Bakr, هَلَّا تَرَكْتَ الشَّيْخَ نَأْتِيهِ فِي الْبَيْت, "Why did you not leave the old man? We would have come to him", honour shown to the father for the son's sake ("he is not of us who does not respect our elders"). Abū Bakr answered that it was fitter his father come to the Prophet ﷺ. Abū Quḥāfah accepted Islam, and the Prophet ﷺ told the women to change the pigeon-white of his hair but to avoid black, the basis of the ruling that a man's fully white hair may be dyed, but not black.

❧Abu Bakr's Tears

As his father's hand was placed in the Prophet's ﷺ to take the oath, Abū Bakr wept. "Why do you cry, this is a day of joy, your father has believed." And Abū Bakr said, "O Messenger of Allāh, how I wish the hand I now see were the hand of your uncle Abū Ṭālib rather than my own father's, that it would gladden you more than it gladdens me." Such was his love: to grudge his own father's Islam a place he would rather have given to the Prophet's ﷺ joy.