Hypocrites Exposed by Revelation at Tabūk

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

❧The lost camel

On the way back the Prophet's ﷺ own camel went missing, and he sent the Companions out to look for it, delaying the whole army. One of the hypocrites, far off at the other end of the column, said: here is a man who claims to be a prophet and tells you revelation comes to him from the heavens, and he does not even know where his own camel is.

It happened that a man who shared his tent was with the Prophet ﷺ at that moment. The Prophet ﷺ stood and said: "Some of you have said such and such. And by Allāh, I am only a human being, إِنَّمَا أَنَا بَشَرٌ, and I know only what Allāh tells me. And Allāh has just told me that my camel is in such and such a valley, its rein caught on a tree. Go and bring it." They went and found it exactly so.

The man came back to his own group astonished, telling the whole story, and one of those present said: that was the man who said it. The Companion was so inflamed that he expelled him, "You will not accompany me, yā ʿaduwwa-llāh, O enemy of Allāh", and drove him from the camp.

The shaykh underlines what the incident settles: does the Prophet ﷺ possess ʿilm al-ghayb? He himself says he does not, "I am a human, and I know only what Allāh has told me." Allāh disclosed this to him at that moment. It was a disclosure, not an independent attribute.

❧"We were only joking"

A worse incident followed. A group of hypocrites fell to laughing and joking beyond all bounds. One said: here he is telling us we will conquer Rome and Persia, who does he think he is? (And in truth, the shaykh says, this is a miracle beyond our understanding: historians still cannot fully explain how the Sassanid Empire, a superpower for six or seven centuries, simply dissolved within five or ten years; and Rome lost its better half, Damascus, Jerusalem, Alexandria, the seat of the greatest library and of its theologians, while ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ took the whole strip of North Africa with four thousand men.)

Another said something cruder still about the Qurʾān-reciting Companions around them, that they were cowardly and fat-bellied. One of the Companions overheard and said: كَذَبْتَ يَا عَدُوَّ اللهِ, "You lie, O enemy of Allāh, and I will tell the Messenger ﷺ of this statement of kufr."

He was at the rear of the army and began galloping to the front. The hypocrite, terrified, galloped after him to get his excuse in first. Picture it: the two racing on their camels toward the head of the column, and the Prophet ﷺ already in a state of waḥy, his eyes lowered, the aura the Companions knew. Before the man could reach him, the revelation had finished, and he was reciting: يَحْذَرُ الْمُنَافِقُونَ أَن تُنَزَّلَ عَلَيْهِمْ سُورَةٌ تُنَبِّئُهُم بِمَا فِي قُلُوبِهِمْ, "The hypocrites are wary lest a sūrah be sent down exposing what is in their hearts."

The hypocrite leapt off his camel to show humility and came running, and blurted out his excuse, and as he blurted it, the Qurʾān quoted him before he had finished: وَلَئِن سَأَلْتَهُمْ لَيَقُولُنَّ إِنَّمَا كُنَّا نَخُوضُ وَنَلْعَبُ, "and if you asked them, they would say: we were only talking idly and jesting" (9:65). And then, without the Prophet ﷺ even looking at him: لَا تَعْتَذِرُوا قَدْ كَفَرْتُم بَعْدَ إِيمَانِكُمْ, "Make no excuses; you have disbelieved after your belief" (9:66). The Companion said he saw the man running behind the Prophet's ﷺ camel, clinging to the stirrup and being dragged along, and the Prophet ﷺ would not so much as look at him, only repeating: لَا تَعْتَذِرُوا قَدْ كَفَرْتُم بَعْدَ إِيمَانِكُمْ.

❧Where the line is

From this the shaykh draws a lesson he calls urgent for our times: we believe in sanctity, that some things are simply off-limits to jokes. The Qurʾān forbids even mocking the false gods of others, "do not revile those they invoke besides Allāh, lest they revile Allāh", so what of Allāh and His Messenger? You may argue academically, you may ask how a thing can be a god; but ridicule and sarcasm of the sacred, no. Mockery of Allāh and His Messenger is among the things that nullify Islam outright, because a heart with īmān in it cannot ridicule Allāh and His Messenger; and one who has done so must return to Islam anew. He notes the pastoral urgency for a second generation raised where nothing is held sacred and a joke at the expense of the religion can seem harmless.